[Press Play: Gustaf Grefberg - "The Butcher's Place"]

As his eyes slid gratingly open, Frank Castle became immediately aware of two things: the first, judging by the biting, vein-clamping pressure along his forearms and ankles, that he had been tied in a sitting position; the second, judging by the dull throb behind his eyes and dry, searing rasp that caught every breath, that he had been ambushed and drugged.

That much, he remembered- at least, quick fragments of it. He had killed Triple, gotten a fix on Chavez' likely position- something had jabbed him, and then...

Three things. Whoever he was dealing with was good at what they did. This wasn't some amateur, some two-bit thug who got lucky, they had gotten in close while he was wired up, struck from a blind spot, executed "the get," and cleared retaliation range before he even knew what had happened.

Four things. He wasn't alone. Across from him sat a woman- late twenties to early thirties, probably- trussed up the same way he was, but still unconscious. Probably gonna be out a while, if she got the same dose. Work with what you've got.

This setup was too elaborate, too well thought-out for either of the New York families after him- they liked the personal touch, but this was too subtle, they'd want the world to know they had bagged the Punisher- take them off the list. The room they had been dumped in looked to be part of some sort of old industrial complex; judging by the rusted storage lockers and lime-crusted wash stations, probably some kind of clean room for a chemical company. A heavy steel door had replaced the room's former entrance- even with his vision taking bouts into a muddy haze, Frank could make out a small digital keypad set into its frame, and what looked like a digital clock set just above that. Whoever had made that patch job was familiar with this location, knew they wouldn't be disturbed while they worked.

14K Triads were a possibility. Rooted deep in the city, with plenty of reach and resources- and one hell of a chip on their shoulders from the last time Frank had left his mark on their territory. The profile didn't fit, though; if they had grabbed him, he'd be waking up in front of their bosses, not in some holding cell.

She's got the answer, Frank concluded, his gaze settling back on the woman in front of him. If she'd been a witness to his getting snatched, she'd be collecting flies right about now; there was some reason she was here.

Focus on getting free. The ropes that kept him bound were supple, lightly waxed, and tied in a series of knots that flexed and gave enough slack to prevent snapping, but not enough to allow any real momentum or extraction- not likely to give. The chair, on the other hand, seemed a safe bet; it creaked and groaned with his every movement as he strained to get free, rusted screws threatening to separate from their berths and beating a squealing cadence for his efforts. It didn't take long for his motions to become too much for the aged wood to bear; a series of sharp cracks like exposed bone snapping signaled Frank regaining a small measure of freedom as the arms of the chair clung to his own.

From there, it was only a moment's work to loosen the knots enough to enable his escape; as he stood, coaxing blood flow back into his sluggish fingers, the vigilante made another appraisal of his surroundings.

No cameras- in here, at least. Whoever had put them here didn't have any urgent need to revisit their captives- this wasn't an interrogation. An execution, though? Dehydration was going to be a serious threat in short order, but no one he could think of had the patience for that particular brand of sadism. Frank approached the door cautiously, alert for any tripwires, half expecting to smell the burning ozone of a live current running through the door itself. This is a patch job, but a damn good one. Dealing with a professional, here. Whoever they were, though, they didn't have access to limitless resources. Rule out the capes.

Then something in his periphery caught Frank's attention. What he had initially assumed was a bulletin board, left behind when the facility was abandoned, was actually a collection of photographs- and they cast a very distinct and grisly light on his situation. Elaborate contraptions, some marked with evidence tags and some without, formed some two dozen gore-drenched sunbursts of photos with still more photos of the devices' victims. The entire board was a showcase of charred flesh and compound fractures, of lacerations and gunshots and crushed skulls.

Serial killer profiles began flashing through his mind rapidly, each one dismissed as the facts were laid bare. Not the Auteur, he exclusively targeted women. Not Tammen, they were both too far north of his preferred age range- and the feds were closing the noose around him in Detroit, anyway. Take them off the list.

