Page 9 of Pretty Cruel Love

The guards insist I take off my jacket and my shoes, hand over the painting, and then make me carry the boxes down a long line of detectors.

Zing! Zing! Zingggg!

The fifth detector screams.

“Hold up,” a guard says, standing. “Set down the boxes so we can scan those separately.”

I comply, watching as they run the boxes down an airport-style security belt again and again.

After the third time, they rummage through one of the boxes and find the culprit: a slim manila envelope.

When they open it, a necklace slithers out of the flap. Its shiny charm—a silver skull with blood-red gemstone eyes—stares at us, reveling in its sneakiness.

Two guards shudder at the sight of it. Another logs something into his tablet.

“All right, Dr. Weiss,” the supervisor says. “We’ll expect these boxes and everything inside them returned on the date listed.”

“Will do.”

A guard escorts me outside to the parking lot. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to fill the walk with conversation.

The moment he walks away, I slide into the driver’s seat and retrieve the necklace. Up close, the detail on the skull charm is chilling.

This isn’t a cutesy memento or Halloween-inspired jewel. It looks like a real human skull, down to the soft shadowing in its metal marrow.

It also matches Sadie’s painting that the warden hated, and there’s a tiny engraving under the right eye socket:

O.L.I.F.

O.L.I.P.C.

“Hmmm.” I snap a photo and text my institute’s lead researcher.

Look into what this could possibly mean. Re: Sadie Pretty.

Have the answer for me sooner than later.

I crank the engine and pull onto the road, but something foreign is fluttering under my windshield wiper. Stepping out to grab it, I see that it’s a note.

Sadie Pretty deserves todiehere.

Go home.

Please don’t save her…

—

Seventy-TwoHours Later

3

DR. WEISS

Day Zero

Night Before the Cabin Experiment Begins

One of the occupational hazards of being a behavioral therapist is having patients who haunt your memories long after they’re sentenced.

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