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And when the question of the other missing children came up, Avery swore blind he had not killed Paul Barrett, William Peters, or Mariel Oxenburg. They might be dead, but those three children had the power to extend his stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and he would never allow them to do that to him, however much it might ease the pain of still-grieving relatives.

Avery knew it was far from a foregone conclusion that he would be paroled after twenty years, but he knew he’d given himself the best possible chance, and was therefore content to wait another couple of years to find out. Within twelve months he could be in a program at an open prison in Northumbria that claimed to prepare inmates for release. Everything was going just the way he’d planned it.

Until he found out SL was just a boy.

A boy he’d built trust with.

A boy he shared secrets with.

A boy who wanted something from him so badly that he might be inveigled upon to do … just about anything.

And if he wouldn’t, then that wasn’t a problem either.

But it had to be now. Not two years from now, when his parole might possibly be granted. By then the focus of a boy on a quest would have given way to the clumsy distractions of a teenager on another kind of mission entirely. And certainly not if he was released to some crappy halfway house up north, far away from his beloved Exmoor.

Arnold Avery had spent eighteen years watching and waiting, knuckling down, doing his time … Eighteen years without fresh memories of just how exciting children could be and, hard though he’d tried to preserve his memories, the old ones had inevitably staled with overuse.

The photo of SL had been a supernova illuminating the dusty recesses of his mind. It had pierced his logic and good intentions like a laser through a magnifying glass. Now his brain was constantly burned and tortured by want—by desperate want and possibilities. Just as Steven had put his eye to the crack in the door and seen a future of summers and skating, so Avery saw that his future—his immediate future—could be similarly filled with astonishing pleasures. Something chemical had been released in Avery’s brain—something that sharpened his lust and dulled his more sensible senses. The same chemical change had once seen him abuse one boy even while waiting for the police to arrive at the behest of another. All he could think about was SL. He knew where he lived. He had a rough idea of what he looked like. He could guide him, tease him, direct him.

Misdirect him.

At will.

The prospect of control was delicious. The prize was precious. The boy was his for the taking.

Suddenly all the time in the world seemed like too much slack to Avery.

Anything could happen!

SL could move; he could die; he could just lose interest. Avery had to write to him. Had to give him hope that the corpse he sought was a heartbeat away. He had to keep him on the hook.

He resented the subtle shift that had made him needy and dented his newfound power. But he knew a surefire way of regaining it. If he had to relinquish a little more power now to achieve complete control and sublime enjoyment later, then that was a bargain he was prepared to strike.

So it was with a brief acknowledgement—and immediate dismissal—of regret that Arnold Avery concluded that he had to escape from prison.

And he had to do it very soon.

This sudden sense of urgency could have made another man careless, reckless, stupid.

It made Avery Superman.

He had woken from hibernation, rejuvenated and cocky and with all his senses heightened.

He knew he was clever, and he hadn’t used his cleverness for a very long time. SL’s letters had prodded his slumbering IQ but now that he was properly awake he could feel his neurons firing like buzzy outboard motors, and intelligence coursing through him like brandy on a cold night.

Every day now was an opportunity he didn’t want to miss. He understood the need for caution and planning but he also recognized that unexpected openings had to be exploited. It was a two-pronged attack of intellect and he felt alive with the challenge.

Once he started to care, Avery noticed things in a never-ending stream of information that flowed through his mind. Every bit of it was assessed, catalogued, and stored away for future reference.

He had always known that Officer Ryan Finlay was a fucking idiot, but now his calm, pale eyes saw that Finlay was a fucking idiot with a big bunch of keys of which he took very little care.

The keys were attached to Finlay’s belt and were also supposed to be tucked safely out of sight in the little black leather pouch on said belt. Prison authorities knew that even the glimpse of a key could make an indelible impression on the criminal mind in a way that honesty and morals never had. Within hours a prisoner could fashion a key from the covers torn from paperbacks, or the ends of cereal packets; it wouldn’t be durable, but it would only have to work once.