He had to be. Nick had to be fine.
CHAPTER TWO
The Wolves of Happy Fun Time World
NICK
Nick staggered, his shaking legs struggling feebly to support him. Two officers half-dragged him forward by the elbows. He used every ounce of resolve he possessed to walk towards the transport van in handcuffs and leg irons with muscles that were beaten and failing.
“Climb!” ordered the officer to his right.
Nick raised his left foot; there was just barely enough slack in the chain between the leg irons for him to get his toe on the step. His right leg buckled, and he hung by his elbows in the grip of the officers. Pain shot through his arms and he scrabbled desperately to launch himself up and into the van.
He half-scrambled and was half shoved face first into the van, landing on his stomach. With every move causing a red haze of shock and pain to close in at the edges of his vision, he wiggled and rolled into a seat.
“Where you taking me?” he managed to ask the driver when at last he caught his breath.
“Happy fun time world. Where we put all the assholes.”
Happy fun time world turned out to be a jail unto itself. All the assholes were in a yard paved in concrete pitted like the surface of the moon.
Nick fell out of the van onto the ground when he tried to navigate the step down. With his hands locked behind his back, he landed with an impact that knocked the air out of his lungs.
An officer from the van hauled him to his feet and he used all his strength to remain there and hobble into the yard. Rather than remove the handcuffs and leg irons, his escort tightened them until they hurt and cinched the belly chain snugger before abandoning him.
Nick gritted his teeth, testing the cuffs. Damn. He was essentially helpless until he could get them off, which would be tricky surrounded by a mob of curious violent criminals. Not to mention that if and when he managed it, he was likely to be beaten again.
Awesome.
“Evening, boys,” said Nick with a grin as a pack of about ten inmates advanced on him. They were all wearing the same blood-red scrubs.
Red for danger.
“So this is summer camp for those of us who piss off the screws for entertainment, is it?” said Nick.
“Let’s say if you kin’ walk right now, you suck at your hobby,” said a young Italian guy with a scar slashing across his neck, returning Nick’s darkly sarcastic tone.
One of the men invaded his personal space and sniffed his ear. “Back the fuck off, perv,” warned Nick.
“Or what?” his assailant asked, his voice holding a menacing snarl.
Good question.
Nick was about as helpless as it got, restrained and so badly beaten that only adrenaline kept him on his feet. The good news? His situation probably wasn’t unique. Half the guys in here had probably been introduced in exactly this condition.
This was less like being circled by sharks, and more like a puppy being circled by a curious pack of wolves.
“There’s a good five square inches of my body not covered in bruises yet. I’m a completist. Shall we finish the job?” asked Nick, wiggling his eyebrows in playful, almost friendly challenge. “I warn you, I can pull off a mean head-butt.”
They could attack and kill him in seconds. But they were more likely to snarl at the newbie in their midst for a while, pawing and snapping until they lost interest and accepted him into the pack.
The guy laughed and stepped back.
“How’d you get them bruises?” asked another inmate.
Blood trickled down Nick’s chin from his nose, but there wasn’t much he could do about that with his hands behind his back.
“Stole a cell phone off one of the screws,” said Nick.
“And used it to call your mommy for help?”
“Called your mommy to come suck my dick,” countered Nick.
“Oh, fuck you. What’s your name, jackoff?”
“Nick Aster.”
The scarred young Italian regarded him with sober respect. “I’m Vincent Corozzo. My family holds you in high regard.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Nick, as though he’d been introduced to somebody’s uncle, not the son of a mob boss.
“May I?” Corozzo stepped forward and inspected the restraints. “Ow. Someone didn’t like you.”
“Yeah. I lifted a guard’s phone,” said Nick. His lips were swelling - okay, his entire face was swelling - and it was hard to talk straight. Because if there was anything he needed, it was another handicap right now.
“He’s a snitch for the feds,” shouted a burly guy from the back of the pack.
Nick’s stomach sank. He could deal with this, but all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner and pass out. Not tackle an issue that could get him killed with a wrong word. At least Corozzo was here and seemed to be the leader.
“I’m not a snitch and never have been,” said Nick, meeting Corozzo’s eyes directly. “I’m on work release with the FBI Art Crimes and Forgery Division, in the custody of the agent who took me down. I use my own skills as an investigator, nothing more. Tommy Gambino himself told me they got no beef with me if I don’t rat out anyone. Not you, not anyone. My agent doesn’t even ask me to. He knows I got a world I can’t share with him.”
Corozzo nodded. “I heard that.” He looked at the others and raised his voice. “Aster is not a snitch. He’s with us.”
