“We need to prep him for surgery, sheriff.”

  The sheriff nodded at the nurse who had just entered. “Just make sure you count your scalpels when you’re finished,” he said before he left.

  “The procedure went well.” Lanz again, standing over Donaldson with that sanctimonious frown. “It’ll be a few days before we know if the skin grafts take. You need to stay still, or they’ll slough off. I’ve given permission for the authorities to question you.”

  Donaldson glanced at the other side of the bed. Two men in suits. Feds.

  “I have nothing to say until I talk to a lawyer,” Donaldson said. His words were heavy, his entire body delightfully numb.

  “We found the pictures hidden in your car, Mr. Donaldson.” The taller of the two had a voice like a radio jock. “In several of them you even posed with your victims.”

  “Alleged victims,” Donaldson said, cracking a small, private smile.

  “We want to close these cases, Mr. Donaldson.” The shorter one. “If you cooperate, we can talk about reducing your sentence. Maybe you can even get life, instead of the death penalty.”

  Donaldson closed his eyes. They tried to talk to him for a few more minutes, and when he didn’t reply, they left.

  Donaldson didn’t sleep well.

  He dreamt of being dragged behind the car, reliving all of the pain and the horror and the fear in slow-motion. His arm breaking, then breaking again, and again, and again, each new snap loud as a gunshot. His legs and ass being stripped of skin as the pavement ate through his pants. Lucy giggling at him, holding a squirt bottle of lemon juice, gleefully spritzing his open wounds. Donaldson’s father watching the scene, standing over him with that constant look of disgust.

  “I always knew you were a bad seed, boy.” Dad took off his belt, bounced the heavy, brass buckle off his palm. “Let’s see if I can’t whup the fear of God into you.”

  Donaldson woke up, woozy from the pain meds, convinced his father was standing next to the bed. But it couldn’t have been his father, because he was too pale, his hair too long and dark.

  “Who’s there?” Donaldson whispered into his dark room.

  No one answered.

  But Donaldson felt eyes on him. He sat up, wondering if Lucy had somehow gotten to him, feeling a sick spike of fear jab right into his heart.

  Donaldson fumbled for the light switch.

  Squinted as it came on.

  He was alone in the room.

  “Serves you right, having nightmares.” The guard outside the door nodded at Donaldson all-knowingly. “Things you done, you should be haunted forever.”

  Donaldson flipped off the light. He closed his eyes.

  You got it wrong, pig. I’m not haunted.

  I’m the one that does the haunting.

  But when Donaldson fell asleep, the nightmare started all over.

  It was two in the morning. Donaldson was in pain.

  He knew there was more pain to come. Much more.

  While they didn’t handcuff him to his bed, the authorities had been very careful with him, just like the hick sheriff promised. Donaldson ate with a plastic spoon on paper plates. The metal bedpan was taken away as soon as he finished. Anything in his room that could be considered a weapon—even the TV and the drawers from the dresser—had been removed. That prick Lanz and those goddamn Feds had even taken away his IV. Cruel and unusual punishment, no doubt. If Donaldson went to trial, it would be something for his lawyer to protest.

  But Donaldson wasn’t going to trial. He was getting the hell out of there.

  He glanced at the cop outside the door, his ass molded to a chair, his back to Donaldson. There was a TV in the nurse’s station that the cop had been watching, but he hadn’t moved in over twenty minutes. Donaldson guessed he was asleep.

  The nurse on duty made her rounds every half an hour. She was a painfully thin woman named Winslow, and she wasn’t due back until two-thirty.

  Donaldson closed his eyes, focusing on his remaining ear, trying to tune into the sounds around him. The ward was quiet. Best as Donaldson could tell, about half the rooms on this wing were empty.

  Slow week at the country hospital.

  That would change in just a few minutes.

  Donaldson eyed the brace holding his shattered arm together. Winslow had called the contraption an external fixation. Made of heavy gauge surgical steel, it ran from his shoulder to his wrist, four metal rods surrounding the limb. They were attached to four large squares that encircled his arm. In each square were several screws. These screws pierced Donaldson’s skin and held his bones in place as they healed.

  He counted nine screws in all. Each had a tiny, flat knob on the end to manually adjust the tension. It sort of looked like the scaffolding employed to hold dinosaur bones together in museums. But shinier.

  Shinier, and very heavy.

  Okay. Here we go…

  Donaldson wadded up a corner of his blanket and shoved it into his mouth, tasting fabric softener. Biting down hard, he tentatively reached for the first screw.

  Touching it brought a spark of agony, and he immediately withdrew his hand. Sweat popped out in fat beads on Donaldson’s forehead. He let out a deep breath through his nostrils, blowing snot like a horse.

