“I’m Jake,” the biker with the eagle tat said, then nodded at the Irishman, “and this is Westie.”
We shook hands like gentlemen.
“I got transferred over from Ely with three other guys,” Westie said. “Overcrowding, they said. That was three months ago. Today? I’m the only one left. We’re getting whittled down, one by one.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Jake added. “Two of my brothers got it, too. Two of the biggest badasses in the whole MC, gone just like that.”
“When you say ‘gone’…”
Westie took a deep breath. “It started with T-Bolt. My cellmate. One night, I wake up to hear the door rattling open. Then suddenly there’s a big-ass flashlight in my face. Damn CRT bum-rushed us.”
“Cell Reclamation Team,” Jake explained. “Guards trained to go in if a con barricades himself in a cell. Riot shields, padded armor, and pepper spray. They work in teams of four.”
Westie looked to the fence, his gaze distant.
“Yeah, but we sure as hell weren’t starting a riot. We were sleeping. They keep the light in my eyes, tell me not to move a muscle if I don’t want to eat a Taser, and they grab T-Bolt. And that was the last time I saw him. Have you met Zap? He’s a trustee, got his fingers in all the warden’s records. He checks it out, and get this: it was written up as a standard ‘housing change order.’ Says T-Bolt got moved to Hive B, with no reason given.”
“Same deal with my brother Sledge,” Jake said. “Got cut up in a scuffle with the Mexicans. Three measly stitches. Two nights later, guards grab him and hustle him out of the cell. Same paperwork, Zap said. Transfer to Hive B. I was awake, man. I saw them drag Sledge out. He had a bag on his head, like it’s goddamn Guantanamo Bay in here.”
I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me, but they had my attention. “So what’s the word from Hive B?”
“There isn’t one,” Jake said. “Hive B’s been in lockdown for a little over a year. The whole damn thing. No word in or out. Guards get rotated between hives, but they won’t help.”
“Did I hear you right?” I asked. “They’ve been keeping an entire wing of prisoners in their cells for over a year? Is that even legal?”
Westie spat into the dust. “Said it was because of a riot. Wasn’t any damn riot. One day they just sealed it up like a tomb and that was that.”
“It gets weirder,” Jake said. “This has been happening like clockwork for a couple of months now. Once a week or so, middle of the night, CRT rolls in and one of us gets dragged off. I just spent a couple of days in Ad Seg after a fight. Down in the hole, my next-door neighbor came from Hive A. According to him, the exact same thing happened in his hive for about three months before it suddenly stopped.”
“And started in up Hive C,” I guessed. “Like they didn’t want to snatch too many people from one place. Better to keep the panic down.”
“That’s right,” Jake said.
“So what do you think this is all about?”
“You got me,” he replied, “but…Winslow says you can do things. I mean, we all heard stories about that thing with his sister…”
Jake shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. I noticed Brisco had his eye on the three of us. He still held court at his picnic table, surrounded by his entourage, but he couldn’t help glancing our way.
“What does Brisco say about all this?”
“Nothing,” Westie said, “and we’re not supposed to talk about it either. He thinks if we make waves, it’ll just make things worse.”
Jake snorted. “Brisco’s scared as shit. This isn’t something he can deal with, and he knows it. And that makes him look weak. So he’s playing ostrich, hoping the whole mess will just go away if he ignores it long enough.”
Great, I thought. So if I swoop in and start playing detective, it’ll look like I’m trying to show him up. That doesn’t bode well for my health.
On the other hand, what choice did I have? Bad enough I was trapped in here, but now I could wake up with a bag over my head and a one-way transfer to a hive in permanent lockdown. Brisco might have felt safe sticking his head in the sand, but I was a little more proactive when it came to staying alive.
“All right,” I said, “here’s the deal. I’ll check it out and see what I can learn about your missing friends. But as far as anybody knows, I turned you down flat. In fact, we never had this conversation. When Brisco or one of his guys asks—and they are gonna ask—you came over to talk about the debt I owe Winslow.”