Then one name chambered itself in Frank's mind and sat flush with the gruesome accolades laid before him. Jigsaw- "Sick Fuck Number One," Micro had called him- him. Or her; Micro's own analysis pointed to the killer being a woman. For all anyone definitively knew, police included, Jigsaw was a force of nature. The only detective to make any real headway in the case had fallen off the grid altogether a few months ago after being booted unceremoniously from the force for unknowingly leading his partner into double-ought brain surgery. So far, the only thing anyone knew was that he struck without warning, with no meaningful pattern or unifying method- in fact, the only thing tying the so-called "Jigsaw murders" together was the elaborate nature of the kills, and the puzzle piece cut from their skin that earned him the name-

That, and the tape. Every Jigsaw kill had featured some sort of tape, whether audio or video, where he- assume he, go by the voice- spelled out the terms of the victim's offense and the terms for their survival. So far, they had been able to count survivors on a single hand- and a few fingers short, if they were to count full sets of limbs and organs.

A weak groan from behind him snapped Frank from his thoughts. The other captive was awake now- and wasting no time in trying to escape, if the scuffling banshee scrape of metal chair leg against shattered linoleum and panicked, breathy wailing were any indicators. Her restraints appeared to be a little more resilient than his had been; the chair was significantly more durable, but she had been tied in place with a single length of rope that terminated in an elaborate knot at the back of the chair.

Almost like he was supposed to untie her. Frank chewed on this fact a moment: to Jigsaw, these weren't kills, but "games," with defined rules for survival and a harsh penalty for failure or subverting the intended "lesson."

"That's not gonna do you any good." On hearing his voice, the woman jumped visibly, all efforts to escape grinding to a momentary halt. "Whoever put us here tied you up to keep you right there."

"Then get me out!"

Frank hooked a finger around the length of the knot, giving it an experimental tug. "I do that, I don't get any answers." He tugged it again for emphasis. "You're stuck without me, I was able to get free. This looks like Jigsaw- and it looks like he wants me to ask you some questions."

In spite of herself, in spite of how eminently dangerous her situation had become, Amanda couldn't help but laugh, internally. This was what they had expected- what John had expected- the moment Hoffman had confirmed the rumors circling the precinct. Castle was exactly as promised: obsessively single-minded and calculating, his only focus his eventual escape back into the world.

Right now, she had the upper hand, even though her heart had lurched into her throat and caught the breath in her lungs with every frantic pulse, even with her head still pounding that same beat just behind her ears. She had only been given a half dose of the sedative cocktail John favored for abducting test subjects; they had to make it convincing-

-so she started to thrash again, straining against the rope until one rocking movement unbalanced the chair and took her to her side. Just remember... just remember, you've got this.

On the bottom of the chair, held loosely in place with two strips of electrical tape, sat a cassette player; Frank peeled it free, thumbing the play button down. A too-low rasp of a voice- filtering algorithm sounds familiar- followed the click.

"Hello, Frank. For years, you've waged your one-man war on murderers and drug dealers, pimps and psychopaths... in an effort to find purpose after the deaths of your family. Some would say that you have succeeded- that because of you, New York is a safer place. I say that you have not, that by forsaking the rest of humanity, you have lost yours in the darkness.

"Tonight, I leave you a choice to do something most would consider... incredibly simple. The woman in front of you is my apprentice- Amanda. She knows the combination to unlock the door to this room, and will give it to you if asked. All you must do is stay in the room with her until the timer has counted down. Your instincts, your training, will tell you to force this information from her, but I urge you to reconsider. Look around, Frank. Just as you have studied me, I have studied you. Know what is at stake here, and make your choice."

But for the slow spooling of the tape player, the room was utterly silent; Amanda lay utterly still, fear coursing through her veins like rolling black death. This must be what a tiny worm feels like on a big fucking hook, she lamented, stiffening her back at the sound of heavy boots on the tile behind her.

"So. Apprentice." The words hung heavy, almost palpable in the musty air between them. "You know everything I need to know right now: how to get out, where to find Jigsaw, what kind of tinkering he's done to keep... guests out." Frank reached for his boot knife, subconsciously knowing even before his fingers brushed the kydex that it wouldn't be there. "You get me out of here, right now, don't get in my way- I cut you loose-" he snapped the rope taut again for good measure, eliciting a wince and sharp gasp from Amanda- "but you fuck with me on any one of those three things, we play a little baseball. Three strikes, you're out. Understand?"

Admittedly, he didn't want to kill her. Maybe he was old-fashioned; hell, it had been different in the sandbox, sometimes a skinny picked up an AK off her dead brother or husband or whoever and started screaming for a pound of flesh, and the choice between two between her eyes and fishing your buddy's kidneys out of the dirt wasn't any real kind of choice. Sometimes the women of the mob were more than the secret-keepers, and they'd go for a piece instead of ducking and covering like any sane person ought to.

