He had maybe eight hundred dollars in his hand. He'd grabbed whatever he could reach. Behind him, the manager was struggling to get up. Tyler was still screaming in the back.
Blake didn't look back. He ran to the tree line behind the station. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might explode. His hands were covered in sweat. The knife was still in his hand, and he didn't remember grabbing it.
He heard sirens in the distance. They were coming. They were already coming.
Blake threw the knife into the darkness and kept running through the woods. Behind him, the station's lights grew smaller. Around him, Pennsylvania forest closed in, wet and dark and indifferent to his crimes.
He'd done it. He'd crossed the line. He was now a murderer in waiting—someone who understood he was capable of hurting people. Someone who'd put a knife to a man's throat and meant it.
The knowledge should have terrified him. Instead, it clarified everything.
He wasn't going to hire a hitman. He wasn't going to sit in a motel room and plan. He was going to do this himself. He was going to become the kind of person who could hurt people. He was going to become dangerous.
He was going to become what James Patterson needed to be afraid of.
And somewhere in the dark woods of Pennsylvania, Ken Blake laughed—a sound that didn't sound quite human.
Blake didn't go back to the motel. It was too close to the crime scene. Instead, he went to Philadelphia. He took a bus. He paid cash. He found a different motel, more anonymous, in a section of the city where nobody asked questions.
The police would be looking for him. This he knew. His parole officer would have already been notified that he'd violated his release terms. There would be a warrant for his arrest. He was officially a wanted man.
He was also now a criminal with $500 in his pocket. Not enough. He needed more. He needed $25,000.
Blake counted on his fingers. Five hundred here. He needed to rob five more places, roughly. Five more gas stations. Five more confrontations. Five more crimes.
The thought didn't paralyze him. It motivated him. He'd been stationary his whole life. He'd been a researcher, an academic, someone who inhabited offices and published papers. He'd been destroyed by a single moment of weakness—his failure to verify his own data.
Now he was destroying himself on purpose. Now he was choosing the path.
There was something clarifying about that.
Blake spent the next week planning. He hit a convenience store in Northeast Philly. Got $800. Nobody was hurt, but he threatened them with the gun he'd stolen (from where? He'd have to figure that out later). The next day, he hit a different convenience store in Camden, New Jersey. Got $600. Then a gas station outside of Allentown. $450.
In seven days, Blake accumulated $2,450 in cash.
He was arrested three days later.
The police had tracked his movements through ATM cameras, through credit card records (he'd slipped up once and used a card at a restaurant), and through witness descriptions. They found him sleeping in his car—a beat-up 2006 Chevy he'd stolen in Scranton.
The arrest was quick. He didn't resist. There was no point.
At the police station, the detective had been very interested in his recent activity. "You just got out of prison two months ago," the detective said, laying out the crimes. "Five robberies in ten days. That's ambitious."
Blake had said nothing.
"Did the parole board know what you were planning?" the detective asked. "Or did you just decide to throw away your whole release as soon as you got out?"
Blake had asked for a lawyer. The lawyer was public defender named Mills who had two hundred other clients and no time for Blake. Mills had advised him to plead guilty and take whatever sentence came. "You'll get two to four years, probably. You're clearly re-offending. The judge will want to make an example."
But the detective had come back with an interesting proposition. "We think you have a bigger plan," he'd said. "We think the robberies are funding something. Where are you getting the gun? Who are you in contact with?"
Blake had realized then that they thought he was part of an organized crime network. That the robberies were too professional, too fast, too coordinated to be the work of a desperate released prisoner.
He'd considered lying. Inventing a criminal conspiracy to explain his actions. But that would have just complicated things.
Instead, he'd told the truth: "I'm trying to raise money for a hitman to kill someone. I'm probably not going to succeed. It's a stupid plan. But I'm going with it."
The detective had stared at him for a long moment. Then he'd said, "You're going back to Rockview. You understand that?"
Blake had said he did.
The prosecutor had offered him a deal: plead guilty to the robberies, and they wouldn't pursue the conspiracy angle. Seven years for the robberies alone—to run consecutive to his existing sentence, but after appeal and review, he'd be out in four or five. Or fight it, and he'd probably get ten to fifteen.
Blake had taken the deal.
He was going back to prison. He'd lasted sixty-two days.
But he had $2,450 in cash hidden in a storage unit under a fake name. And he had proof of concept. He could rob people. He could get money. He could, theoretically, get to $25,000 if he had more time and fewer mistakes.
As they were processing him back into the system, one of the guards—a man named Patterson (no relation to James, but the irony wasn't lost on Blake)—had asked him, "What were you thinking, man? You were out. You had a shot."
Blake had said, "I was thinking about someone who destroyed my life. I'm still thinking about him."
Patterson had shaken his head. "Revenge is a life sentence, man. Even if you pull it off, you don't get out."
Blake hadn't responded. But he'd filed that away. Patterson was wrong. Revenge was the only thing that made a life sentence worth serving.
Blake's second stretch in prison was harder than the first.
The first time, he'd been broken. Now he was purposeful. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he was willing to do.
The years crawled by. He'd gotten three years added to his original seven. Ten years total. He'd be released at sixty-two. He'd never get out. He'd never see James again. He'd never get his revenge.
Unless something changed.
Then, five years into his second sentence, something did.
A guard told him his appeal had been partially granted. His original conviction was being reviewed for procedural errors. There was a chance—a small one, but a chance—that he could get out early. Thirty months early if everything went right.
Blake had applied for every program available. He'd taken every counseling class. He'd gotten his GED. He'd become a model prisoner.
And on the same day that he learned he might get out, he'd looked up James Patterson online using the prison library computer.
James was still alive. Still in Virginia. Still breathing air that Blake wasn't breathing.
And Blake had decided something: If he got out, he wouldn't waste time planning. He wouldn't try to find professional hitmen. He'd do it himself. However he had to. Whatever it took.
He'd get his second chance. And this time, he wouldn't fail.