The word gridiron hung in the air like a crooked painting, blending into the forest sounds.
Tyrone whispered, “They built a football field?”
Martin shook his head. “The term gridiron is used for football these days, but it’s a much older word. It was a form of execution in ancient Rome. Coals are spread over the ground, stoked until they’re red hot. Then the victim is put in a special iron cage, sort of like a grill, and placed on top of the coals, roasting him alive. Unlike being burned at the stake, which is over in a few minutes, it takes hours to die on the gridiron. They say the liquid in your eyes gets so hot, it boils.”
Sara stood up. Martin should have known not to go there with the gore. “I think that’s enough, Martin. You’ve succeeded in freaking everyone out.” She forced joviality. “Now who wants to roast some marshmallows?”
“I want to hear what happened to those people,” Tom said.
“And I want to be able to sleep tonight,” Sara replied.
Sara’s eyes met Martin’s. She saw intensity there, but also resignation, and something else. Something soft and happy. Eventually his lips curled into a grin.
“But we haven’t gotten to the part where I pretend to be dragged off into the woods, kicking and screaming. That’s the best part.”
Sara placed her hands on her hips, feeling herself smile. “I’m sure we would have all been terrified.”
Martin sat back down. “You’re the boss. And if the boss wants to do marshmallows, who am I to argue?”
“I thought you’re the one who created the Center,” Laneesha asked.
Martin glanced at Sara. There was kindness in his eyes, and maybe some resignation, too.
“Sara and I created it together. We wanted to make a difference. The system takes kids who are basically good but made a few mistakes, sticks them into juvee hall, and they come out full blown crooks. The Center is aimed at giving these kids positive direction and helping them to change.” Martin smiled sadly. “Well, that was its purpose.”
“It’s bullshit the man cut your program, Martin.” Meadow tossed a stick onto the fire.
“It sucks,” Cindy added.
There were nods of agreement. Martin shrugged. “Things like this happen all the time. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you kids. Sara, Jack, and I are a small family, but you guys are like our—”
Martin screamed in mid-sentence, then fell backward off the log, rolling into the bushes and the darkness.
Excerpt from LOCKED DOORS by Blake Crouch
THE headline on the Arts and Leisure page read: “Publisher to Reissue Five Thrillers by Alleged Murderer, Andrew Z. Thomas.”
All it took was seeing his name.
Karen Prescott dropped The New York Times and walked over to the window.
Morning light streamed across the clutter of her cramped office—query letters and sample chapters stacked in two piles on the floor beside the desk, a box of galleys shoved under the credenza. She peered out the window and saw the fog dissolving, the microscopic crawl of traffic now materializing on Broadway through the cloud below.
Leaning against a bookcase that housed many of the hardcovers she’d guided to publication, Karen shivered. The mention of Andrew’s name always unglued her.
For two years she’d been romantically involved with the suspense novelist and had even lived with him during the writing of Blue Murder at the same lake house in North Carolina where many of his victims were found.
She considered it a latent character defect that she’d failed to notice anything sinister in Andy beyond a slight reclusive tendency.
My God, I almost married him.
She pictured Andy reading to the crowd in that Boston bookshop the first time they met. In a bathrobe writing in his office as she brought him fresh coffee (French roast of course). Andy making love to her in a flimsy rowboat in the middle of Lake Norman.
She thought of his dead mother.
The exhumed bodies from his lakefront property.
His face on the FBI website.
They’d used his most recent jacket photo, a black and white of Andy in a sports jacket sitting broodingly at the end of his pier.
During the last few years she’d stopped thinking of him as Andy. He was Andrew Thomas now and embodied all the horrible images the cadence of those four syllables invoked.
There was a knock.
Scott Boylin, publisher of Ice Blink’s literary imprint, stood in the doorway dressed in his best bib and tucker. Karen suspected he was gussied up for the Doubleday party.
He smiled, waved with his fingers.
She crossed her arms, leveled her gaze.
God he looked streamlined today—very tall, fit, crowned by thick black hair with dignified intimations of silver.
He made her feel little. In a good way. Because Karen stood nearly six feet tall, few men towered over her. She loved having to look up at Scott.
They’d been dating clandestinely for the last four months. She’d even given him a key to her apartment where they spent countless Sundays in bed reading manuscripts, the coffeestained pages scattered across the sheets.
But last night she’d seen him at a bar in SoHo with one of the cute interns. Their rendezvous did not look work-related.
“Come to the party with me,” he said. “Then we’ll go to Il Piazza. Talk this out. It’s not what you—”
“I’ve got tons of reading to catch up—”
“Don’t be like that, Karen, come on.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have this conversation here, so…”
He exhaled sharply through his nose and the door closed hard behind him.
Joe Mack was stuffing his pink round face with a gyro when his cell phone started ringing to the tune of “Staying Alive.”
He answered, cheeks exploding with food, “This Joe.”
“Hi, yes, um, I’ve got a bit of an interesting problem.”
“Whath?”
“Well, I’m in my apartment but I can’t get the deadbolt to turn from the inside.”
Joe Mack choked down a huge mouthful, said, “So you’re locked in.”
“Exactly.”
“Which apartment?” He didn’t even try to mask the annoyance in his voice.
“Twenty-two eleven.”
“Name?”
“Um…I’m not the tenet. I’m Karen Prescott’s friend. She’s the—”
“Yeah, I get it. You need to leave any time soon?”
“Well, yeah, I don’t want to—”
Joe Mack sighed, closed the cell phone, and devoured the last of the gyro.
Wiping his hands on his shirt he heaved himself from a debilitated swivel chair and lumbered out of the office, locking the door behind him.
The lobby was quiet for midday and the elevator doors spread as soon as he pressed the button. He rode up wishing he’d bought three gyros for lunch instead of two.
The doors opened again and he walked onto the twenty-second floor, fishing the key ring containing the master from the pocket of his enormous overalls.
He belched.
It echoed down the empty corridor.
Man was he hungry.
He stopped at 2211, knocked, yelled through the door, “It’s the super!”
No one answered.
Joe Mack inserted the master into the deadbolt. It turned easily enough.
He pushed the door open.
“Hello?” he said, standing in the threshold, admiring the apartment—roomy, flat-screen television, lush deepblue carpet, an antique desk, great view of SoHo, probably loads of food in the fridge.