Might not be it, after all. This one was giving him good reason to do it, though- she was some part of this twisted-up slimeball's grand morality play. And yet, something didn't set right in him, when it came to the idea of snaking an arm around her head and giving it the kind of pull that would snap her spinal cord like taffy.

"I- I can't do that," Amanda replied between labored breaths. "If the timer's still going, any combination just locks the door- even the right one! We'd be stuck here." She angled her head as best she could to look toward the vigilante, eyes wide. "I swear, I'm not making this up... the rules..."

Frank studied her expression a moment, leaning uncomfortably close around the back of the chair before letting the ropes go slack and exhaling heavily. He didn't want to admit it, but he was over a barrel; this "Jigsaw" thought some five or six moves ahead of him before the game had even begun.

"Rules. Right." Without warning, Frank lifted the chair and its occupant- Jesus, she's light- and sat them upright once more, stepping into Amanda's field of vision and crouching down. "Explain those to me again. I didn't hear him so well on the tape."

"All I know is that if you try to get out of here, that door's going to lock, and no matter what we try to do, we're stuck here," Amanda repeated, eyes flitting anxiously between the monolith of a man in front of her and- well, anywhere he wasn't.

"That's it, huh." Frank shook his head, none too convinced. "You're supposed to talk to me for an hour, and you don't have enough information to keep the conversation going for thirty seconds? Smells a lot like bullshit to me- and I have a few rules about bullshit, in case you forg-"

"You think I want to be in here with you?" Amanda snapped, eyebrows furrowing beneath her choppy fringe of hair. "I didn't get told shit about what was happening here- just the door, what your name was and who you really are." She began to strain against her bindings again, chewing angry red welts into her bare forearms as she did, rocking in vain for what could have been an entire minute before hanging her head in defeat. John had tied these ropes himself. There was no getting loose of her own volition. "I don't even really know where we are."

"So you're just a pawn." The observation came without the low menace she had expected, but the words still stung like a brand. "You're a patsy, he throws you to the wolves and hopes you don't get too chewed up." It made sense to compartmentalize the information; the less anyone actually knew about an operation, the less they could reveal when they got squeezed. And he knew I'd tighten the screws. So far, he was playing right into this guy's hands. "Shit. Hold still."

"What are you-" Amanda stared in disbelief as Frank circled around her and proceeded to untie the series of knots that kept her captive.

"You're on the chopping block just as much as I am here," he explained as he loosened the final knot. "Don't stand up right away. Rope was tight, wait for circulation to come back." He began to pace around the room, taking detailed inventory of their surroundings for any little inadvertent clue that might give him an edge.

"...Thanks," Amanda finally managed to half-whisper in response, still trying to put together what had just happened. One moment, he was making death threats, and the next, he gave up any easy control of the situation? The man made no sense. What was his angle?

And why did he think she was just the sacrifice play? She had been the one to grab him- probably shouldn't mention that. Nothing made sense about this test. It was too simple; John had said that Frank would be able to pass any physical test they threw his way without hesitating, but this... the only rule was that he had to talk to her? Why? He had been obsessed with this idea for the last week, ever since Hoffman had mentioned the possibility that Castle was in the city.

Pictures. The only other thing in the room that didn't originally belong. They had to mean something. Frank crossed the room to them, poring through them, trying to discern a pattern. Every so often in the midst of all the carnage, there was a picture of a device or what he assumed was a kill room... and the forensic shots looked to be arranged around the setups responsible for their existence.

Except one. Off toward the corner of the board sat a photograph off to itself; at first, he had thought nothing of it, just a part of one of these "games," but on closer inspection...

"What's this mean to you? Ring any bells?" Frank asked, ripping the photo of the contraption from the wall and handing it to Amanda. "Only shot up there that doesn't belong, nothin' fits it. No wounds, no-"

"It's mine."

Two words brought Frank to a full stop. "Yours," he repeated, a faint undercurrent of disbelief carrying the word on for a half-beat longer than it should have.

"He called it a... reverse bear trap." Amanda clutched the picture tightly. "Right there, it's already sprung. If you close it... it fits in your mouth." She shuddered, eyes locked on the device that had been her rebirth.

