by R. B. Schow
“The way you said all that,” he said, showing her his arm, “it gave me goosebumps.”
“That’s how you know it’s legit,” she replied.” She opened the door, got out, and then leaned her head back in and said, “Go slay some dragons, Andrew.”
“In my mind, I’m already on it.”
The second she stepped out of the Uber, her cell phone rang. It was Yergha. She picked up and had a brief but charged conversation with him, one that left her rattled but more determined than ever. When Yergha finally got mad and hung up on her, Cira’s heart was filled with an agitation she had to release before heading inside.
She took a few calming breaths, then put a smile on her face and walked into the prison to meet with a man who was a dragon in his own right, one she had to slay if she planned to move into her own position of power.
“Be savage,” she said to herself as she walked into the Supermax prison.
After checking in, Cira was promptly escorted into Warden Dicampli’s office. He did not look happy to see her.
“Warden,” she said.
He waved at a chair in front of his desk and said, “To what do I owe this displeasure.”
“Oh, come on Warden,” she said with a sexy smile. “You know exactly why I’m here. Let’s not start things off on a bad foot.”
“Every day here starts off on a bad foot. And then there’s always something that makes things just a little bit worse. Today, you are that something.”
“And tomorrow it will be something else.”
“You’re looking fit,” he said. “Have you been working out?”
“Overtime,” she said.
“Let me guess, you need Atlas Hargrove.”
Sitting up a little straighter, she smiled and spread her hands wide. “Look who decided to come to the table.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Wrong answer.”
“We’ve had some discipline problems with Atlas and he’s currently in the hole in a state of mental decay. He is unfit for whatever it is you’re wanting him for.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” she said with an edge to her voice.
“What do you want him for?” Dicampli asked. “I’ve been ever so curious these last six months. I mean, a man of Leopold Wentworth’s caliber surely isn’t hiring this low-rent thug for personal security.”
“First off, Fabian, that’s none of your business, but I understand that nature of curiosity and how it can pick at you. So I will tell you, Atlas Hargrove is a weapon. He’s blunt-force trauma. For our purposes, he’s also a way to get things done that other people can’t do.”
“I’ll give him that.”
“Go get him, Warden Dicampli,” she said, her amiable disposition all but gone. “I am dealing with a situation that is time-sensitive and lives are on the line.”
“You don’t need to tell me about the pressures of the day,” he said, not even moving a muscle.
“I think that I do, Warden Dicampli. See, the pressures you have here will wait for you, but the pressures out there—what Leopold, our team and I are dealing with—won’t wait. With all due respect, Fabian, you don’t have a clue.”
“I already told you I cannot bring you Atlas Hargrove. He’s not fit for company or whatever else you need your blunt-force object for.”
“Would you like me to call Leopold?”
Dicampli laughed, then reclined in his chair and said, “What, so I can tell both of you that my answer is no? The man damaged prison property, scared both prisoners and visitors alike, and he refuses to play well with others, which is to say, since you dropped that maniac off six months ago, he’s killed two more inmates.”
“This is a Supermax prison facility, Warden. Every convict I’ve ever known did time because they were a problem too big for society to handle. Now stop with this bullshit posturing and go get Atlas.”
“I decided to leave my wife,” the man said as if this absolved him from being properly blackmailed.
“I’m aware of this,” Cira said. “I will send her a note of congratulations when I can.”
“She took my son,” he said, ignoring the jab, “but I let her because he’s nothing but a disappointment. Everyone around me is a colossal disappointment.”
“I’m sure you were just as disappointing to him,” she said. “We all have our lousy father story we get to tell when we’re old enough. You’ll be his. Bravo, Fabian. Bravo.”
“What are you going to take from me that hasn’t already been taken?” he asked with a bitter laugh. “She gets half of my income, I’ve had to turn down prisoners for COVID, and the board is breathing down my neck about profitability. I’ve had to stall the reporting of the two people Atlas killed just to pad the books for another month. That alone could cost me my career. And now you want to throw this Atlas Hargrove BS in the mix? I’m sorry, but I’m not all that excited about ending up in genpop right alongside these guys.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“You need to know where I’m at on things both here and in life.”
“It’s customary to keep your offenses private so that later they won’t be used against you. Not that I care about something as paltry as fraud.”
“What Leopold has on me is worse than whatever I’ve done recently, I know that. There is one thing that he cannot take from me and that’s my responsibility to my inmates. When you brought Atlas back last time, he was a mess. You think that didn’t raise a few eyebrows? One of the prison nurses actually tried to report me for dereliction of duty or something petty like that. She was new and nosy, but now she’s full-time because in the state of California, when someone complains about you, not only can you not fire them, you have to take a knee and suck their proverbial dick until the end of time.”
“No one said California law was pretty, but it’s not without its holes. You give me Atlas, I’ll find a hole for both of us to crawl through, and—”
“He’s in solitary confinement,” Dicampli said as if that resolved the matter.
