Bedlam

by Susanna Strom

  Georgia led me to the kitchen and introduced me to the supervisor. We helped the cooks finish lunch prep. At noon, men filed into the restaurant and took their seats. The servers loaded rolling food service carts with bowls of chili and boxes of soda crackers. We passed out the food and brought the men cans of room-temperature soda. Allsop fed his men, but they weren’t exactly living large.

  Eight men sat at the round table by the window. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Georgia dispense their food and drinks. One of the men threw back his head and laughed at something somebody said. Recognizing the guard who’d delivered my teriyaki jerky dinner just three days ago, I turned my back on the group.

  Georgia disappeared into the kitchen. Commotion at the guards’ table drew my eye. One of the men had knocked over a can of soda, and the liquid poured over the side of the table onto the floor. He jumped to his feet and pointed at me, snapping his fingers.

  I grabbed a pile of napkins and rushed over to them. Dropping to my knees, I wiped up the puddle on the floor.

  “Get the table, too,” a man said.

  Holding my breath, I stood. I lowered my head, so the wig’s longish blond hair fell over my face as I swiped at the sticky soda.

  “You’re just spreading it around.” I glanced up at the pissed-off face of my guard. He scowled at me, and my breath caught in my throat. “Go get a towel.”

  “Yes, sir.” I wheeled around and dashed for the kitchen.

  “Hey, you,” he called. “Hold up.”

  Shit. I halted in place, fighting the impulse to bolt. What could be more incriminating than fleeing the scene? Not to mention that if I ran, I’d be abandoning Georgia. As if I could escape a room full of armed soldiers anyway.

  “Jesus Christ, are you ignoring me?” he called.

  “Sorry, sir.” I turned around to face him.

  He held up a sleeve of crackers. “Crackers got wet. Bring another box.”

  Relief made me light-headed. “Yes, sir.”

  I ran into the kitchen and told Georgia what had happened. She brought the crackers to the guards’ table.

  “That was a total bust.” I sighed when the last man walked away from the restaurant. “We need a plan B.”

  We spent the next hour cleaning up after lunch, then were given a half hour break to eat our own bowls of chili. We carried our bowls to the courtyard and sat on the edge of a three-tiered stone fountain. The fountain was dry as dirt, of course, the bottom level filled with cigarette butts. The courtyard must be a popular place for the men to take their breaks, but we had it all to ourselves now.

  “Plan B,” Georgia repeated my earlier words. “You have any ideas?”

  “I have one, but you might not like it,” I said, glancing around the courtyard to make absolutely certain that it was deserted.

  “Try me.” She took a bite of chili.

  “The skeleton key you use when you clean the rooms, does it unlock the office doors on the main floor?”

  She dropped her spoon into the bowl. “Are you suggesting that we...” Instead of saying the words out loud, she raised her brows and mimicked putting a key in the lock.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Mataraci’s office?” she whispered.

  “If anybody here knows something about Finn, it’ll be the top man,” I said. “His desk is covered with files and reports. We need to check out his papers. It’s high risk, but it’s our only shot.”

  “Let me think.” Georgia stared off into the distance, her mind clearly racing a mile a minute. “Guards are stationed at the hotel’s entrances twenty-four, seven. At the front desk, too. Lights out for the men is at 10 p.m. Overnight, two-man patrols circulate throughout the building. They pass by my door every twenty minutes.”

  “What happens if you’re caught outside of your room after 10?” I asked.

  “Nobody’s allowed to smoke in their rooms,” Georgia said. “Last week one of the staff snuck down to the courtyard in the middle of the night for a cigarette. The patrol stopped her and put a strike in her file. The policy is two strikes and you’re out. And by out I mean you disappear and nobody knows where you went.”

  I blew out a slow breath. “So even if we get caught supposedly sneaking out for a smoke, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it’s our first strike?” Yeah. I was putting a positive spin on a dire situation. Kyle would call that my default.

  “That wouldn’t be the end of the world,” Georgia answered. “But getting caught snooping in Mataraci’s office definitely would. There’s a list of offenses punishable by death posted in the staff lounge. Being caught in a restricted area without supervision is near the top of the list.”