So this was what he wanted. She had to tell her story... again.

"There's enough tension on those springs to shatter-" the mental image of what would happen to a human skull if it were placed in that trap brought Frank a moment of unexpected pause. "You said this is yours?"

Amanda shifted in her seat, determined not to meet Frank's gaze. He was crawling into her head, putting things together that he had no right to know. But for some reason... John had put it here. He wanted him to know, he wanted her to tell him. She had to. "That's what I said... I woke up in a room kind of like this once before," she began, voice quavering with nerves as every second of her test flashed before her eyes. "Same fucking chair, actually-" she laughed bitterly- "with that thing locked around my head.

"There was a tape... he explained it all to me, what I had to do, what would happen to me if I didn't." Her eyes settled on the foot or so of tile between herself and the vigilante. "I had to..." Donnie's fate, his feeble, muted groans of protest as she made dozens- hundreds, maybe- of tiny cuts, twisted itself through her mind's eye on an endless coil. "I had to cut a man open and dig a key out of his guts."

The thought of the woman in front of him being capable of that kind of action took Frank by surprise; as that fact itself registered, the realization dawned on him that he had stepped into something without a single reliable piece of intelligence. "That had to take-"

"He wasn't dead," she interrupted, suddenly locking eyes with him. "He might as well have been, but..." she shuddered slightly. "He was alive. I had to kill him to survive." The words felt hot and clumsy tumbling out of her mouth, almost as though they were the wrong shape for what she had really meant.
But they were right, when it came down to it. Even if she hadn't known at first that he was alive... had thought that she was cutting into a dead body... there was no mistaking the blood. How hot it had been, how it gushed instead of just pooling. And she had known that as soon as she'd made the first cut, but by that point, it was too late. The choice had been made.

"Not an easy choice to make. But it was the right one." For the briefest margin of a second, Frank's expression softened as the gravity of Amanda's no-win scenario washed over him in its entirety. "But why? You don't exactly seem like you belong."

Amanda merely shook her head in response. "Yes I did. But he... he helped me." In spite of herself, in spite of knowing what she had seen from her own brief foray into researching Castle, knowing what he was capable of, she offered the bare corner of a smile. "We're supposed to survive, but... there are rules, and there's always a price."

"A price..." Frank repeated, glancing around the room in the hopes his periphery would pick up on something direct attention might not. "And you think that if someone pays that price, it just washes away whatever they did to deserve it?"

"That's the idea," she affirmed, a curiosity that almost suggested hope tugging the corner of her mouth a fraction of an inch higher. "Depends on what they did, though. A lot of the time, it doesn't come clean. They don't make it." Maybe he was starting to understand.

"And because they don't 'wake up' and drink whatever kool-aid Jigsaw's selling... they all deserve to die?" Frank asked pointedly. "I've seen the spread. A few of these guys got what they had comin' to them, but-"

"If you don't cherish your life, you don't really deserve it... do you?"

As the question left Amanda's lips, it felt as though a piece of the analysis slid into place within Frank's mind. Killing these people for "not cherishing their lives" smacked just like retaliation, a chip on someone's shoulder. The only people who could get angry about something like that... were dying themselves. Broken messiah complex. This little piece of dogma sewed everything together.

"Yeah, well where's that start and end? One day you've got some arsonist playin' with fire to save his own life, and then the next- hell, you might as well string everyone up who works a goddamn office job! Doesn't make sense." He lashed out at the bulletin board with a gloved fist, knocking some half of the pictures from their berths as the cork board cracked beneath the impact. "What about them?" He tore a group of pictures from the board, tossing the stack at Amanda. "You want to explain this guy?"

Amanda studied the photos for a long moment, recalling when she and John had conducted this test. "Steve Ramos..." She lingered on the shot measuring the gap between his upper and lower halves, setting her jaw and meeting Frank's souring expression with smoldering resolve. "Alcoholic. Drove drunk, ran off the road, wrapped his car around a tree with someone pinned to the hood." She let out a shuddering breath. "Swore he'd go to rehab, gave the jury a good sob story... a week later, we found him passed out in an alley with a handle of vodka spilled down his shirt and a baggie full of coke in his pocket."

