by Ryan Schow
“I won’t have time,” Atlas said, slowly creaking his eyes open. “Besides, you guys are going to shoot me when this is over.”
“My men have strict instructions to protect your pathways, and your six. When you’re done, they will put you down and bring you back here.”
“Your men?” he asked, forcing his eyes open.
“When everyone is done, I’ll return with two guards. We’ll give you black clothes and a black gunnysack for anonymity.”
“Who are you?” Atlas asked, still seeing the soft blur of a man.
“I don’t know how long this will work, but for both our sakes,” the faceless voice said, “we cannot mess up.”
The blur came into focus. The light stung, and his body hurt from lying on concrete, but suddenly he knew exactly who he was looking at: the warden.
“You,” he hissed.
“It seems as though you and I have things to both lose and gain.”
“Everyone pays the price for the things they do,” Atlas said. “Which makes me wonder about your crimes.” He knew what Leo’s blond had said, but she could just be goading him. Either way, he and the warden had both seen fit to follow their given instructions.
“I am cooperating for a higher good.”
“Bullshit,” Atlas growled.
“I don’t know anything else, Mr. Hargrove,” he said. “Only that I have been forced into this role as your handler.”
“Lucky you,” he said. “Lucky me.”
“This is Ronnie’s meal rotation,” Warden Dicampli replied. “Just get it done, and try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum.”
“Keep my path clear and I’ll do what I have to do,” he said, feeling a light upsurge of nausea.
In that moment, as the warden walked him to gen pop—specifically the chow hall—Atlas reminded himself he was no longer a police officer. He was a killer ex-cop who would never leave this place alive. Well, not legally. And that was why he was thinking of Alabama. He had been given another chance to find her. Was this God’s gift for doing His work with those three men? He didn’t know. Maybe this was his punishment. If Alabama was dead, if that was the knowledge his efforts brought him in the end, he would know that he was not God’s hammer, that he was not His chosen son. Rather, he’d know that everything he had done had been wrong.
Is she dead or alive? he wondered for the millionth time.
He had to know.
Ever since Alabama had been taken, she had become that all-encompassing thing, that unrelenting obsession, the one care in his shitty, miserable life. The constant boil of anger—the need to push Alabama’s case and the detectives working it harder, to blow off the incessant anxiety festering inside him—had destroyed everything worthwhile to him. His career, his marriage, his God-given freedoms. And even now, this same obsession haunted him, no walls or situations able to stall its charge.
As he walked down the hallway with the warden, he knew he’d never see old age, not before he saw the inside of a body bag. That was what inmates referred to as “getting a back door parole.” When he’d agreed to kill Ronnie, he’d said yes because he had come to terms with his future. To do this for the blond woman, and Leopold Wentworth, meant letting the light of hope spark inside him again. He almost couldn’t take it. Not after he’d let go of Alabama, of Jade, of any hope of returning to the civilized world. If there was a way to find his daughter, though, no matter the cost, he had to do it. Even if it meant committing cold-blooded murder. But that didn’t mean he’d get down on bended knee to serve Leopold’s interests, not unless Leo served his interests in return.
First, this human pestilence, he thought, bringing his thoughts back to the task at hand. He was going to do this one way or another, so to have it sanctioned by the warden with coverage from the guards…well, that was the cherry on top of the cake.
The instant he walked into the chow hall, the warden broke off. Atlas stopped, looked to the second-floor guard posts, saw three armed men eyeballing him. This was the confirmation he needed. This wasn’t a game. Or perhaps the warden was working toward his own interests. Maybe this was Dicampli trying to kill two birds with one fight. Atlas killed Ronnie, the guards killed Atlas. Two problems dealt with in one sitting. No, he told himself. It’s not like that. The warden was in a bad way, just like him. And the guards protecting him? If they kept their word, then perhaps they were compromised as well. Be it a payoff, or blackmail, it didn’t matter. He’d know soon enough if this deal was on the level.
