Free Mind Prey by John Sandford

and she didn't like it. He was too young to scare her...
    Mail, at twelve, had already shown the size he'd be. And he had tension-built muscles in his body and face, and eyes like hard-boiled eggs. He talked about his stepfather.
    "When you say he beat you, you mean with his fists?" Andi asked.
    Mail grunted, and smiled at her naivete. "Shit,fists . The fucker had this dowel he took out of a closet, you know, a clothes rod? He whipped me with that. He beat my old lady, too. He'd catch her in the kitchen and beat the shit out of her and she'd be screaming and yelling and he'd just beat her until he got tired. Christ, there'd be blood all over the place like catsup."
    "Nobody ever called the police?"
    "Oh, yeah, but they never did anything. My old lady used to say that it was none of the neighbors' business."
    "When he died, it got better?"
    "I don't know, I wasn't living there any more; not much."
    "Where'd you live?"
    He shrugged: "Oh, you know: under the interstate, in the summer. There's some caves over in St. Paul, by the tracks, lots of guys over there..."
    "You never went back?"
    "Yeah, I went back. I got really hungry and fucked up and thought she maybe had some money, but she called the cops on me. If I hadn't gone back, I'd still be out. She said, 'Eat some Cheerios, I'll go get some cake,' and she went out in the front room and called the cops. Learned me a lesson, all right. Kill the bitch when I get out. If I can find her."
    "Where is she now?"
    "Took off with some guy."
    After two months of therapy, Andi had recommended that John Mail be sent to a state hospital. He was more than a bad kid. He was more than unbalanced. He was insane. A kid with the devil inside.
    The girls had stopped weeping when Mail opened the van door. He took them out, single file, through the side door of the old farm house and straight into the basement. The basement smelled wet, smelled of fresh dirt and disinfectant. Mail had cleaned it not long ago, she thought. A small spark of hope: he wasn't going to kill them. Not right away. If they had a little time, just a little time, she could work on him.
    Then he locked them away. They listened for him, fearful, expecting him back at any moment, Genevieve asking, over and over, "Mom, what's he going to do? Mom, what's he going to do?"
    , A minute became ten minutes, and ten minutes an hour, and the girls finally slept while Andi put her back to the wall and tried to think...
    Mail came for her at three in the morning, drunk, excited.
    "Get out here," he growled at her. He had a beer can in his left hand. The girls woke at the sound of the latch, and they crawled across the mattress until they had their backs to the wall, but curled, like small animals in a den.
    "What do you want?" Andi said. She kept looking at her watch, as if this were a normal conversation and she was on her way somewhere else. But the fear made her voice tremble, as much as she tried to control it. "You can't keep us here, John. It's not right."
    "Fuck that," Mail said. "Now get out here, goddamnit."
    He took a step toward her, his eyes dark and angry, and she could smell the beer.
    "All right. Don't hurt us, just don't hurt us. Come on, girls..."
    "Not them," Mail said. "Just you."
    "Just me?" Her stomach clutched.
    "That's right." He smiled at her and put his free hand on the door-sill, as though he needed help staying upright. Or maybe he was being cool. He'd teased his hair into bangs, and now she realized that in addition to the beer, she could smell aftershave or cologne.
    Andi glanced at the girls, then at Mail, and at the girls again. "I'll be right back," she said. "John won't hurt me."
    Neither of the girls said a word. Neither of them believed her.
    Andi walked around him, as far away as she could. In the outer basement, the air was cooler and fresher, but the first thing she noticed was that he'd dragged another mattress down the stairs. She stepped toward the stairs as the steel door clanged shut behind her