“A lot of these guys would sleep easier knowing you’re on the job,” Jake said.
“And I wouldn’t sleep easier if Brisco thought I was making him look like a chump. I need to be discreet about this.”
Easier said than done in a prison where guards were watching my every move. Guards who, according to Jake and Westie, were neck-deep in this whole mess. There were a hundred ways to die behind bars, and I kept discovering brand-new ones.
I went back to my cell. I needed what little privacy I could get to come up with a plan of attack. That didn’t last long. The sound of a truncheon rapping against the bars jolted me from my thoughts.
“Faust,” a guard at the cell door said, looking dead-eyed and bored. “You’ve got a visitor.”
He walked me off the hive, down corridors of slab rock painted pea-soup green. I swallowed my excitement, breathed deep to slow my pounding heart, and took mental notes. We paused at two checkpoints along the way, waiting as he flashed his ID and a guard on the other side flipped a switch to make the gate rattle open.
I counted guards and guns. Studied the consoles we passed and whether they needed keys or cards to operate. Checked for mirrors, windows, and blind spots as I built up my mental map of Eisenberg Correctional.
Every iceberg has cracks. And every prison has a weakness. If I stayed sharp and kept my eyes open, I’d find my way out.
All that faded away, though, as we stopped beside a painted stencil reading “VISITOR CENTER” in big block letters. A visitor was a lifeline. A visitor meant my friends had found me.
A visitor was a taste of home.
I held out my arms in a T pose, and the guard patted me down from neck to toe. It was a thorough job, down to making me open my mouth and wriggle my tongue from side to side while he flashed a penlight across my tonsils. At least it wasn’t a strip search, I figured. At that moment, it didn’t matter. Anything to get me through that door.
The visitor center wasn’t much to write home about. Just a stark white-walled lounge with a scattering of round tables and cheap folding chairs and a couple of vending machines humming in a corner alcove. A sign plastered to one wall screamed out the rules in two-inch-high letters.
No physical contact.
No passing of materials between convict and visitors.
Only visitors may operate the vending machines.
No items from the vending machines may be taken back to the hives.
Visitations may be terminated at any time at the supervising officer’s discretion.
A few men sat spread out at the tables with heir visitors, talking in hushed tones. I saw wives, children, a toddler who had to be pulled back before she could clamber into her daddy’s lap. Family. Not my family, though. I glanced around, trying to spot my visitor, hope soaring. Then I saw her, flashing an eager smile my way.
“Well, hello, lover.”
Nadine.
8.
My heart sank like a stone in the ocean, my lifeline cut.
Nadine extended a hand, beckoning me to a table in the back corner. Her blond bob gleamed like spun gold under the harsh fluorescent lights. She’d dressed for the occasion, wearing a stylish sweater with muted black and white stripes. Cute.
“You like?” she asked, following my gaze.
“You’re behind the times,” I said. “Cons mostly wear orange jumpsuits now.”
“How…seventies of them. I think I’ll pass.”
As I came close, she reached for my
hand. I barely had time to flinch before one of the officers—spread out along the walls like angry statues—stepped in.
“No physical contact,” he barked.
She frowned and sat down. I pulled out a chair on the far side of the table. Nadine might have been the last person in the world I’d want to speak to under normal circumstances, but these weren’t normal circumstances. And at this moment, any familiar face—even an enemy’s—was a tiny comfort.
“In the 1930s,” she murmured, “Henry Harlow conducted experiments on rhesus monkeys to study the effects of maternal and social deprivation. He subjected them to long-term isolation, denied them affection, even simple touch. The monkeys went quite mad. Primates need to be touched, regularly and with care, to stay healthy. It’s ingrained in your brain chemistry.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m just wondering how long your sanity will last.” She held up a smooth, pale hand. “Can you feel it? That hungry crawling beneath your skin? The pain of knowing you’ll never feel a tender touch upon your body again? Wouldn’t you kill for the comfort of a gentle embrace, even mine? It must be torture.”
