“I am Rebecca Morrow.”
He smiled back, happy to have brought her a taste of happiness in Jeter’s manufactured hell.
“It’s good of you to remember.”
Keeler remembered a lot about her from the news coverage. He remembered the holiday snap most newspapers had shown in their stories—a happy and tanned Rebecca squinting against the Corfu sun. She looked a hell of lot different when a tabloid had run an autopsy headshot after the police found her naked body in Epping Forest. It was that grisly image which had helped Keeler remember.
“Can you help me?” he asked.
“If I can.”
“I’m looking for two other men. Their names are Lefford and Allard. They would have come this way a couple of months back.” Keeler stopped himself, remembering what Rebecca had just said about time having no place here. “Have they come this way?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Have you spoken to them?”
“No, but I sense people exist here who shouldn’t.”
Keeler swallowed hard.
“I can’t tell you where they are, but I can tell you they are still here.”
The tone of her voice told him something had happened to them. He wasn’t up to asking what yet.
“Is there anybody else here,” Keeler indicated to this make-believe world with its sunshine without a sun, “who could possibly tell me where I could find them?”
“You need not worry about that. Everybody here senses those who should not be here. Have no fear, these men will find you.”
He did have fears. He feared Rebecca and the lake of corpses she stood on. He feared Lefford and Allard and what had happened to them. Any amount of time spent inside Jeter’s world was bound to distort the mind. He could feel himself changing already, nothing severe, just a low level disturbance at the back of his brain, a whisper telling him what to do. He wondered if it was a permanent change and if it was too late for him already. He wondered how long it would be before O’Keefe sent another inmate after him.
“What is your name?” Rebecca asked.
“Keeler.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Michael.”
“You should leave before it’s too late, Michael.”
Keeler wished he could, but there was no going back—no pardon waiting for him with his name on it. Even if he made it out of this thing alive, O’Keefe wouldn’t let him rejoin general population with what he knew. Whether Rebecca liked it or not, this was Keeler’s new home.
“I gotta go,” Keeler said, turning to leave. “Thanks for your help.”
“You can still save him.”
“What?”
“The child. You can still save him.”
Anger flared inside Keeler. The child—how did she know about the bank? Was she reading his mind? He whirled on Rebecca.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he snapped. “What child?”
“There is a boy here. The police captured Jeter before he could kill him. The police learned of the boy, but never located him.”
Keeler’s flesh tingled as his rage subsided. Images of Tim Mitchell’s bloody corpse clawed their way into his brain again. He pushed Tim to the back of this mind in favor of this other lost boy.
“No one else can save him,” Rebecca said.
“That doesn’t make sense. What do you mean the boy’s in here? How can that be?”
“Come to me, Michael.”
He stared at the heap of mutilated bodies she was standing on.
“They’ll support your weight.”
“But they are…” Words failed him and he pointed at the knotted victims.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rebecca said with overwhelming compassion. “We feel nothing. You cannot do anything to us that hasn’t already been done.”
Keeler swallowed. He eyed a decapitated man before him and placed a foot on his barrel chest. The corpse squirmed against its neighbors, but it supported him. His next step connected with the partially flayed face of a middle-aged woman. She