Talion Justice

by Rick Bosworth

  I got another smile out of her.

  “Seriously, Frank. You promised Quinn and me that you would seek treatment next year—which is next week. And now you’re in here. You need treatment, Frank.”

  “I don’t plan on being in here long enough for treatment. Me, Quinn and Gerry are working on something.”

  Sarah leaned into the glass. “What?”

  “I don’t want you involved in it,” I whispered. “I’ve put you through enough already.”

  “But Frank—”

  “No. It’s for the best, Sarah. I want you to go to Quinn, up in Boston. He’ll protect you.”

  “What about you?” Sarah asked. “Quinn said Prisha would have you killed in here, and that he couldn’t protect you.”

  “I’ve got a plan. That’s not how I’m going to go out.”

  Sarah put both elbows on the table, pressed her face up to the glass.

  “Why don’t we just run, Frank? Me and Quinn bust you out of here, maybe when they transport you for sentencing. Then we run to South America. I’ve got enough money stashed away. We could…”

  I smiled and shook my head. “And you were pissed at me for robbing an armored car?” She reddened and grinned sheepishly.

  “Seriously, Sarah,” I said, “It’s too dangerous. I don’t want us to be fugitives, looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”

  “Maybe if we just give Prisha all her ODYSSEUS shit back, she’ll leave us alone.”

  “And what about my money? My reputation? Making things right again?” I asked. “Running away from this won’t solve that. This thing ain’t gonna go away until we put her down.” We locked eyes. “She’s never going to stop. You know that.”

  Sarah sat back and dropped her head.

  “Look, I know things didn’t work out as we planned,” I said. “I’m in here and Prisha’s still out there. But I have you and Quinn back in my life. And now I have a life worth living. You’ve given me my faith and hope back, Sarah. I’m strong again. I know we can do this. But you have to trust me. Go to Quinn.” I sat forward, trying to catch her eyes. “Leave now.”

  Sarah raised her head. She tried to smile, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  An obese guard barged in, keys jangling, and announced that our visit was over. I stood and he cuffed me, brusquely, mouth-breathing down the back of my neck. My eyes never left Sarah’s face. She mouthed I love you. I mouthed it back.

  Sarah kissed her two fingertips, then reached out and pressed them against the glass. She held them there for a moment, then turned and left without looking back.

  I stared at that smudge of lipstick on the glass until the guard jerked me away.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  December 31, 2016

  CDF/DC Jail

  Washington, DC

  I lay on my back in the top bunk of my forty-eight-square-foot cell. My cellie Jamal was finishing up his business on the steel toilet next to our bed. It was a few minutes shy of midnight. New Year’s Eve. The inmates were whooping and hollering more than usual, their screams and catcalls echoing off the steel and concrete of our housing unit. All hard surfaces. All hard men.

  Our cell was never dark, even at night, due to the hall light right outside our door. It, too, was encased in steel bars. Darkness was a privilege inmates here would never earn. I had been in DC Jail now for exactly one week and had yet to find my sleeping rhythm. Jamal could sleep through anything. Most nights I lay awake, listening to his breathing. And thinking.

  I hoped Sarah and Doyle would be safe in Boston. She had arrived there yesterday. Doyle still had plenty of old friends in the city. They would build a moat around him and Sarah. They would be okay up there for the time being, I told myself.

  Robinson had hidden all the ODYSSEUS data; Doyle had his copies of it. Robinson had dismissed Khabir Ahmad out of hand as a rank amateur, said he and his team would never crack his virus and uncorrupt the data. I wasn’t so sure, but Robinson promised me it would take Prisha months to get ODYSSEUS fully back online. I intended to make good use of that time.

  Prisha was counting on killing me in here, and on Robinson and Doyle not picking up the ODYSSEUS fight after my death. But even if ODYSSEUS was exposed, history proved it would be covered up well before it ever reached Prisha and the White House. Power always protects itself. Lies would be spun, scapegoats held up and skewered. I realized this now. Prisha had made this a zero-sum game. It was now me against her. One winner, one loser. She would never give me my money back, make me whole, then pat me on the head and watch me ride off into the sunset. I would have to destroy her to get what I wanted. I was ready to do so.

  I’d had an attorney visit yesterday. No surprises. ADA Calderon had filed his sentencing motion and was seeking a life sentence for me. Gonzalez wanted to argue five years, citing my cancer. I’d told him not to fight Calderon’s sentencing recommendation, but instead to push off the sentencing hearing for as long as he could. I told him I needed a couple more months to work things out. He didn’t ask any questions.

  This cancer thing sucked. I’d promised Sarah and Doyle I would seek treatment next year, but that was before everything went to shit. My bones still ached, and the night sweats had gotten worse. Since I’d been in jail, I’d broken out in tiny red spots all over my chest and thighs. I blamed it on the coarse jail scrubs, but I knew better. I didn’t want to die, not anymore. I had Sarah and Doyle now. And Teddy. I would keep my promise and seek treatment for my leukemia. As soon as I could.

  The doctors had given me a twenty-seven percent chance of beating it. In five years, and with treatment. But I had a bigger problem. There was a one hundred percent chance Prisha would have me killed in jail in the next few months.