I didn’t answer. I turned my chair at an angle, looked at the wall, and fell into a sullen silence. I figured I’d wait until she had something useful to say.
“I came to your trial,” she told me, “every single day.”
“No. You really didn’t.” I paused. “But tell me the truth: do you actually remember a trial? How long has it been since we last saw each other?”
Her ruby lips pursed in a pout. “What kind of a question is that? You know when it was. The airport in Chicago. About four months ago.”
Except it was yesterday, I thought, my hope draining like sand through a sieve. There had to be a way to break this curse, to force someone to see the blatant contradiction.
“Before they took your belongings away,” Nadine said, “did you happen to open the envelope?”
The envelope. The ticking time bomb she’d dropped in my lap at O’Hare. Containing, allegedly, proof that Caitlin was out to stab me in the back. No, I hadn’t opened it. I hadn’t thrown it away either.
“Is that what you came here for?”
“No. I came here as an emissary of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. To show our respect and prove that we want you on our team.”
“Oh?” I didn’t buy it. “And how will you do that?”
“By saving your life.”
She leaned as close as she dared, pitching her voice in a low whisper.
“This morning, one of my operatives was approached in hopes of hiring him for an assassination. You were the target.”
“Me?” I touched my chest. “Did they know I’m in prison?”
“Absolutely. He was supposed to infiltrate, as a prisoner or a guard, and take you out from inside the walls. The one absolute criteria of your death was pain. You were meant to suffer, as grievously as possible, before you died.”
I drummed my fingers on the table, thinking. That kind of hit had revenge written all over it. I could see the Chicago Outfit ordering up a kill like that, but why bother? They’d already gotten me thrown in prison. It’d be crueler to make me live out a life sentence.
Damien Ecko maybe? I’d ruined his business and run him out of Chicago with a bounty from two infernal courts on his head. He wanted me dead in the worst way, I had no doubt, but hiring a living hit man wasn’t the necromancer’s style. Besides, he’d never reach out to the Dead Roses for help. Nadine’s crew were among the demons competing to hunt him down.
What about Angus Caine, Lauren Carmichael’s mercenary captain? He’d gone into hiding along with what was left of Xerxes Security Solutions after Carmichael died. So had those two mad-scientist whackjobs on her payroll.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Nadine said.
“Just realizing,” I told her, “that I really need to stop letting my enemies live. The second I get out of here, fixing that becomes priority one.”
“Speaking of which—” She fell silent. A guard lazily patrolled past our table, taking the time to look her up and down like a butcher eyeing a prime slab of meat. She puffed her hair and smiled at him until he walked out of earshot. “Speaking of which, only say the word. We have a plan.”
“We?”
“The Flowers, Daniel. Your new court. Join us. Swear fealty to Prince Malphas, and Royce and I will have you out of here before midnight. It’s that simple.”
“Caitlin might have something to say about that.”
Nadine shook her head, putting on a wistfully sad face for me. I almost believed she felt bad.
“Oh, Daniel. Isn’t it time to face the truth? She abandoned you. She went home to Prince Sitri’s court the night you were arrested, and she never looked back. She never will. Your usefulness was at an end. She’s probably already forgotten your name.”
I had to fight to keep the smile off my face. I knew something Nadine didn’t.
When I was in Chicago, getting ready to break into Damien Ecko’s jewelry store, Caitlin was making preparations of her own. Prince Sitri had a gala planned. That meant Caitlin’s job, as his right-hand woman, was going back to hell so she could stand next to his throne and look menacing while the nobles partied it up.
“I’m leaving Emma in charge while I’m gone,” she had told me on the phone. “She should be able to keep the wolves at bay for a few days.”
I never actually got in touch with Caitlin the night I came back to Vegas and got busted. If she’d had to leave early…that had to be it. Caitlin had left town all right, but only for the party. A party that, since only a day had really passed, was still in full swing.
That meant as soon as it was over, she’d be coming home to Vegas. And she’d be looking for me.