"Would've just put one between his eyes. He didn't deserve a second chance-"

"Everyone deserves a second chance. This is it," Amanda countered, rising from her chair. Even at a full head taller than her, the fervor in her voice, her movement, was enough to set Frank back half a pace as he leaned away from a swipe that never came. "I did. I passed, and now I'm-"

"What, better? At least I own what I do!"

"Yeah, so great that you do that," she quipped. "It isn't people dying that bothers you, is it? It's the idea that someone might actually wake up, might actually take the second chance we give them and run with it. No one gets that when you just go open season on them."

"What are you sayin'?" Frank's sense of outrage-on-principle had been replaced with an iron backbone of deadly intent. "You put yourself in my sights, you don't get- or deserve- to walk away. And right now, you're standing right on the line. Better think about which side you want to land on when that clock ticks down."

Silence fell over the room once more, practically thrumming through the musty air hanging between vigilante and apprentice. Amanda edged her way back to her seat, forcing herself to slow her breathing to an even- if ragged- tempo.

It wasn't what Frank had said that had ramped her heartbeat up to a fever pitch in her throat, while her stomach bottomed out and adrenaline coursed through her limbs until her hands were visibly twitching. It was that she had been put here, by John's design- with someone who was, in no uncertain terms, going to kill her- probably painfully, definitely only after squeezing every last scrap of information he wanted out of her.

Was she really that disposable to him? No, there had to be something she was missing, some lesson to take away from this herself. John wasn't one to make careless mistakes.

I did, though. A room not much smaller than the one she sat in- Tie the key around his neck- where every angle, every detail, had been put together so carefully, except one. The one that had been her responsibility.

I'm here to free you...

Only the insistent heat and warmth beneath her fingertips pulled Amanda back to reality; with a sharp hiss, she uncurled her clenched fingers, blotting her now-bloody palms against the legs of her jeans. At least blood doesn't show up too well on black, she thought ruefully.

"Look... I know it doesn't make sense to you why any of this is happening. Why we do this." She kept her eyes forward, trying to fix them on anything that wasn't Frank, voice only just more than a whisper. "But this helped me... and I have to believe it'll help someone else. I chose this, I knew what I was doing... and if I had to, I'd do it again." She gingerly rubbed the heels of her palms together. "And if you wanna kill me for that... I guess it's just how-"

"Stop talking," Frank interrupted, something catching in his voice that she hadn't heard before. It sounded almost like... pain? But there was no way. Just couldn't be. Whatever had been human in Frank Castle was long burned away by what he saw on a daily basis- wasn't it?

I knew what I was doing... and I'd do it again.

The beach. Puerto Rico.

The sand is warm beneath their bodies. "We aren't lucky- we're blessed," she had said. All the time in the world away- in the desert, Panama, row houses and penthouses of how many persons-of-interest to the Bureau- seemed to slide away with the gently ebbing tide. All that mattered in the world was staring up at him, blue eyes dark with the starry midnight overhead, bare skin the color of the pale golden sands beneath-

Gunshots. Sniper fire, returning fire. Ambush. Knife fight. Should have finished him there, shotgun blast to the guts. Would have had time to run. Make it before-

"I said st-" the word fell dead from Frank's lips as the screaming that seemed to surround him vanished as abruptly as it had come on. Goddammit. The memory had always been there, every second of it had folded onto itself; it was impossible, anymore, to think of any moment he'd spent with his family without seeing them as he'd seen them last. Meat spilling out where it shouldn't, too-white slivers of bone tearing out of skin, everything dark and glistening with too much blood until every memory was just another rendition of that goddamn scene from Pulp Fiction.

Seeing something like that changes people. Amanda's words from earlier rang in his ear; she'd been given no more choice than he had in being what she was... and yet somehow, twisted and misguided though it was, she wanted to-

To help people? To "wake them up," make them appreciate what they had before the rug got pulled out from under them for good?

"You said this 'helped' you?" he asked, a note of genuine curiosity softening the question. "How?"

After his outburst, this had been the last direction Amanda had expected Frank to veer off into; she slowly worked her lips into the first syllables of a dozen explanations before finally choosing the words that actually felt right.

"I have... a reason to be alive now," she murmured, "and a way of- of making some things right that I'd made wrong."

Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't ask.

"It might sound kind of fucked up, but I-" her teeth raked the edge of her lip- "I feel like I owe him this. The man I had to... cut open. I deserved a lot worse than what happened, and he- I don't even know why he was-" Amanda's explanation trailed into nothingness.

