“Looks like ‘the devil’s’ alone,” Jonah observed, annoyed. He crossed to the doorway with Maggie following closely behind him. “What’s the matter?” Jonah asked the guard. “Why isn’t Corgan with you?”
“If he’s refusing to see us—” Maggie began, cutting in.
“He’s refusing to see everybody,” the guard informed her, a nasty edge to his voice.
Jonah was tired of playing games. “He can’t do that,” he protested.
“Yeah, he can,” the guard contradicted, “if he’s dead,” he added.
“Dead?” Jonah repeated, stunned. The guard had clearly buried the headline. Deliberately?
“What do you mean, dead?” Maggie demanded, pushing herself in front of Jonah. “We just saw him yesterday,” she declared.
“Well, yesterday, he was alive,” the guard answered. “This morning it looks like he hung himself in his cell, using his bedsheet. And I’m the guy who found him,” he added in disgust. “I had to get someone to help me cut him down. That’s what took so long,” he told Jonah, scowling as he obviously anticipated that was going to be Jonah’s next question.
Jonah frowned. This didn’t sound right to him. “Corgan hung himself just like that and nobody saw anything?” he asked the guard, annoyed by the vagueness of the whole situation. He was certain that someone was hiding something.
“What do you want from me?” the guard demanded. “This is prison, not a frat house. Nobody ever sees anything,” the man snapped.
Though the guard’s attitude annoyed him, what he’d just said really didn’t surprise Jonah.
“I want to see the body,” Jonah insisted.
“Sorry, buddy, you’re gonna have to get your jollies somewhere else,” the guard retorted.
“I am asking you officially,” Jonah ground out between clenched teeth. “I’m Jonah Colton.” For the first time in years, he stressed his last name. “And I’m part of Cowboy Heroes, the search and rescue team that just put in two weeks saving and digging Whisperwood out of the rubble that hurricane created. And this is Maggie Reeves,” he said, gesturing toward Maggie. “That dead prisoner was her uncle.” Jonah conveniently skipped over the part about Maggie no longer being married to Corgan’s nephew. “Now, if you’ve got a drop of human decency in those veins of yours, you will take us to see the body,” he told the guard.
The guard obviously didn’t like being overridden. “How do I know you are who you say you are?” he challenged Jonah.
“You can check our IDs,” Maggie told the guard. “They’re being held by the guard up front.” And then she changed directions. “Do you know if Elliott said anything to anyone before he died?”
“How the hell should I know that? I wasn’t his nursemaid,” the guard snapped. But then grudgingly, the guard relented. “Follow me. You can talk to the guard who helped me cut him down. It’s the best I can do.”
“This doesn’t make any sense, you know,” Maggie insisted as they followed the guard. “Elliott wouldn’t commit suicide,” she insisted.
The guard turned around to look at her. “Why? Because he was so happy here?” the guard asked sarcastically.
“No, because when we spoke to him yesterday, he gave every indication that he intended to live a long, long time, enjoying all the attention that his ‘handiwork’ had garnered him. That’s not a man who was planning on hanging himself in the morning.”
“Look,” the guard told them angrily, “all I know is that if you go talk to the other guard, he’s not going to tell you anything different than I did.”
Suddenly, as he brought them out into the corridor leading to the prison’s interior, a shrill alarm sounded, calling for all visitors to immediately evacuate the prison.
Chapter 17
“What’s going on?” Jonah demanded
No one was answering him. Exasperated, he caught hold of Warren, the guard who was, until a moment ago, bringing them back to Corgan’s cell.
There were guards armed with rifles rushing past them, while civilians there to visit prisoners were being evacuated, herded in the opposite direction, toward the exit.
Everything suddenly appeared to be in a state of chaos.
“There’s a riot in Cell block C,” Warren shouted, responding to a message that had just come through on his cell phone. “You have to go back the way you came,” he told Jonah.
If he had come out here on his own, then Jonah would have been perfectly willing to find his way out of the prison, no problem. But he wasn’t alone. He had Maggie to think of and he wanted an armed escort to lead them out since he had no way to defend her or himself. He had surrendered his weapon along with his wallet and ID at the desk before they had passed through the last prison door.
“Look, man, you need to escort us out of here,” Jonah insisted, raising his voice because the din coming from scrambling civilians and rioting prisoners was getting louder.
But the guard was just as adamant that they had to do as he said and part ways.
“Sorry, but we’ve all got our assigned duties in the event of a riot. Look,” he said, leaning in so that his voice carried without the need to shout, “the prison is in the process of being locked down so my advice to you is to get the hell out of here. Now,” he ordered. “Go that way,” Warren said, pointing behind Jonah.
Annoyed, Jonah turned away from the guard and told Maggie, “We’re on our own.”
He found himself talking to no one.
“Maggie?” He repeated her name, looking around, but she was nowhere to be seen. A sense of growing panic instantly set in.
Where was she?
“Maggie!” he called out again. Receiving no answer, Jonah dashed after the guard and grabbed hold of Warren’s wrist before the man was able to get away. “I can’t find the woman who was just here with me.”