“That’s a generous offer,” I told Nadine, “but I have faith.”
She frowned. “You don’t get it. As long as you’re in this prison, you’re defenseless. My operative turned down the contract, but the client will keep looking until she finds someone who will kill you, and then what good will your ‘faith’ do you?”
“She?”
“A human.” Nadine wrinkled her nose. “Possibly a sorcerer of some pedigree. My operative was…unnerved by her presence. She called herself Mater Tantibus.”
I scraped the rust off my Latin. “Mother of Nightmares?”
“Pretentious, right?”
Said the Grand Matriarch of the House of Dead Roses, I thought, but I was smart enough not to say that out loud. Instead I asked, “Anything else to go on? I’ve pissed off a lot of people, but this ‘Mater Tantibus’ isn’t jogging my memory.”
Nadine shrugged. “Curly black hair pinned in a bun, dark skin, tailored suits and mirrored sunglasses—she had money. British accent, very clipped.”
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I knew exactly who wanted me dead.
“Fleiss.”
“Hm?”
“Her real name, at least the name she gave me. ‘Ms. Fleiss.’ Her ‘boss’ commissioned me for a heist. Except, as far as I can tell, she was the one pulling his strings.”
Normally, answers were a relief. This one just sprouted more questions. My business with Fleiss was over, and if she’d wanted to kill me, she—and Pachenko, her slab of imported muscle—had plenty of chances to do it before we parted ways. Kill me? Hell, she’d paid me and flown me home on her private jet. If I’d put together a list of all the people with a motive to send a hit man after me, she wouldn’t have even made the top fifty.
“Do me a favor,” I said. “I don’t think my family knows I’m in here. Can you get word to—”
“I only do favors for members of my court.” Nadine smiled sweetly. “And your ‘family,’ as you call them, can’t help you now. Only we can.”
A man in a fitted black pinstripe suit and an earpiece, looking like a Secret Service agent, approached our table and leaned in. As he did, I noticed two fingers were missing from his left hand. His rig
ht was a twisted blanket of faded burn scars that crept up his wrist and disappeared into his sleeve.
“Ma’am,” he said, “we’ve just received word. Nyx has arrived in Talbot Cove. Her hunt is underway.”
Nadine slid back her chair and rose, making a purring noise as she stretched her arms above her head.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Daniel. My daughter is having a…recital of sorts, and I believe she’s about to make me very proud. I’ll come back in a couple of days to see how you’re enjoying prison life. Maybe you’ll have come to your senses by then. That is, of course, assuming you’re still alive.”
9.
Chow time was seven o’clock. Another chance to fill in my mental map of Eisenberg Correctional. If I had my bearings right, the cavernous cafeteria squatted at the intersection of the hives, serving all three in staggered shifts. The concrete ramp on the way inside had a subtle slope, but that and the lack of windows in the dingy tile walls told me we’d gone underground.
The ceiling was unfinished, just girders and the occasional vent interspersed among harsh white industrial fluorescents. If the vents were for circulation, they weren’t doing their job: the air was swampy, stagnant, stinking with the kind of wet sweat-sock odor that comes from packing five hundred men into a room built for three hundred and turning up the heat.
Any other time that would have killed my appetite, but my stomach growled in eager anticipation as I shuffled into the serving line. After all, I haven’t eaten in four months, I thought. Black humor was about the only weapon I had left.
I felt like I was in high school again. I came away from the line with a gray plastic tray, paper plate, and three small dollops of food from a surly inmate’s ladle. Dinner was watery mashed potatoes the color of a soap bar and what you might call creamed chicken and rice, if you were in the mood to be charitable and squinted a little.
I thought about eating beef Wellington at Gordon Ramsay’s and sharing the sticky-toffee pudding dessert with Caitlin. Imperial Peking duck at Saffron East. Fat slices of pepperoni pie at Secret Pizza. Hell, at that moment I would have killed for the greasy shrimp toast and a mai tai from Tiki Pete’s.
The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5) Page 5