  “The operative word is caught,” I said. “We won’t get caught.”

  “How are we going to manage that?” she asked.

  “We’re intelligent women,” I said. “We’ve got the rest of the day to come up with a plan.”

  At a little past 3 a.m., clutching a couple of cigarettes and a book of matches that we’d bummed off a cook, Georgia and I crept silently down a dark stairwell to the ground floor. We pressed our backs against the wall just inside the swinging door and waited until we heard a patrol pass by in the hallway on the opposite side of the door. Counting off the seconds, we lingered for four minutes, then slipped into the corridor. Mataraci’s office was the second door on the right. No light shone from the crack under the door. The captain wasn’t working late. Georgia slipped the skeleton key into the lock and twisted it. A click, and the door handle turned. Georgia handed me a penlight.

  “Ten minutes,” she mouthed. Ten minutes would give us time to get back to the stairwell before the next patrol. I stepped inside the office, quietly shutting the door behind me. I spread my hoodie out along the bottom of the door, to block the glow from my flashlight. Georgia would retreat to the courtyard. If anybody unexpected approached the office door before the next patrol, she’d light up, the flame drawing attention to her illicit presence in the courtyard. I’d slip from the room while she kept the interloper occupied dealing with her infraction.

  I wasn’t kidding when I called it a high-risk operation.

  Leaning against the door, I counted to five while I steeled myself for the task ahead. If I allowed myself to think about Kyle or how much I wanted a future with him, I might wimp out. No way would I wimp out. Not when Finn’s life was at stake.

  I tiptoed across the office and clicked on my flashlight. Mataraci’s desk appeared a jumbled mess, with no obvious order to the files and papers scattered across the top. Just because it was messy, didn’t mean that he wouldn’t notice if a file or paper shifted location. There might be an idiosyncratic method to his apparent madness.

  I carefully shuffled through all the papers and files, taking care not to displace anything. A lot of the information would be of interest to Marcus, but with only minutes to search, I had to stay laser focused on any reference to Finn. I skimmed rapidly over every document on the desk, but found no reference to a spy or Finn Rasmussen. Acid burned in my stomach and my hands began to shake.

  Dammit.

  I whirled around and leaned dejectedly on the edge of the desk. My flashlight beam fell across a small cork bulletin board hanging on the wall.

  The Pleasure of Your Company Is Requested

  A tasteful invitation—gilt lettering on cream paper—was tacked to the bulletin board. Some inexplicable impulse led me to pull out the tack and open the invitation.

  Inside the card, a handwritten message scrawled in black ink.

  I blinked three times, scarcely able to fathom what I was reading. With shaking hands, I pinned the invitation to the board once again. I padded across the room, picked up my hoodie, cracked open the door, peeked outside, then stepped into the hallway, checking to make sure the door locked behind me. Georgia immediately joined me and we stole up the corridor to the stairwell. Two minutes later, the patrol passed by. We dashed up the stairs and snuck back into her room.

  “What did y
ou find out?” she whispered.

  I bit the knuckles of my hand, stifling hysterical laughter, before choking out the words.

  Georgia pulled me into her arms, hugging me tight. I gulped in air, willing my hysteria to subside. Too ludicrous to be real. In any sane world, this should be too ludicrous to be real. Not in the Allsops’ world.

  I hiccuped and got a grip.

  “Can we walk away from the hotel early tomorrow morning?” I asked.

  “Thursday mornings is when my team takes laundry down to the greenbelt,” Georgia said.

  “We need to report to Marcus ASAP. When does your team leave?”

  “Usually around 9 a.m., but if you and I take off with our carts earlier, my supervisor would probably pat us on the back for showing initiative.”

  “Okay.” That was good. “We’ll get an early start. We’ll ditch the laundry, and meet up with Marcus and Kyle.”

  We laid out our clothes for the morning, then crawled into bed. At most, we’d get two or three hours of sleep, although I was so worked up that any sleep seemed unlikely. I stared at the ceiling for a long time. Georgia’s rhythmic breathing told me that she finally drifted off. I was just starting to feel groggy when muffled voices sounded from the hallway. The staff was starting to rise. I rolled over and poked Georgia.

