Eleven days ago, Shannon Sundry showed you a knife he found in a wall.

You'd been his cellmate for two years by then — long enough to know when he was excited about something, which was almost never. But he sat on the edge of his bunk with that curved blade across his knees, turning it under the fluorescent light so the damascus ripples caught and moved, and his leg was bouncing. The milky gemstone in the pommel swirled like something alive. He said he found it during the transfer to D-block, wedged behind a crumbling chunk of cinderblock like someone had hidden it decades ago. Warm to the touch. You felt it yourself — blood-warm, humming faintly against your palm, edge so sharp it seemed to part the air above it.

He showed you what it did three days later.

An inmate named Rourke — a lifer nobody would miss — cornered Shannon in the shower over a commissary debt. Shannon buried the blade in his side and Rourke didn't bleed. He just... hissed. Deflated. Sank in on himself like a punctured pool float, his face going slack, his frame crumpling until there was nothing left but a warm wrinkled pile of empty skin pooled on the wet tile. Shannon picked it up by the shoulders, held it at arm's length, and grinned at you with that broken sneer of his.

"Lookit that," he said. "Ain't even heavy."

He stuffed Rourke's skin under his mattress. Two days later you watched him climb inside it — the seam splitting open along the spine, Shannon feeding his thick legs in, pulling it up over his shoulders like coveralls, and then the seam sealed shut and Rourke was standing in front of you. Same height, same face, same voice when Shannon opened Rourke's mouth and laughed with it. But the eyes were wrong. Shannon's eyes in a dead man's sockets, darting and pleased.

The escape plan came together fast because Shannon doesn't plan — he just goes. CO Darren Holt pulled evening shift on D-block every Thursday. Shannon caught him alone in the supply closet, one hand over his mouth and the blade in his gut before Holt could reach his radio. Shannon stripped down, climbed inside, buttoned the shirt over Holt's borrowed chest, clipped the radio to Holt's borrowed belt. You watched a crude, scarred convict disappear into a clean-shaven corrections officer like a hand sliding into a glove.

You started the fight in D-block at 8:40 PM. Swung on Marcus Telley in the common area — Telley swung back, two more piled on, and within ninety seconds every available guard on the east wing was sprinting toward the noise. Shannon walked out the west gate in Holt's skin, nodded to the booth officer, and drove Holt's truck to the lot where you'd arranged to meet after slipping out during the chaos he'd set up for you — a popped lock on the kitchen loading dock, a route through the service corridor you'd memorized weeks ago.

You both rode a Greyhound bus six hours to the city. Shannon changed out of Holt in the bathroom at the station, folded the empty skin into the duffel bag he'd stolen from Holt's truck, and walked out in his own body wearing Holt's civilian clothes from the back seat. Nobody looked twice.

Eleven days. A motel room paid for with Holt's debit card. Shannon has worn Holt's skin twice — once to sign the register, once to buy supplies at a Walmart. The rest of the time he paces. Watches women from the motel window. Watches them in the parking lot, in the diner across the street, on the sidewalk. He hasn't said it outright, but you know him well enough to read the look: he wants to wear one. He wants it so bad his hands shake when he talks about it.

Right now it's just past midnight. The motel room smells like stale smoke and gas station food. Shannon is sitting on the edge of his bed closest to the window, the knife across his thigh, the curtain cracked an inch. Orange parking lot light cuts a stripe across his face. His leg is bouncing the way it did eleven days ago when he first showed you the blade.

"There's a lady comes home 'round one or two every night. Works some kinda night shift, I figure. Lives right there — 14-B, corner unit." He taps the flat of the blade against his knee. "She's got dark hair. Thick. Little bit heavy, but that's... I want that. I wanna know what that feels like."

He looks over at you. His pale eyes are bright and fixed.

"You gonna help me, or what?"

You pull into the driveway at 6:47 PM, thirteen minutes later than usual. The Audi's headlights sweep across the front of the house — brick colonial, three-car garage, the Japanese maple throwing long shadows across the lawn in the last of the evening light. Your street is quiet, and that's what you paid for.

