INTRODUCING PENN CAGE... From the author of Cemetery Road  comes the first intelligent, gripping thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Penn Cage series.  Natchez, Mississippi. Jewel of the South. City of old money and older sins. And childhood home of Houston prosecutor Penn Cage.  In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, this is where Penn has returned for solitude. This is where he hopes to find peace. What he discovers instead is his own family trapped in a mystery buried for thirty years but never forgotten—the town’s darkest secret, now set to trap and destroy Penn as well. Praise for The Quiet Game “The pace is frenetic, the fear and paranoia palpable, and the characters heartbreakingly honest. Iles strikes not one false note.”— Cleveland Plain Dealer   “Would make James Lee Burke or even Pat Conroy proud. This is storytelling at its absolute best, a tale of near-epic status.”— Providence Sunday Journal   “The plot turns and twists with surprise after surprise...inventive and satisfying. [Iles’s] mastery of the Southern setting rings with the truth of his own experience.”— New Orleans Times-Picayune   “A definite page-turner...Extremely well-written...profound...wise and disconcerting.”— The Daily Mississippian   “The plot twists and turns magnificently...A grand thriller with a wonderful Southern seasoning.”— Orange County Register   “A don’t-touch-that-dial courtroom climax.”— Charlotte Observer   “When the final page of The Quiet Game is turned you feel a pang as when good friends move away.”— Orlando Sentinel   “A superb legal-conspiracy thriller that brings the deep South to life…an enthralling tale.”— Kirkus Reviews Greg Iles is the #1  New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series. His novels have been made into films, translated into more than twenty languages, and published in more than thirty-five countries worldwide. CHAPTER 1 I am standing in line for Walt Disney’s It’s a Small World ride, holding my four-year-old daughter in my arms, trying to entertain her as the serpentine line of parents and children moves slowly toward the flat-bottomed boats emerging from the grotto to the music of an endless audio loop. Suddenly Annie jerks taut in my arms and points into the crowd. “Daddy! I saw Mama! Hurry!” I do not look. I don’t ask where. I don’t because Annie’s mother died seven months ago. I stand motionless in the line, looking just like everyone else except for the hot tears that have begun to sting my eyes. Annie keeps pointing into the crowd, becoming more and more agitated. Even in Disney World, where periodic meltdowns are common, her fit draws stares. Clutching her struggling body against mine, I work my way back through the line, which sends her into outright panic. The green metal chutes double back upon themselves to create the illusion of a short queue for prospective riders. I push past countless staring families, finally reaching the relative openness between the Carousel and Dumbo. Holding Annie tighter, I rock and turn in slow circles as I did to calm her when she was an infant. A streaming mass of teenagers breaks around us like a river around a rock and pays us about as much attention. A claustrophobic sense of futility envelops me, a feeling I never experienced prior to my wife’s illness but which now dogs me like a malignant shadow. If I could summon a helicopter to whisk us back to the Polynesian Resort, I would pay ten thousand dollars to do it. But there is no helicopter. Only us. Or the less-than-us that we’ve been since Sarah died. The vacation is over. And when the vacation is over, you go home. But where is home? Technically Houston, the suburb of Tanglewood. But Houston doesn’t feel like home anymore. The Houston house has a hole in it now. A hole that moves from room to room. The thought of Penn Cage helpless would shock most people who know me. At thirty-eight years old, I have sent sixteen men and women to death row. I watched seven of them die. I’ve killed in defense of my family. I’ve given up one successful career and made a greater success of another. I am admired by my friends, feared by my enemies, loved by those who matter. But in the face of my child’s grief, I am powerless. Taking a deep breath, I hitch Annie a little higher and begin the long trek back to the monorail. We came to Disney World because Sarah and I brought Annie here a year ago—before the diagnosis—and it turned out to be the best vacation of our lives. I hoped a return trip might give Annie some peace. But the opposite has happened. She rises in the middle of the night and pads into the bathroom in search of Sarah; she walks the theme parks with darting eyes, always alert for the vanished maternal profile. In the magical world of Disney, Annie believes Sarah might step around the next corner as easily as Cinderella. When I patiently explained that this could not happen, she reminded me that Snow White rose from the dead just like