Page 59 of Whispers in the Dark
A door buzzed. A woman in a charcoal-gray suit stepped through. Square-shouldered. Authority in her walk. “Warden Shepler,” she said, offering her hand. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Charlotte exchanged a quick glance with Graham. His brow ticked up. “Expecting?”
The warden’s expression was neutral. “Not every day the U.S. Attorney himself calls to push a visit through.”
Charlotte exhaled sharply through her nose.
Graham didn’t miss a beat. “That conversation’s getting longer by the minute.”
Warden Shepler gestured for them to follow. “It’s a good thing you came today. He’s not doing well. Cancer’s eating him alive. Doctor says he won’t last much longer.”
Charlotte’s stomach twisted. She didn’t want to feel anything about that. Not pity. Not satisfaction. Just clarity.
They moved through a series of steel doors and dim, echoing corridors. The deeper they went, the less it felt like a place for the living. This wasn’t where people paid a debt. This was where they were buried in pieces.
“This wing was converted from the old death row,” the warden said. “Some of these doors haven’t opened in years.”
Charlotte’s boots echoed softly beside Graham’s steps. Neither of them spoke. The silence wasn’t just strained—it was heavy, thick with what neither wanted to say out loud.
They reached the final set of doors. Shepler unlocked them herself, the keys jangling sharply in the stillness. The hospital ward.
The smell shifted—antiseptic and something underneath. Faint. Rotten. The scent of dying. The room was small. Windowless. A bed. Machines. Tubing. A single chair. And Gideon Ward.
He looked like a husk. What was once muscle had collapsed into sagging skin. His face had yellowed with sickness. His cheekbones were sharp under papery flesh, eyes sunken in.
Graham stepped forward. “Ward.”
For a moment, there was no response. Then Ward’s eyes opened. Hazy. Pale blue. They moved slowly, drifting between shadows and shapes—then locked on her.
Charlotte felt it in her spine. That recognition.
His thin upper lip peeled back into something like a smile, revealing yellowed teeth and recessed gums. “Charlotte…” he whispered, voice raw. “I’m honored. You’ve come to say goodbye?”
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. She hadn’t come to say goodbye. She had come to see the monster still wearing a man’s skin. To look into his face one last time and know—know—that whatever game had restarted, it wasn’t over yet. And if he had one final play left in him, she needed to see it in his eyes.
“I came,” she said, her voice like cold steel, “to see if you could still look me in the face.”
His gaze didn’t waver.
And neither did hers.
Charlotte didn’t sit. Her boots stayed planted just feet from his bedside, shoulders square to Graham, spine straight despite the sick, buzzing weight in her chest.
Ward didn’t move either. He couldn’t. His body was failing, eaten from the inside out, but his mind—God help her—his mindstill looked there. His eyes tracked her, slowly and deliberately. The corner of his mouth twitched again, a pale echo of that same predatory grin she remembered from the interrogation room in ’94.
“Still standing,” he rasped. His voice was shredded, a slow drag of air over dry paper. “I was wondering… if they broke you yet.”
Charlotte’s jaw locked. She kept her breath steady, her face neutral. Graham stayed behind her, quiet, watching, letting her lead. Just like always.
“No one broke me,” she said. “You didn’t. And whatever came after you didn’t either.”
Ward’s chest hitched in something that might have been a laugh. “We never get broken all at once. It’s slow. Cell by cell.” He licked cracked lips. “Takes patience.” His chest rattled with his next breath. “Sorry about your daughters’ troubles. Sorry Chuck wasn’t there to help.”
Charlotte didn’t flinch. But something inside her coiled. The way he spoke wasn’t nostalgic. It was personal.
“You left something behind,” she said, voice even.
Ward blinked, slow and deliberate. “Did I?”