  Gonzalez had argued for me to be put in isolation, but of course they’d put me in general population instead. Right where Prisha wanted me. I felt the eyes on me, as if every inmate was taking my measure. Old Frank would have just put his head down and faced this alone. I knew better now. No man’s an island. Doyle knew it. Sun Tzu, too. But it was Sarah who’d taught me this. Made me feel it. If I was going to survive in this place, I would need to put my faith in something. Trust someone.

  I leaned down over the side of my bunk. Jamal was on his back, rereading a letter he had received last week from his six-year-old daughter. Jamal was a dark-skinned African American, tall and rail thin. He wore large oval-framed prescription glasses that magnified his chocolate eyes. He cussed incessantly, and his farts smelled like spoiled meat, but otherwise he was a good enough cellie.

  “Hey, Jamal—who’s the biggest badass in this place?”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “Who’s the guy you want on your back when shit’s about to get real in here?”

  Jamal thought it over. He took a deep breath and sat up. “Shit… that’d be Duckie.”

  “His name’s Duckie?” I asked with a chuckle.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t be laughin’ if you be seeing him.”

  “Why’s he called Duckie?”

  “’Cause motherfuckers be duckin’ every time they around him, that’s why.” Jamal bobbed and weaved his head and shoulders in pantomime. “Trying not to get hit and shit. Dude’s a scary motherfucker.”

  “You know him?”

  “Shit, everybody know Duckie in here.”

  “Good,” I said. “Go see Duckie tomorrow and tell him I gotta talk to him.”

  Jamal screwed up his face. His eyes narrowed behind his big plastic frames.

  “Are you shitting me? I’ll get me a fuckin’ beat-down if I step to Duckie like that.”

  “Just tell him he’s gonna wanna hear what I got to say. Get me in with him—quick—and I’ll put fifty bucks on your books. Deal?”

  “I ain’t stepping to Duckie for no fifty bucks, tell you that right now.”

  “Hundred then?” I hung my hand down to shake on it.

  “Fuck,” Jamal groaned. He slapped my hand. “Okay, man. Money up front.” He blew
out a long breath, sounding out another Fuck. “Gonna get my ass beat, that’s what’s gonna happen. Be eatin’ my damn commissary through a straw.”

  I smiled and thanked him. Jamal pursed his lips and nodded. I pulled back up into my bunk. Stared at the ceiling as my fellow inmates counted down the new year.

  I knew it would be a good one, this coming year. Despite having two death sentences hanging over me and a pending sentence of life in prison. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. Couldn’t put it into words or explain it to anyone so that it made sense. But deep down, wherever one’s soul resides, I knew everything was going to be all right.

  Faith and hope. Hope and faith.

  I let loose a howl as the clock struck twelve. Jamal joined me and the other inmates in revelry. No more ladder stepping. I would come at Prisha hard this year. A direct hit. Old Frontal Assault Frank was back. I howled again, the “lonesome howl” I’d first heard about sitting next to Teddy at the National Zoo. The deep, even howl of a wolf seeking its pack.

  I was getting out of here. I would make things right again. I would rejoin my pack.

  Because evil thrives when good men do nothing.

  Afterword

  I hope you enjoyed my second novel, Talion Justice, the first book in my Frank Luce thriller series.

  The sequel to Talion Justice will be published by end of year 2020.

  Let’s stay in touch. Click here (newsletter) to sign up for my free monthly newsletter and receive exclusive updates and insights on me and my author adventure.

  Visit my Amazon Author Page (author page) to check out my other novels, including First Citizen, my stand-alone fast-paced thriller about an army general seeking absolute power, and the FBI agent who opposes him.

  And lastly, if you enjoyed Talion Justice, please consider leaving me a review on my Amazon book page. It would help other readers find the book, and would also really make my day.

  Enjoy.

  About the Author

  Rick Bosworth is an attorney and retired FBI agent who worked and supervised street gang, drug, terrorism, and intelligence cases in six different offices during his 25-year bureau career. He survived the LA Riots, South Central, and the Northridge Earthquake as a street agent, and paper cuts, endless meetings, and ceaseless vexation as a squad supervisor and program manager. Rick has walked dark alleys and Beltway power corridors, arrested killer gang members and briefed Cabinet members, all the while asking himself the same two questions: Why? What if? His answers became the basis for his first novel, First Citizen.

  Rick writes page-turning novels that make you think and feel. Juicy tenderloin thrillers, sautéed in literary prose and served with a buttery side of history and philosophy.

  He lives with his wife on the shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When he is not writing, Rick enjoys hiking in the woods, sipping good bourbon, and slapping at his acoustic guitar. See what he’s up to at his website, rickbosworth.com.

  TALION JUSTICE

  Copyright © 2020 by Rick Bosworth

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN Number: 978-1-7341412-8-3 (eBook)

  ISBN Number: 978-1-7341412-9-0 (Paperback)

  Published by UPrising Publishing, LLC 2020

  Upper Peninsula, Michigan

  This book, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the copyright owner’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.