Page 94 of The Ashes of Summer

Not until the cell records showed messages to a burner that was eventually connected to Jackson. But even then, there was no evidence. No messages that we could use against him.

She simply vanished. And we had nothing to go on.

Groves' voice breaks apart completely.

"Is she dead?" It comes out choked. "Please… please just tell me if she's fucking dead."

The room stills. Even the guards look uncomfortable now.

He sobs hard enough that his whole body shakes with it.

"You tell me where my little girl is…"

Jackson walks toward him. Slow. Nothing on his face at all.

He takes hold of the back of Groves' tipped chair and hauls it upright. Metal slams against concrete hard enough that Groves gasps.

Then he crouches down in front of him.

"You want the truth?"

Groves nods frantically. "Yes—YES⁠—"

"Your daughter hated you."

Jackson's voice doesn't rise at all. "She wanted to run because all you cared about was chasing pussy and pretending you were twenty-five again."

"No—"

"You barely saw her." He tilts his head. "Too busy dragging different women through your house every week while your daughter raised herself."

"That's not true!"

"It is." Something in his eyes hardens. "She used to cry after your dates left."

The sound Groves makes then isn't one I've heard out of a grown man before. "You're lying."

"She told me she wished her mother had taken her when she left."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

He throws himself against the restraints, screaming, sobbing, the chair scraping across the floor—and Jackson just watches him unravel like it's something he put on for himself.

"She wanted out of Rosefield," he says quietly. "Out of your house. Out from under you."

And I understand what he's doing, because it's the same thing he did to me twenty minutes ago. He isn't taunting Groves. He's taking the last thing the man owns—the belief that his girl loved him—and he's peeling it off him while he's tied to a chair and can't cover himself.

Jackson doesn't kill people first. He empties them out.

"You fucking killed her!"

Something tightens in Jackson's face. Not anger.

Annoyance.

"YOU TELL ME WHERE MY BABY IS!"

Jackson sighs. Soft. Almost tired. Then he reaches beneath his jacket.