“So?”
“It’s indefinite.”
She realized she was getting nowhere. Looking at Dicampli, staring right into his eyes, she saw he was the immovable object, which meant she had to be the unstoppable force, only stronger because Leopold Wentworth doesn’t do standoffs—he requires only victory.
“Fair enough,” she said, standing up.
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she leaped over the desk, gracelessly tackling the warden. He squeaked out in surprise, the awful sound becoming a belch of forced air the moment the chair toppled over with her on top of him. She punched him quickly and repeatedly in the ribs and solar plexus until he tried to suck in that one giant breath, but couldn’t.
Having knocked the wind out of him, she now had the advantage. She grabbed his balls, squeezed tight, and started to twist. Leaning forward, her forearm across his neck and her face now inches from his, she said, “If you don’t get me Atlas Hargrove right now, I’m going to crush your nuts and turn you into a permanent bitch. And if you don’t do exactly as I say, if Atlas and I are not walking out of this prison in exactly half an hour, give or take, I’m going to take the one thing from you that you won’t want to give up and that’s your life.”
“You can’t kill me,” he said, forcing the words.
She twisted his nuts even harder, her grip crippling. His face deepened another shade of red, his eyes bulging in their sockets.
“Do you really want to make that bet, Fabian?”
“Okay, okay,” he said.
She pushed off of him, straightened her hair and her clothes then she stood close enough to attack him again if he didn’t take her to see Atlas right away.
“You people are crazy,” he grumbled.
He tried to clear his throat and then he picked up the phone and said to the man outside, “I need an escort to solitary. We have some…extenuating circumstances.”
He nodded just
as the door to his office opened. The guard looked at them both, suspicious because Dicampli was red and disheveled, and Cira was put together and smiling. When his eyes met hers again, she gave him a wink and a slight smile, hoping to convey this as a sordid affair in a room without cameras or listening devices.
“You needed an escort to solitary confinement?” the guard asked.
“Yes,” Dicampli said, straightening his shirt collar and tie. “Both of us will.”
They walked through an otherwise quiet prison heading to solitary confinement. Considering the hour, everyone was still asleep. When they arrived at solitary confinement, their escort walked them to the last cell, nodded to the duty guard, and said, “Open the door, Hargrove has a visitor.”
The duty guard didn’t move right away.
“Are you on a mental break?” Dicampli hissed.
“No, of course not,” the man said, confused. Through the bean slot where they slipped Hargrove his daily meal, the guard shined the light in on the prisoner. “He’s asleep right now, Warden Dicampli.”
“She can wake him,” Dicampli said. “Let her in.”
“This is against prison protocol.”
“Don’t lecture me on this prison’s protocol,” Dicampli said, stepping forward. “I’m the one who wrote the damn book on it.”
As Cira stood there about to see Atlas, everything she had gone through with him came rushing back at once. He had been an interesting surprise, a quick fling, the marrying of something thrilling and rare with the struggles of a hostile, violent world—the world of the Russian sex trade. She knew from her own past experiences that trauma had the power to bond two people together in more ways than even the human brain could comprehend.
The duty guard began to unlock the door.
She took a deep breath.
Her time with Atlas had been short and intense. Russia, Ukraine, the hunt, the sex, the killing, and the slaughter, all topped off with them finding Kaylee Barnes and saving the motherfreaking day. But that particular op bound the two of them together in ways she couldn’t seem to shake. The feeling hadn’t been front and center for months but it also never left her. Now that she was about to see him again, that feeling rushed forward once more, intense, thrilling, transfixing.
To the warden, she said, “I’m waking him up and we’re walking out of here. So if there’s some arrangement you need to make, I suggest you make it now.”
“Everyone is asleep. We will dress him, bag his head, and walk him to a transport van. From there you need to arrange your own way. We are not a taxi service.”
She had a chartered plane on a private airfield ready to go. She just needed to clear this hurdle and they’d be on their way.
“Get him some regular clothes,” she said.
To the guard who escorted them there, Dicampli turned and said, “Leave us to sort this out. I will call in a few moments for the prisoner’s original clothes.”
The guard had that look like he couldn’t believe what was happening.
“That wasn’t a request,” Dicampli said.
Before Cira went inside that dark hole to fetch Atlas, she turned to Dicampli and said, “If you try to stop us in any way, if you try to harm us or even slow us down, not only will I find a way to harm you in grievous, irreparable ways, Leopold will make sure he harms you worse. If you know what’s best for you, you will not fuck with us.”
“You have my word,” Dicampli said. He turned to the duty guard and said, “Let her in.”
The minute the door opened, she saw darkness as thick as oil. She gave the two men one last look and then she stepped into the gloom to collect the prisoner. Two steps inside the cell, however, and it felt like the darkness and the cold had swallowed her whole. She knew where she’d come from, but she wasn’t sure where Atlas was and it was disorienting, to say the least. She saw him, though, a slight lump on the floor in the corner.