"He's dead, so you have to keep livin' because he never got to." She was starting to make sense. Definitely wasn't a threat, and if she reported back to this Jigsaw, it would only take a few key words to send her home with a story of how he'd "changed," leaving him free to resume his mission.

"Explain this to me." Frank gestured to the room around them. "Not the philosophy, the psycho-babble shit that fuels the whole operation- give me the pieces. How do you... do this?"

"It's different every time. Sometimes it takes a few days to set up... sometimes a week, a month, however long it takes to figure out what's-" Amanda struggled for a moment before settling on- "broken, about them, and then how to make them choose- are they gonna fix it, or-"

"Or does it kill them?"

"Y-yeah, in so many words."

Frank nodded in understanding. In its own way, it mirrored how he had dismantled Howard Saint one piece at a time: take the things that mattered to someone, turn them against them- make them realize what was really important. The last step had never occurred to him.

Saint wouldn't have survived a test any more than he'd survived his little criminal empire going up in smoke.

"So what's the deal with this one?" He began to pace the edge of the room, idly tapping against the walls in a half-measured search for any false- or loose- bricks, even as he knew there wouldn't be any. "Doesn't exactly fit the 'death machine' M.O. you employ most of the time."

Amanda shrugged, following Castle intently with her eyes. "Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, you don't have your guns, your knives-"

"Better hope nothing happened to my Colts," he warned, examining the wall behind the celluloid mural of death Jigsaw had left him.

"Don't worry, everything's safe. I know where it all is." Amanda held her hands up in a placating gesture, moving to stand.

"They weren't mine. Belonged to my dad. Brought 'em home from Vietnam, he kept that damn good care of them. Lots of new bells and whistles, a few replacement parts over the years, but... he was proud of those old nail drivers."

"I never thought of you as sentimental." Amanda laughed softly at her own joke, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"I'm not. Those guns have been working for close on forty years- and I'm used to the recoil. No sense fixin' what's not broken."

Are you talking about the guns or yourself? she wanted to ask, but thought better of it. She didn't really want to know the answer to the question; even if he "got it" on some level, enough that they could stay out of one another's way until he left the city again... he was still missing something. That something was what John expected him to find, expected her to drag out of him somehow.

There was no way he expected her to convince this man- this fucking scourge of the underworld- to stop leaving piles of brass and bodies everywhere he went, but...

Why did John have Castle's guns? He'd insisted they be dropped off back at Gideon before they finished setting up the test, which had to mean-

Oh, no. No, no, no. He wanted to talk to him personally- and so far, out of the half-dozen or so test subjects that had survived, she and the doctor had been the only ones John had approached directly. Hoffman had been... something else, but this-

He can't be serious.

"Look, Castle, I-" Amanda ran her fingers through her hair nervously- "I can take you to them, when we get out of here, but there's something you should know."

Frank's investigation of the room came to a full stop. "What?"

"I think he wants to meet you."

This was... interesting news. "How do you figure?" he asked, running down what he knew thus far for the sixth time in ten minutes.

Jigsaw, whoever he was, knew how to implement a good ambush. He was methodical, thorough, planned his scenarios to the last letter- and had evidently done his research. Supposedly, his method was supposed to rehabilitate the people he targeted, but with the only physically whole "test subject" sitting before him proselytizing, learning from his "lessons" seemed to be secondary to making them known.

It was a curious little cult he'd started- granted, population of one- but now he wanted to meet with someone he'd just put into one of his games? It didn't add up, unless-

He wants my help. Now it made sense. This "test" had just been a way to force him to listen for an hour while Amanda waxed new-age bullshit on life, death, and serial killers. He'd known what he was up against, knew they had both gotten familiar with each other's reuptation... banked on the fact he would know the way a Jigsaw killing normally shook out and take no unnecessary risks. No physical risk inherent in the design, beyond guaranteed death- he didn't want to damage what he saw as an asset.

Then an idea chambered itself in Frank's mind. People were dying wholesale from these "tests," and- Amanda had as good as said, the photos had proven- no one was going to bat an eye if the victims turned out to be scum. The whole country- hell, the whole world by this point knew about the Jigsaw kills; odds were, that included the Franchettis and Russotis.

Good way to stay off the grid...

Whatever Amanda had offered in explanation had been swallowed by the walls. It didn't matter.

"I'll meet him."