With the shank tucked up against his forearm, Atlas walked into the large dining hall, moving like a shark through occupied waters. The eating and talking of a hundred uninterested men gave him the cover he needed. It was now up to him to mask his intentions.
He kept himself to Ronnie’s back for as long as he could. It all worked out perfectly, until it didn’t. That was when everything went wrong.
Chapter Twelve
ATLAS HARGROVE
The last thing the warden had said to Atlas before leaving him was this: “If one of my men is killed, I don’t care what they have on me, I’ll shoot you myself and deal with the consequences later, capiche?”
“I have no interest in either you or them,” Atlas mumbled. “And lay off the cooked cabbage. You smell like you’ve been eating ass for hours.”
“You do your job and I’ll do mine,” Dicampli snapped. “Just remember what I told you.”
Yeah, he thought. Make it messy.
Now, as he locked in on the back of Ronnie Beckett’s head, Atlas’s stomach crept into his throat. His heart was already kicking. Instantly, it set off at a gallop. Blood pumping, his breath short, he turned the shank over in his hand. With the cold metal blade against his forearm and a solid grip on the handle, he put one foot in front of the other.
You can do this, he told himself. You need to do this.
The rationale was that he was doing the world a favor. Killing this rodent was him righting an unbelievable wrong in God’s plan. Then again, as moral and just as his actions might appear, the law would only see murder one. Pure and simple.
He envisioned killing Ronnie, made the image bright in his mind. For a moment, he felt his stomach squeeze tight, dread gripping him. He adjusted his grip on the shank. He had to do this! Wandering between the tables, his vision tunneling in on Ronnie, he wondered, If I don’t right this wrong, who will? Instead of obsessing about murder, he turned his thoughts to Alabama and Martha Garnier. If anything, he was doing this for them.
At that moment, all he saw was Ronnie breathing, Ronnie talking, Ronnie’s hand gestures, and bodily animation. The rage he kept on tap for this very moment emerged with force, the memories of the mutilated child burning bright in his mind. Tightening his grip on the shank, his jaw set, he narrowed his eyes, remaining both focused and vigilant. The second his trajectory became clear, however, one of Ronnie’s road dogs got up and cut off his path.
“You’re in the wrong pond, fish,” the heavily inked, pint-sized nightmare sneered. “Get the fuck on.”
Ronnie was just out of reach, running his mouth to his boys, some animated story about whatever. A few of the guys across the table glanced up at Atlas, none of them concerned. That was when Atlas drove the shank right up into the soft spot under this road dog’s chin. The weapon split his tongue, buried itself into the roof of his mouth.
Wide-eyed and haphazardly trying to gulp, he was too shocked to panic. As fast as he’d stabbed him, Atlas yanked out the shank, shoved the future dead man aside and charged Ronnie. The whole cafeteria seemed to erupt into noise at once. He didn’t care. If anything, it tightened his focus.
Spinning the shank around, Atlas drove the makeshift weapon into Ronnie’s trapezius muscle. He was going for the neck, but Ronnie squirmed. The blond nightmare arched his back and began hurling out all number of curses. Atlas tried to yank it out, start sticking this pig the way he’d planned, but the tip of the half-scissor weapon was lodged deep into the bone. Before he could gi
ve it another yank, someone tackled him from behind.
The second Atlas crashed down on the cafeteria floor, he knew the wind had been knocked out of him. He didn’t try to breathe, not for the next few seconds. His chest felt constricted nevertheless. The inmate who’d hit him was now going for a full mount, deepening the chaos erupting all around them.
In the distance, from the second-floor perch above, he heard weapons being discharged, the white noise of inmates panicking, the muted grunts of bodies being struck by projectiles.
The guy who’d tackled him successfully got the mount, sat up with a closed fist meant for Atlas’s face; Atlas got into the guard, but that was when his opponent took a beanbag round to the spine. Eyes flashing wide open, mouth agape, his punching hand went limp. Seizing the moment, Atlas sat up inside his guard, grabbed a fistful of shirt, then dragged him back down and reversed position. Had the man not been shot, Atlas couldn’t do what he did, for he was struggling to breathe himself. But, clumsily, he took the mount.