She knelt down before him. He was asleep on his side, naked. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the door slammed shut behind her and the darkness enveloped her.
She spun around, saw nothing but darkness.
Son of a bitch!
“You just signed your own death warrant, Warden,” she said. “You just died and you don’t even know it!”
Atlas jolted awake, scurried back into the wall, and waited there, his breathing quick and shallow.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“It’s Cira,” she said.
“Cira?”
She felt his hands find her, then she held them and they began to shake. And then, just like that, it all stopped.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “This is no place for a lady.”
She crawled toward him, the concrete floor murder on her knees. Feeling his face, she felt a big beard, longish hair, and a lean body.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
He returned the touch feeling not just her face but her body as well. It was as if he wasn’t quite sure what was real and what might be fiction.
“There’s been a kidnapping,” she explained. “Three little girls and a prominent man’s wife. They were abducted in El Paso and trafficked into Juárez.”
“How old are the girls?”
“Eight, twelve, and sixteen. The wife is forty-six.”
“Why would you get me involved in anything that involves prominent people?”
“Because it’s gone international. No one will know you in Juárez. Hell, the way you must look right now, I might not even recognize you if someone turned the lights on in this freaking dungeon.”
He reached for her hand again and that’s when the smell hit her. “I can’t tell what stinks,” she said. “Is it you or the cell?”
“They won’t let you bathe in here. There is this floor, one sock, and a hole to dump in. As I said, this is no place for a lady.”
“What did they do to you in here?”
“They do nothing for me here but give me one terrible meal and a glass of water a day. Other than that—”
“I mean here in prison. What did they do to you here in prison? And why exactly are you in solitary confinement, Atlas?”
“I did this to myself.”
“Why do you feel like a Neanderthal?”
“I wasn’t going to cut my beard or hair until Leopold came for me. When he got here, I wanted him to know how long he has been gone so that he has a concept of time relating to my daughter. Five months is an eternity to a child in captivity. She may not even be alive anymore.”
“She is alive, Atlas. Leopold gave you the photo.”
“That was five months ago.”
“It’s been closer to six months now.”
A great sadness seemed to fall over him, or so she imagined. After learning about his missing daughter, she had tried to imagine having a child and then having her taken. And then she tried to imagine how she would feel if she never found the child. When she had finished this last thought, Cira felt her eyes fill with tears and her heart had ached for him. But just knowing Alabama was alive was not the full extent of Atlas’s plight. After so much had already gone wrong, she imagined getting a glimpse of this child only to learn she was out there somewhere but there was nothing you could do about it. That’s when it really struck her, when she really started to feel like she was beginning to understand Atlas’s agitation and his rage. If she were in his position, she would have gone crazy. Maybe he had gone crazy, too.
“Leopold will come for us.”
“Who are you again?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but…are you real, or is this a figment of my imagination?”
“I told you, it’s Cira,” she said, cupping his cheek and wrapping a hand over his arm. “You’re just waking up and this place isn’t good for the mind.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. He spoke a moment later. “How can you be sure Leopold will come for us?”
“Because that ferocious nightmare you became in Russia and Ukraine…we really need that gu
y. We need you. Can you become him again? Are you well enough for the task?”
“All I’ve done since I last saw you is hone my body and my fighting skills for the next time. If this is the next time, then yes, I’m ready.”
“What about your mind?”
“Nothing some sunlight, food, and a shower won’t make right.”
“Let’s hope for both of our sakes that you get those things,” she said. “Especially the shower.”
Lying on her side, the concrete pressing into her ankle, the side of her knee, and her hip bone, she leaned against Atlas.
As she lay there, she thought about her own past and the bad choices she made. No matter her position in life, her status with Leopold, or the measure of her talent, her previous life was sordid enough to never lift her nose too high at the rest of society. Setting aside some of the questionable decisions he had made—because she’d made a few herself—Atlas was a good man, a man with whom she had shared her bed and her heart.
“If you weren’t lying on me right now,” she heard Atlas say in a groggy voice, “I would feel as though my mind was playing tricks on me.”
Later, when she felt herself drifting off to sleep, she wondered how he handled this bleak nightmare. He’d been pitched into a hole to rot, remanded to darkness and solitude, unwanted by the world. It was the saddest most desolate thing she’d ever felt.
Chapter Twenty-One
YERGHA MUGHERI
Yergha and Estella crossed into Mexico through the Bridge of the Americas less than half an hour before sunrise. They did so without issue. Once they crossed the border, they made their way into Ciudad Juárez looking for a hotel or motel they could use as home base.
“I think we picked up a tail,” Estella said. “Black SUV behind us.”
His heart jumped. “Already?”
“It might be this little shitbox,” Esty replied. “We’re not exactly subtle here.”
Cursing under his breath, he checked the rearview mirror. “You’d think that at this hour, with sunrise just minutes away, all the vampires would be asleep in their coffins.”
