The Gatekeeper. Michelle Gagnon
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bad she blacked out. And Lurch in the background with a camera, recording it all.
It seemed to go on forever. It was still dark outside, and she wondered if she’d lost another day.
Madison felt like she’d been beaten all over, every limb, every joint ached. For the first time she confronted the full gravity of her situation. All along in the back of her mind she’d maintained this elaborate fantasy. Commandos storming in and putting a bullet through Lurch’s brain. They’d tell her she was so smart, so brave. Deep down she never doubted that someone was coming to save her.
Now she could see how childish that fantasy was. Sometimes there was no happy ending. Sometimes people just died. She almost laughed aloud at how pathetic her GPS transmission was. Ridiculous, really—the world was full of signals now, a never-ending stream bouncing along every wavelength, a constant din. And yet she’d managed to convince herself that her little signal, from a DS Lite no less, would filter through. It was completely absurd.
Madison realized she was shuddering again. She drew a deep breath. No more imagining who would show up at her funeral, no more pretending this was a nightmare she would awaken from. She was done with all that. All she could do now was hope they never brought her in that awful room again.
Ten
Jake lifted a corner of the mattress and grimaced at what was underneath. Mack Krex’s living quarters redefined the term hellhole. A dank eight-by-ten-foot room in a boardinghouse so far on the wrong side of the tracks they weren’t even visible in the distance. The only furnishings were a caved-in bed and a rickety pasteboard bureau propped against the wall. Honestly, a cell would have been preferable, Jake thought. At least it would’ve been clean.
“Pretty foul, huh?” Mack Krex’s parole officer grinned at him, rocking back and forth on his heels. “No fast-food joint pays enough for a place without rats.”
Jake wasn’t in the mood to joke around. He hadn’t been able to forget Madison’s tortured face all morning. “I called the manager at Plucky Chicken. He said Krex quit a few months back.”
“Yeah? Huh.”
“But he’s current on the rent here. Paid three months in advance.”
The guy shrugged, and Jake narrowed his eyes at him. The PO stood about five-six, wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt, skinny tie, cheap shoes. His scraggly goatee was a misguided attempt at trendiness, and the beginnings of a potbelly hung over his belt. He looked fifty but was probably closer to thirty-five.
“Doesn’t bother you that Krex might have backslid?”
“Maybe he got a gig under the table, working the door at a club. Some of them do that, and Mack’s a big guy.” The PO held up a hand defensively. “You want to see my caseload? I can’t babysit these guys 24/7. He showed for our meets, and his piss was clean. Far as I’m concerned he’s a success story.”
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