  “Wake up,” I whispered. “It’s D-Day.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Kyle

  I was going to call this the longest twenty-four hours of my life, but glancing at my watch, I amended that thought. Longest twenty-two hours of my life. Less than a day since Sunny marched by herself into the lion’s den, but it felt like freaking forever. It had killed me to let her go, but she was the right person for the job. And like Ripper always said, the new world doesn’t coddle anybody.

  Marcus Havoc stretched out on the floor across the room, arms crossed under his head, catching a few z’s. Ripper could do that, too, seize any downtime to grab a nap. I stood at the window, binoculars held to my eyes, scanning the street for signs of Sunny or Georgia. Georgia was one of the handful of survivors from Havoc’s army base in California. He’d shown me her military ID, so I’d know what she looked like.

  The radio squawked. “Sunny and Georgia just exited the hotel, pushing what looks like two shopping carts,” Justin reported from his position two blocks to the east. “They turned a corner and they’re heading south.”

  Marcus appeared at my side and held out his hand for the radio. “Are they alone?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Intercept them,” Marcus ordered. “If they have something to report, meet us at the car. Over.” He grabbed his rifle and strode toward the door. I followed close behind as we dashed down the stairs and ran to the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant, where we’d hidden the car under a tarp behind a pair of dumpsters. A few minutes later, Sunny, Justin, and Georgia jogged into sight. Sunny clutched a bundle of something gray to her chest.

  Marcus threw open the car’s back door. Sunny, Georgia, and I clambered in. Marcus and Justin hopped into the front. Sunny threw her arms around me, squashing a pile of smelly gray T-shirts between us.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said, almost choking on my relief. I cleared my throat, then tapped on the bundle of clothes. “What you got there?”

  “I grabbed a bunch of T-shirts from the laundry,” she said. “Just in case you guys need to disguise yourselves as official Allsop men.”

  “Good thinking.” She laid her head on my shoulder, and I held her close, despite the stink from the dirty tees.

  “What do you have to report?” Marcus asked, pulling out onto the road.

  “Last night, we broke into Captain Mataraci’s office,” Georgia said.

  My stomach clenched. Jesus. If they’d been caught, they would have been shot. No, they would have been tortured and then shot. I swallowed back bile.

  “And?”

  “Brody sent Mataraci an engraved invitation to Finn’s execution. It was tacked to the bulletin board behind the captain’s desk,” Sunny said. “On the front it said, ‘The pleasure of your company is requested’ in gold letters. Very formal. Inside, Brody wrote that the festivities start at 8 tonight with appetizers and drinks. The main event is at 9. Followed by billiards and more drinks in his man cave.”

  “An engraved invitation to Finn’s execution? Un-fucking-believable.” Justin shook his head.

  Treating an execution—hell, a murder—like a party. This had to be the most cold-blooded thing I’d ever heard of. How had my old buddy gone so totally off the rails?

  “Where?” Marcus asked.

  “Cell House 5 at the old penitentiary. Apparently it has a built-in gallows that the state used only once. Brody is excited about bringing it back,” Sunny said.

  Marcus was silent for a minute. “Sunny and Georgia discovered the what, the where, and the when,” he finally said. “I’d call that a successful reconnaissance mission.” He stopped the car at an intersection and leaned forward, scanning the road in both directions.

  “And we’ve got about twelve hours to plan a rescue.” Justin scrubbed a hand across his chin.

  Our luck held, and we arrived back at grandma’s place without incident. We hid the car in the garage and traipsed into the house, settling down in the living room again to devise our plan.

  “Appetizers and drinks. Sounds like Brody is planning quite the bash.” Georgia sat in one of the floral chairs.

  “We don’t know what went down at the Allsop house on the night Finn was captured,” I sat in the other chair and pulled Sunny onto my lap. “He was going back in to rescue their private chef, Hildy. She may or may not have been compromised that night.”

  “If the Allsops aren’t aware that Hildy turned on them—if it’s business as usual—I bet Brody will have her prepare the appetizers for the party,” Sunny surmised. “She’s a fabulous chef, and he obviously is trying to impress his guests.”