Your wife's name is Catherine. Thirty-one, five-foot-six, dark hair that falls just past her collarbones, olive skin, amber eyes, a narrow waist and full hips she maintains with a yoga habit that borders on religious. Pretty in a composed, deliberate way — good posture, clean nails, the kind of woman who looks put-together. You met her in law school, and she now works part-time at a nonprofit downtown and spends the rest of her week running the house, which she does with the same quiet efficiency she applies to everything. She's warm but reserved, careful with words, never loud. You're the perfect couple.

The front door is unlocked, which isn't unusual. The foyer smells like something cooking — less usual. From the kitchen, the clatter of a pan and a soft curse.

Your wife is standing at the stove. Dark hair pulled back in a loose knot. Barefoot on the tile in a pair of yoga pants and one of your old college t-shirts. She's stirring something in a skillet — ground beef, it looks like, with half an onion chopped rough and dumped in. No seasoning visible. A beer sits open on the counter beside her, half empty.

She turns when she hears your shoes on the hardwood. Smiles. Something about it sits a little crooked on her face.

"Hey, um... babe!" She reaches for the beer and takes a long pull. "Didn't know what you wanted so I just threw some shit together. Hamburger meat was in the freezer."

She scratches her stomach through the t-shirt, blunt and unselfconscious, and turns back to the skillet. Pokes at the meat with a spatula held in her fist like a weapon.

"This house is fuckin' nice, by the way. I been — I been walkin' around all day just lookin' at stuff. You got that room upstairs with the... the big TV? The one with all the leather chairs?" She whistles through her teeth. "Sat in there for like an hour. You treat me well, huh?"

She flips a chunk of beef.

"Oh — almost forgot." She picks up the beer again, gestures with it toward the hallway. "Toilet in the guest bathroom is runnin'. That little handle thing in the tank, I jiggled it, didn't help. Might need a new one'a them flapper deals."

She leans her hip against the counter and looks at you straight on, takes another drink. Bare feet planted wide on the tile. Her shoulders squared, weight low. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

"How was work?"

Magnolia Davis is already waiting outside when you pull up to the curb. She's sitting on the porch steps of the little yellow house on Bellflower Lane — the one with the wind chimes and the overgrown azaleas — in a denim skirt and a white top that does nothing to hide the chest that made her varsity cheer captain two years running. Tanned legs crossed at the ankle, blonde hair freshly curled and bouncing past her shoulders, blue eyes bright under a coat of mascara she's applied a touch heavy. Eighteen, five-foot-four, a hundred and twenty pounds distributed in a way that's made her the subject of locker room conversation since sophomore year. D-cups on a cheerleader's frame — narrow waist, round hips, the kind of body that fills out a homecoming dress like it was sewn onto her.

You've been dating Magnolia since junior prom. She's sweet, church-raised, giggly, the youngest of three daughters born to Linda Davis, a single mother who works reception at a dentist's office on Main. Her older sisters — Jolene, twenty-two, manages a Chick-fil-A, and Becca, twenty, takes classes at the community college — still live at home. You've had dinner at that yellow house a dozen times. Linda always made sweet tea and asked about your parents.

Magnolia bounces up when she sees your car, grabs a little purse off the railing, and jogs down the front walk. Her tits bounce with every step. She drops into the passenger seat, leans over, and kisses you on the mouth — firm, a beat too long, her hand landing high on your thigh and squeezing once before she pulls back.

"Hey, darlin'." She grins and tugs the seatbelt across her chest. "Where we goin'? I been cooped up in that damn house all day, I'm ready for whatever."

She stretches in the seat, arms overhead, back arching. The white top rides up past her navel. She catches you looking and laughs — a low, easy sound, not quite the giggle you're used to.

"Mama said hey, by the way. She's doin' one of her headache nights so she's layin' down. Becca's watchin' some show. Jolene's... I dunno, Jolene's around somewhere." She waves a hand like the details bore her. "Point is nobody's gonna miss me, so we got all night."

She digs through her purse and pulls out a piece of beef jerky, tears into it with her teeth.

"So what's the plan? I could eat. Like a real meal, I mean — a burger or somethin'. Somethin' big." She chews, swallows, wipes her fingers on the denim skirt. "Then after that, I dunno. We could go park somewhere. You know that spot out past the water tower?" Her hand finds your thigh again. "I wore this skirt on purpose. Just so you know."