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“Like in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’”

“You’re familiar with it?”

Leaning his head back on the seat, he closed his eyes “‘I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was per me The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears’”

“I’ll take that as a yes” The fact that he’d ested he’d identified with the story in so his situation She turned down the radio “Thatmaterial to read in prison”

“I read it in high school, too”

“So…you graduated?”

“I would have if my murder trial hadn’t interfered,” he said dryly “I was in my senior year when they carted me off”

Because it’d grown dark, Peyton had less fear that they er at “Silasses sat in his hat on the console between thelad he could relax, but the quiet of the countryside they passed on their way into town made her feel as if they were just as isolated as they’d been at her house “Did you get your GED?”

“Not for several years I was too busy trying to get myself DOA”

“DOA is dead on arrival”

“I know”

She slowed for a traffic light “You were suicidal?”

“Not in the classic sense Just self-destructive, fatalistic I was looking for trouble, and I expected the trouble I found to be the kind that would put ood”

“It wouldn’t be easy to deal with being falsely imprisoned”

“I was consue hadn’t left him But if his mother and uncle had betrayed hiry Peyton couldn’t think of anything that would cut a child more deeply “Is that when you joined The Crew?”

“Yes”

The light turned green, so she gave her SUV so, like the Aryan Brotherhood?”

He stared out the ard the whitecaps of the sea “The Crew is an offshoot of the AB My first cellie was a member”