  Do it.

  Just do it.

  It’s the only way.

  Donaldson pinched the screw head again.

  Then he twisted.

  The pain was akin to having a tooth drilled. Deep nerve pain. Bone pain. A pointed, foreign object, sticking deep in the marrow, prompting a guttural moan that the blanket didn’t entirely muffle.

  Donaldson glanced frantically over at the cop, hoping his outburst hadn’t woken him.

  The cop didn’t budge.

  Blinking away tears, Donaldson twisted the screw again, and this time the burst of pain was so acute, so otherworldly, his whole body began to shake.

  Withdrawing his quivering hand, Donaldson immediately realized what had happened.

  Damn it, you idiot!

  It’s supposed to be righty-tighty, lefty-loosey!

  He’d been inadvertently driving the screw in deeper.

  Screaming curses in his head, he forced himself to grip the screw once again, turning it the correct direction this time, not stopping until the pointed barb tugged free of his skin. The hole it had been nestled in oozed dark blood, the pinpoint of suffering replaced by a duller, but equally unbearable throb.

  Done.

  Only eight screws to go.

  The next two were hell.

  The one after that made him redefine what hell actually was. Tears streaking down his cheeks, biting the blanket so hard his jaw ached and his gums bled, Donaldson fumbled with the screw holding the top bit of his shattered ulna in place. But the screw was lodged in the bone so tightly that Donaldson felt his ulna twist as he turned it. He could even see the bone wiggle underneath the skin, as if a mouse had burrowed into his flesh and was trying to escape.

  Donaldson’s hand shook so badly he couldn’t get a firm grip. His face felt cold and clammy, and he recognized he was going into shock—something he’d witnessed many times in his victims.

  Fight it. This is your only chance.

  Donaldson turned the screw.

  The broken bit of ulna turned sideways, almost perpendicular to his forearm.

  He shuddered in agony, and then passed out.

  Donaldson awoke trembling and confused, his face so drenched with sweat he looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower. He cast a frantic glance at the cop—still sleeping—and then the clock.

  2:20.

  Only ten minutes until Nurse Winslow made her rounds.

  He had to hurry. There were still five screws remaining.

  Donaldson hadn’t cried since he was a child. He remembered being ten years old, his father’s belt drawing blood on his ass, his thighs, his back; whipping him for killing a neighbor’s dog, whipping him so hard and for so long that Donaldson missed an entire week of school.

  That was the last time he’d ever cried. His father had whipped him many times since, but Donaldson had vowed to himself he’d never show weakness again. He’d internalize the pain. Keep it inside.

  It was a vow he’d kept for over forty years. A vow he now broke as sobs shook his body and mucus streamed down over his blubbering lips.

  The screw seemed to twitch with his pulse, vibrating just a bit, the bone beneath the skin so obviously out of place it was almost funny.

  Donaldson tried not to hesitate. But twisting was unbearable. It would cause him to pass out again.

  So he took a deep, stuttering breath, gripped the screw head, and yanked.

  The screw popped free, tearing out a thread of flesh, the blood spurting rather than oozing.

  Wailing like a baby now, Donaldson attacked the next screw. The pain became the only thing he knew. His entire world. He twisted and pulled and pried at his tortured arm, blinded by tears, thrashing his legs and feeling the skin grafts tear, shaking his head side to side and actually bending the metal brace that held his neck immobile.

  It was coming… coming…

  Did it!

  Donaldson wiped his blurry eyes.

  Three screws left.

  It was worse than a tooth ache. Worse than being kicked in the balls. Worse than his father’s belt. Worse than being dragged behind the car.

  Just two more.

  Both arms shook so badly now that Donaldson couldn’t get a grip on the screw head. He had to keep wiping his slippery, blood-soaked fingers on the blanket. When they finally locked on, he got confused and twisted the wrong way once again, tightening the screw, ratcheting up his suffering to the nth degree, causing his eyes to roll up into his head. He used the pain, knowing it couldn’t get any worse, turning it quickly and spitting out the blanket and vomiting bile as the screw mercifully pulled free.

  Okay…

  Just one more…

  The last one…

  This was the longest of them all, pinned into his wrist.

  Deep.

  So deep.

  Too deep.

  Can’t do it.

  Can’t fucking do it.

  The very thought of touching that final screw, let alone manipulating it, made Donaldson gag again. He needed morphine. He needed it more than he ever needed anything in his life. He could call the nurse, and she’d give him a shot. It would knock him out. He wouldn’t hurt anymore.

  But then they’d reset the screws.

  Donaldson knew he couldn’t bear that.