Warren’s ruddy complexion was even more flushed than usual as he tried to pull free. The look on his face made it clear this wasn’t his problem.
“Looks like she’s smarter than you are and took off. If I were you, I’d do the same,” he told Jonah, and made another attempt to pull free.
But Jonah just tightened his grip on the man’s wide wrist. He wanted answers and he wanted the guard’s help. “She wouldn’t just take off like that,” he all but growled at the guard. “Something must have happened to her.”
Annoyance creased the man’s low forehead. “Well, good luck with that. I’ve got a lockdown to deal with,” he said again, trying to yank his wrist free of Jonah’s grip.
“No,” Jonah told the guard, measuring out each word evenly, “What you’ve got to deal with is helping me find her, you understand?”
“Look, jackass, I’ve—”
And then, whatever curse or choice words the guard had intended to utter never materialized. Instead, his small dark eyes widened in surprise as he pointed behind Jonah toward a scenario that was unfolding down the corridor.
When Jonah turned around, he saw that one of the inmates who had apparently managed to escape from Cell block C was holding a knife to Maggie’s throat. He was dragging her back there with him.
“You do what I tell you to do, bitch, and maybe you’ll live to see tomorrow.” The escaped inmate, a man in his late thirties, was skinny and by the looks of him, he was obviously high on some kind of drug. All it took was one look at the man’s eyes to see that he was completely out of it.
Jonah’s first instinct was to run toward Maggie and somehow wrestle the knife away from the inmate. But he knew that there was no way he could launch any kind of a frontal attack on the prisoner without also endangering Maggie, maybe even getting her killed.
“Do what he says, Maggie,” Jonah called out to her. “Don’t fight him.”
“Listen to your boyfriend, honey, and you and me are gonna have us a real a good time,” the inmate promised, leering as he dra
gged Maggie with him down the corridor. Within moments, both the inmate and Maggie disappeared from view.
The second he lost sight of Maggie, Jonah turned back to the guard. “Where does that corridor lead?” he demanded.
“That one? That goes back to Cell block C,” the guard told him.
A chill washed over Jonah. He couldn’t allow that to happen. “Do any other corridors intersect it before it gets to Cell block C?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Warren answered with a careless shrug.
Jonah resisted the temptation of shaking the information out of the guard. Instead, he kept his temper in check and said, “‘Maybe’ isn’t good enough.” When the guard didn’t volunteer anything further, Jonah’s face darkened.
“I’m not a violent man, but if anything happens to that woman, I’m going to devote my life to making sure you live to regret it. Now does any other corridor intersect with the one that inmate just dragged that woman down?” Jonah repeated.
The guard actually appeared to think for a second, fully aware that Jonah was tightening his grip on his wrist with each passing moment. “Yeah, yeah it does,” he finally cried.
“Show me!” Jonah ordered, pushing the guard out in front of him.
* * *
“Look, you’re just making things worse for yourself,” Maggie said to the inmate who had the knife to her throat and was dragging her backward with him. She’d almost stumbled twice. “If you let me go now, things will go easier on you.” It took everything she had for her to remain calm.
“What do you think I am, stupid or something?” the inmate shouted at her. “I let you go, I’ve got no leverage. Holding on to you is the only choice I’ve got. Besides, you have any idea how long it’s been since I had my hands on a woman? Too damn long, that’s how long,” he yelled, taking out his frustration on her and becoming almost hysterical before he managed to calm himself down.
“Why don’t you take that knife away from my throat?” Maggie suggested, keeping her voice friendly. “If you accidentally cut me, I’ll be bleeding all over you and what fun would that be?”
“If I cut you, there won’t be no ‘accidentally’ about it,” the inmate promised her. “And you think I don’t know that if I take the knife away from your throat, you’ll take off?”
“I won’t take off,” Maggie told him, adding, “You have my word.”
“Your word,” the inmate mocked. “Like that means anything anymore.” He continued dragging her with him, one arm held tightly around her waist, the other hand holding the knife to her throat. “Besides,” he said, pausing just for a second to rub his face against her hair, “in case you haven’t noticed, I’m getting off on this.”
She could feel herself getting physically sick. She didn’t have to use her imagination to know what the man had in mind for her.
“I’m not,” she said, hoping that might make him view this Neanderthal action differently.
But instead, he just laughed at her, enjoying this unexpected turn of events. “Too bad. I am.”
The inmate looked over his shoulder to make sure he was going in the right direction as he continued to drag her off with him.
The next part happened so fast, neither Maggie nor the inmate realized what was going on until it was almost over.
In the inmate’s case, it wasn’t until he felt a wire going over his head, around his throat and then tightening in one smoothly executed movement, deftly robbing him of the ability to get air into his lungs.
“Let her go, you brain-dead jackass,” Jonah ordered. Furious, he tightened the wire even further. “Now!” he commanded.
Because he was suffocating, the inmate dropped the knife he was holding to Maggie’s throat. A gurgling sound was coming out of his mouth as he desperately tried to suck in some air.