With that awful tightening in his chest loosening up, he got the air he needed. Enough to drive a vicious palm strike right up into the man’s chin. One of his front two teeth broke in half and his eyes rolled loosely in their sockets. Atlas zeroed in on his Adam’s apple. The sweet spot. Grunting, using brute force, he all but destroyed his Adam’s apple with an elbow strike. To his relief, he was rewarded with a solid crunching sound and a sick expulsion of breath. This cat was cooked. No tenth life for him.
As he was pushing up off the dead man, someone kicked him in the back, pitching him forward. Someone else was there to catch him in the side of the head with a knee. He collapsed sideways, his head rattled. Dazed, half in a panic, he braced himself for the next shot. It never came.
Fresh beanbag rounds had hammered the two guys ambushing him. One of them yelped; the other backed off. Both were spitting curses and death threats.
Pushing up to his knees, hand on the long table’s bench, he pushed himself to his feet, scanned the room for Ronnie. Atlas found him in the crowd, moving along the edge of the cafeteria. With his back to Atlas, he screamed at one of his boys to pull the damn shank out of him already.
Atlas fought through the tangle of bodies, avoided being hit a couple of times, punched some guy in the eyeball, then drove a punch into the spine of Ronnie’s guy. The con seized, his knees weak. Atlas fish hooked him from behind, kicked out his knee, then threw his ass to the ground, where he struck his head hard enough for a lights-out moment.
Ronnie spun around; Atlas clobbered him with a well-placed, perfectly timed haymaker. His legs went soft, but by then Atlas had a hold of the shank. With a fierce wiggle and a mighty yank, the shank came out. Wasting no time, he drove it right back into the man, this time into the side of his neck. Ronnie howled like a shot dog, his body suspended in a suppressed state of fear. Atlas followed up with a ferocious kick into the side of his knee, buckling it sideways. Ronnie collapsed in a heap.
All around him, beanbag rounds were blasting inmates while a commanding voice on the bullhorn was calling for order and threatening to switch to live rounds. Just then a beanbag round caught Atlas in the side of the head. The glancing blow gave him pause. But behind him, the crowd was pushing back. Turning to Ronnie, he saw the man bleeding out, his eyes wide and lost. Atlas dropped to a knee beside him and that was when it all began.
With thoughts of the butchered Martha Garnier bright in his mind, Atlas embarked upon a stabbing spree that was as savage as it was unrelenting, his own rage terrifying not only him but the others around him as well. He could hear their gasps, followed by a collective quiet. Even the C/Os went silent. That might have been what disturbed him most.
Atlas stabbed Ronnie ten times, twenty times, thirty times with no signs of slowing or stopping. Even when the serial killer was dead, Atlas was thinking it needed to be messier. He was also thinking about Alabama and how guys like Ronnie Beckett preyed on the innocence of youth.
Thirty stab wounds became forty. By now he was in his own head, the world around him muted out, the only sounds coming from inside him, from his violent exertion.
He didn’t realize he was crying, but he was, and it didn’t matter. Then, in an instant, it was all over. In one final move, in an attempt to take the blue-ribbon prize for ending this bitch, Atlas punched the shank deep into Ronnie’s open, lifeless eye, driving the makeshift dagger straight into his brain.
The serial killer stopped moving.
Kneeling over the body, exhausted with blood drizzling down him from crown to knee, he took the deepest breath ever, then let out an animal roar that damn near shook his entire being. The victory cry was cut short by the beanbag round to the face. After that, it was lights-out, just as promised.
Chapter Thirteen
BOOK 2: SAINT PETERSBURG
ATLAS HARGROVE
When he woke sometime later, it was to the sounds of a man in his cell. From what he could tell, this unknown visitor was getting Atlas’s body into a set of clothes. He didn’t fight back—he couldn’t—for his head was a throbbing mess, the backs of his eyes strained.
Finally, he said, “I got it.”