  He closed his eyes, lips pursed together as he sobbed, and in his pain-delirium he was visited by an angel.

  In Donaldson’s mind, the angel had big, white wings. A glowing halo. A beatific smile.

  And pink Crocs.

  “Looks like I win, old man,” said the Lucy Angel.

  Donaldson’s eyes flipped open.

  No. You’re not going to win, little girl.

  He attacked the last screw with a hatred so fierce he could handle the agony.

  It took twelve complete turns to get the son of a bitch out.

  And then Donaldson was done.

  His arm no longer looked human. More like a giant, pulsing earthworm, gooey with blood, the skin purple with hematomas. He carefully pulled off the brace, threading his ruined appendage through it, laughing as he hefted its weight. Solid surgical steel, at least five pounds of metal, screws protruding out like spikes on a medieval war mace.

  Hysterical, Donaldson’s tears turned into hoarse laughter.

  You fuckers made sure there were no weapons in my room.

  But you forgot one.

  He focused on the cop.

  Still asleep.

  The clock.

  2:27.

  Three minutes until Winslow showed.

  Donaldson yanked off his head gear, bent and twisted from his thrashing, and set it on the pillow behind him as he heaved his bulk into a sitting position. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the bandages from his skin graft surgery soaked in blood.

  When he stood up Donaldson almost collapsed onto the floor. It felt like his entire body was made of pudding. His ravaged left arm hung at his side, useless, and the bloody brace clutched in his right hand looked comically inadequate.

  I’m going to pass out before I even get to the cop.

  Donaldson closed his eyes, feeling the blood drain from his head, knowing he was about to lose consciousness.

  Once again, an image of Lucy saved him. That little whore’s face smiling after she’d handcuffed Donaldson to the car bumper.

  Rage displaced the wooziness, and he took three quick, lumbering strides over to the door, reaching the cop before he could turn around, raising up the brace and savagely bringing it down onto the lawman’s skull.

  There was a crack like a board splintering. The cop flopped over, off his chair, raising up his forearm to protect himself.

  Donaldson adjusted his aim, swinging the brace sideways, a protruding screw connecting with the cop’s temple, where it became embedded.

  Embedded, and also stuck, which Donaldson discovered when he tried to pull it back.

  The cop’s hands flailed, pulling at the brace, his legs flopping around and kicking the tile floor. Donaldson shifted his bulk, dragging the man inside his room, and then with a single, violent twist, he yanked the brace free, along with a quarter-sized piece of skull.

  From that point on, it was like hammering a nail, bringing down the surgical steel again and again and again and again until the cop finally stopped moving.

  Sweating, shaking, and—quite incongruously—giggling, Donaldson tossed the brace back onto his bed, and used his good arm to drag the pig into the bathroom. He was exhausted, pain crawling over his entire body like red ants. But he was also exhilarated. Killing was the best drug in the world.

  And like an addict, Donaldson craved more.

  The plan had been to dress in the cop’s uniform. But there was no time, no possible way Donaldson could ever fit his mangled arm into a shirt sleeve. So instead Donaldson took the man’s gun—a 9mm Beretta—and flipped off the safety.

  Moving quickly, he slipped into the hallway just as the clock hit 2:29, padded one door over, and ducked into the adjacent room.

  There was a man asleep in bed, lightly snoring. A big guy, lumberjack type. The chart on his bed read R. Bolton. Donaldson considered his next move, judged the large man to be a potential threat if he awoke, and then moved another room down.

  This bed was occupied by a sleeping old woman. Easy pickings. Even better, she was hooked up to a heart monitor.

  Donaldson approached the bed and raised the gun.

  Wait. No fun in that.

  Better to wake her first.

  “Hey. Lady.”

  She peeked open her rheumy eyes, the pupils growing wide at the sight of him.

  “Do you have a family?” Donaldson asked.

  She nodded, eyes flitting back and forth between him and the gun. The heart machine went BEEEEEP……BEEEEEP……BEEEEEP…

  “People who love you?”

  “What do you want?” Her voice was like dry, autumn leaves crackling underfoot.

  Donaldson pressed the barrel of the weapon to her head. “Answer me.”

  “Yes, people love me.”

  “Who will miss you most?”

  “I… please don’t hurt me.”

  Donaldson’s eyes flitted to the balloon bouquet on the dresser next to the bed. “Who sent the balloons?”

  “My… my grandson.”

  BEEP…BEEP…BEEP…BEEP…

  “What’s his name?”

  “Petey.”

  “Will Petey miss you when you die?”

  She nodded, her wrinkled, chicken neck bouncing.

  “Will he cry at your funeral?”

  Another nod.