The second the knife was away from Maggie’s throat, Jonah loosened the wire that he had gotten around the inmate’s throat, although he still held it in place to show the man who was in control.
With Maggie free, Jonah stepped back and let the guard take over restraining the inmate. Warren was quick to jump in.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Warren snarled at the inmate when the latter struggled, then sank down to his knees. Warren yanked him back up to his feet. “You’re going back to your buddies. And then you’re all going to be getting what’s coming to you,” Warren informed the would-be escapee.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. All the prisoners were being herded back to their cell block, although they were all going to be kept separate from one another until the responsible parties were singled out and properly dealt with. It was clear that some heavy restrictions were going to have to be put in force.
Jonah was oblivious to all this going on. His only concern was Maggie.
“Are you all right?” he cried as Maggie all but collapsed into his arms.
He held on to her for a long moment, incredibly relieved that he could. There had been one really scary moment back there when he was afraid that this whole scenario was not going to end well for her.
Jonah upbraided himself for ever having brought her back here, but at the same time he knew it was futile to feel guilty about it. Maggie was stubborn. She would have come here on her own and if he hadn’t been with her, who knows what might have happened?
“I’m fine,” Maggie assured him in a somewhat-shaky voice.
But he wanted to see for himself, to check her over and make sure that the deranged inmate hadn’t cut her or left any kind of a mark on her from that knife he’d been holding against her throat.
Because if he had, if the prisoner had left even the tiniest scratch on her, he was going to come back and make the man pay for that.
“I just want to make sure for myself,” Jonah told her.
Satisfied that there wasn’t so much as a scratch on her, he took Maggie back into his arms, embracing her as if he had been separated from her for an entire eternity. It certainly felt that way to him.
“When I saw that lowlife holding that knife to your throat, I swear my heart froze. I just wanted to rip his heart out with my bare hands,” Jonah told her.
Holding her to him, he kissed the top of Maggie’s head several times over. He felt his own heart twisting as he relived the scene in his head. “I’ve never been so scared in my life, Maggie,” he admitted quietly. “Scared that I was going to lose you.”
“No such luck,” she murmured against his chest, her breath warming him.
“Luck?” Jonah repeated, then held her away from him for a moment to get a better look at her face. “I wouldn’t call losing you ‘luck,’ Maggie,” he said, enfolding her in his arms again. “If anything ever happened to you, I really don’t think that I could continue.”
This time Maggie was the one who drew back to look up at his face, confused as she tried to process what Jonah was telling her.
“Just what are you saying, Jonah?” she asked, afraid to think what she was thinking.
Jonah paused for a moment then, drawing in a breath and pulling his thoughts together as best as he could. This was a new concept he was dealing with.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I love you,” he told Maggie.
It was hard to know who was more surprised to hear him say that, Maggie or him. But once the words were out, he knew that they were true. He found himself smiling at her.
“Yup,” he said, “I love you. And I don’t ever, ever want to go through anything even close to that again.”
Dazed by his revelation as well as by what had happened earlier, she nodded. “All right, then I guess I’ll cross off prison riots from my list of preferred activities,” she said with such a straight face, for a second she almost sound serious.
It took Jonah half a minute to realize that she was kidding. He laughed then, the sound echoing with almost-tangible relief
.
“That’s just fine with me,” he told her. And then he looked her over one final time “You’re sure that you’re okay?”
“Jonah Colton,” Maggie said, threading her arms around his neck, “I have never been so okay in my whole life. Really.”
“Then let’s go home,” he told her, putting his arm around Maggie’s shoulders. “There’s nothing we can do here now that Corgan’s dead.”
“His ‘suicide’ is still rather fishy to me,” she told Jonah as they began to walk toward the front desk.
He had no intention of disagreeing with her. “I guess we can just add that to the list of things that need looking into,” he told her.
Their escape from the prison grounds was delayed when Warren, the guard who had brought Jonah to the corridor that intersected with the one the escaped inmate had taken returned. He placed himself in front of the couple to momentarily prevent their exit.
Jonah instinctively positioned himself between the guard and Maggie just in case something else was about to happen.
“Hey, in all the excitement,” the guard said, “I forgot to ask you if either one of you wanted to press charges against Waylon.”
“Against who?” Jonah asked, not recognizing the name the guard used.
“Waylon Roberts,” the guard said, “the guy who held a knife to your girl’s throat.”
“Absolutely,” Jonah responded. “But can we come back tomorrow to do that?” He looked toward Maggie. She nodded her agreement. “I think we both just want to get out of here for now.”
“Sure. I understand,” the guard said, much friendlier now with the riot quelled than he had been just less than a half hour ago. “You want an escort out?” he offered.
Jonah looked at Maggie again and she nodded. “Sure, that would be good,” he agreed for both of them. “Thanks.”
The guard accompanied them not just through the first set of gates, but he also came with them when they picked up their personal possessions.
Warren seemed impressed when he saw Jonah’s handgun. “That’s a beauty.” And then he asked, “You have everything you came with?”
Colton 911: Cowboy's Rescue Page 16