  “You think he’ll bring over food from the Allsop kitchen?” Marcus asked.

  “Food. Booze. Crystal glassware. Probably linen tablecloths,” Sunny listed. “He wouldn’t serve beer and pretzels if he went to all the trouble of sending gilded invitations. He’s trying to make an impression.”

  “Huh.” Marcus planted his boots on the glass-topped coffee table. It wobbled on its spindly legs, but held up under the weight. “I can work with that.”

  After playing cat and mouse across town, dodging Allsop SUVs, we cautiously approached the penitentiary. High stone walls surrounded the entire facility. We parked in the back lot of a nearby community center, where trees and buildings hid the car from view.

  Hid the car and Sunny. She grumbled, but when Marcus Havoc told her that he wasn’t taking an untrained civilian into a potential firefight, even Sunny knew better than to argue with the major. Marcus, Justin, and I donned jeans and the dirty gray T-shirts. We’d pass for members of Allsop’s team.

  The Allsop organization was strictly a boys club. Georgia didn’t roll her eyes or complain when Marcus ordered her to dress up like a caterer. Luckily, Grandma and Georgia were about the same size. Sunny and Georgia rooted around in Grandma’s closet and found a pair of black slacks and a simple white blouse that would pass for a caterer’s uniform. A black-and-white-checked apron they found hanging on a hook in the pantry completed the ensemble.

  According to Sunny, Ever said her grandma liked to hold fancy dinner parties for her friends. A search of the basement revealed several silver serving trays, chafing dishes, and champagne flutes, all useful props for the mission.

  A few minutes past 7 p.m., I kissed Sunny goodbye.

  “Be careful,” she said, hugging me around the waist. “And come back to me.”

  “Always.”

  I picked up a box holding a dozen champagne glasses and a silver ice bucket. Justin lugged an insulated cooler, supposedly packed full of ice and cold champagne, but in reality holding extra magazines, a fragmentation grenade, and a couple of wrenches. Geor
gia’s pistol was stuffed inside the steel chafing dish she carried. Marcus tucked several silver serving trays under one arm and carried another cooler, this one holding an extra pistol for Finn.

  I took a last look at Sunny before the operation, then followed Marcus up to the prison’s administration building, the only exit and entrance to the facility. One of the two guards stationed outside the entrance shook his head as we passed. “More food for the party? Really?”

  “You want to tell Brody Allsop how to throw a party, be my guest.” Marcus snorted.

  The guard raised both hands in the air, acknowledging defeat.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Justin said, grinning at the man.

  Inside the entrance, another soldier sat behind a desk. He shook his head as we passed, clearly sharing the first guard’s opinion on Brody’s excesses, but not challenging our right to pass through. Once through the administration building, we took a hard right, heading directly for Cell House 5. We jogged past the sally port—an entryway into the prison grounds built into the high wall and secured by a locked rolling gate.

  “Three guards at the entry to the prison,” Justin said. “Wonder how many are at Cell House 5?”

  “We’ll see,” Marcus responded.

  “They said more food. Somebody’s already here.” I shot a look at Marcus. “If Brody came early to supervise the setup, we’re in trouble. He’ll recognize me, then the jig is up.”

  “Hang back,” Marcus said. “Justin, Georgia, and I will go first. The Allsops know about me, but they have no idea what I look like.”

  We hurried toward the execution site. A two-story building designed for function not beauty, Cell House 5 resembled a concrete box with narrow barred windows. We pushed through the entry door and stepped into a passageway that led to both the ground floor cells and a staircase.

  Glancing to our right, I recoiled. It was easy to forget that before the Allsops resurrected the place as a functioning prison, this used to be a historic site, complete with handy-dandy placards telling visitors what was what. I stared into the small room directly below the indoor gallows. There was nothing remarkable about the bare walls and floor, but the ceiling—shit—the ceiling gave me chills. A hinged trapdoor was built into the rafters and under it, an odd wood-and-rubber contraption with a dangling counterweight. Gallows Trap Door Weight and Stop, the sign pronounced. If Brody had his way, in two hours Finn’s lifeless body would hang there.