When a dark sack was pulled over his head and he was perp-walked out of solitary confinement, he started to wonder if this was part of him getting out of prison, or if this was indeed his back-door parole.
As he was walked through the mostly silent prison, he realized it was nighttime based on the lack of talking and the amount of snoring he heard going on. He was escorted down a flight of stairs, walked through several sets of doors, and guided out into what sounded like the echoes of a parking garage. Atlas was then stopped. An automobile door opened and he was moved into a delivery van or something like it. The door shut, the engine started, and they were off. He had the sense he was with others, but no one said anything as they prepared to leave NorCal State Prison. With a big sigh of relief, he was certain he wouldn’t be dying tonight.
They navigated up a concrete incline, then stopped at what he suspected was a gate. There was talk between the driver and the guard, and then they were let through. When he was officially off of NorCal State Prison’s property, someone pulled the sack off his head—a big man with huge muscles. In the front passenger seat was the blond he’d met earlier. She was looking back at him, surprised if not a bit perplexed.
“I might have forgotten to tell you not to mess up that pretty face,” she said, thoroughly disappointed.
“Too late,” he responded with blood in his mouth. He wasn’t sure if it was his or Ronnie’s blood he was tasting, nor did he care. The serial killer was dead, and it was grisly, just as instructed. He’d held up his end of the bargain. Would they hold up theirs when it came to Alabama?
The van was three rows of seating. The blond was up front, and he rode bitch between one beefy escort and his lean but overly-serious looking friend in the second-row bench. Behind him was a strange-looking girl who wouldn’t speak. Her head was clean-shaven, her eyes vacant, her countenance the direct opposite of his. Next to her was a large suitcase. Atlas stared back at her, not even sure she was alive until she blinked.
“Who’s the living doll in the back seat?” he turned and asked the blond.
Without turning around, she said, “We should be at the plane in the next twenty minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I talk to Leo.”
The blond dialed a number, waited until it was answered, then said, “He wants to talk to you.” She nodded, then handed Atlas the phone.
“You said you could find my daughter,” Atlas said, skipping any formalities.
“If she’s alive, I can,” Leopold Wentworth replied. “If she’s dead, it will be harder, but it will not be impossible.”
“She’s the only reason I’m doing this.”
“I gathered as much.”
“So tell me again what this job guarantees me,” Atlas pressed.
“You’ll get my best detective, as well as the full measure of my
resources starting today. While you work, he works. That’s the deal. Which means when you’re done, he’s done.”
“His effort matches my efforts, is that what you’re saying?”
“You’re a fast learner,” Leopold said. It sounded like there was a party going on in the background. “I assume you know this is not a vacation.”
“That goes without saying.”
“I want you to look at this as a rescue and recovery mission. You rescue my girl, I’ll work to recover yours. That’s the deal.”
“What if you don’t find her by the time I’m done?”
“I can almost guarantee you we won’t.”
“Then what’s the point?” Atlas snapped, his head pounding so hard, he nearly seized.
“This is but the first job, Mr. Hargrove. If you do this one right, there will be more to come. In the same spirit of recovery, my detective also has something to prove. We are all here for one reason, Mr. Hargrove, and that is to get what matters to us most.”
“What’s in it for you, then?”
“The kind of payday I need to fund a wider operation,” he said. “Before you ask, I am not a bad guy. I simply operate outside the system.”
“Doing what?”
“I occasionally arrange justice for those who are failed by a system that has gone from conventional at best to corrupt and inept at worst.”
That was all he said. Atlas had the feeling this was no more than an elevator pitch. Whatever Leopold Wentworth was doing, he had deep pockets, plenty of pull, and reasons that were far more personal than he was letting on.
“You say your detective will start today?”
“As soon as you give me the word,” Leopold mused, “I will pull the leash off that dog and set him free.”
“Is that what he is to you, Leo? A dog?” Atlas asked. “Is that what I am?”
“When we work to further the interests of others, we are all someone’s dog, myself included. But if you do well, one day we will let ourselves off the leash others have put on us, and perhaps then, we’ll all be free.”