After a round of introductions, Nick’s new Italian buddies helped him sit down at a dented metal picnic bench in one of the few slivers of shade.
“Thanks,” said Nick. He looked at Corozzo. “Anyone here got a phone? I can get a guy to spring me.”
“See what I can do,” said Corozzo.
JOHN
John slammed his palms down on the table in Nick’s luxury apartment and huffed in worried frustration. There was nothing here. When Nick had fled to Bermuda to escape a crooked agent, he’d left his beloved FBI identification on the table in farewell. If Nick ever ran again, it would be without a trace. But not without acknowledgment.
Instinct said Aster was in trouble. A sick feeling in his stomach said Aster was in trouble. The fact that nice, sunny fall days in New York City held an undercurrent of dread for anyone who’d been there on September 11, 2001 said Aster was in trouble.
The fact that Nick Aster existed meant Aster was in trouble. The man was congenitally incapable of making a decision that wasn’t rash, typically illegal, and usually involving only the best of intentions.
NICK
If only all the inmates were as friendly as the Italian Mob.
“Hello, Nick Aster,” said a beefy, red-necked monster with a swastika on his arm. He grinned with a sort of malicious pleasure at the gang backing him up. “There’s a price on yer head. An’ I’m here for the head.”
His pack snickered on cue at his cleverness.
Hands the size of oven mitts grabbed Nick’s arms. Rough fingers twisted in his hair, closing and yanking his head back. The rednecked Nazi punched him in the back.
“Ahgh!” Nick yelped. Liquid pain flashed through his back like a flood.
Circling around, the beefy mess of muscles and hate pummeled his stomach.
“Ahhgghh!”
Shit, this hurt. When the hell did getting punched start feeling like being disemboweled with a rusty poker?
Nick’s assailants were holding his upper body so tightly he couldn’t even move. So he let their grip support him while he raised up both his legs and jackhammered his attacker in the groin.
The guy went down screaming, and the force of the impact shoved the men who were holding Nick off balance. They dropped him.
He landed flat on his back on top of his cuffed wrists and howled when the metal was driven into his wrists by his own weight. The world went black for a few seconds, his nerves so overwhelmed with pain that it registered only as red and hot and clubs.
And then the past caught up with him in the best sort of way.
&nbs
p; Nick’s favorite lanky Italian stepped forward, with a small army behind him. “You ever heard of the Gambino family?” asked Corozzo. “Aster’s under our protection, so’s best if you wanna keep your kneecaps you leave him be.”
“Aster ain’t no Gambino.”
“If you’ve saved the life of the boss’s son on the inside, you don’t gotta be no Gambino,” retorted Corozzo.
Hillbilly Nazi kicked Nick in the groin. “Worth ten grand to me in a body bag. What’s ‘e worth to you’s all?”
A furious pack led by Corozzo devastated his attackers, and while Nick lacked the strength to stand, he managed to roll out from underfoot.
The young Italian knelt by Nick’s side and put a steadying hand on his shoulder. Then he slipped a cheap prepaid phone into Nick’s waistband, in the small of his back where he’d be able to reach it with cuffed hands.
“Good luck.”
Sirens blared, and beanbag rounds fired, and angry corrections officers joined the brawl. With the upper hand in weaponry, they made short work of it.
Nick was lying motionless face down on the gravel when a baton struck his arm and a guard planted a knee in his back and punched him in the cheek.
They hauled him to his feet by the chain linking the cuffs behind his back. It felt like his shoulders were being dislocated and his wrists cut off all at the same time. He struggled to stand, but the guards pulled him along faster than he could walk in leg irons that hobbled him.
He fell to his knees again and focused his efforts on keeping the phone concealed. It meant the difference between another brutal beating to recover from alone in a cell, and a fiercely protective FBI agent rushing to his side.
“Ow. Ow. Ow,” gasped Nick through gritted teeth, trying not to scream or cry in pain as he was dragged. He let out a sharp yelp despite himself, and someone’s grip shifted, and now he was being dragged by his hair too. It was not an improvement.
He tried to get his legs under him, and a boot slammed into his side. He went limp, gritted his teeth, and devoted all his attention to not screaming.
“Stop resisting!” yelled one of the officers. “Stop resisting!”
They dropped him, and Nick shrank into the fetal position to protect himself from the inevitable beating.
Someone yanked his hair again. How the hell did he have any left? Then came the whooshing sound of discharging pepper spray, and his face ignited in pain.
The guards forced his eyes open and sprayed again, and there was no longer any concern about screaming or crying, because he was doing both and struggling desperately to breathe, trying to convince himself he wasn’t dying.
Rough hands ground the burning spray deeper into his eyes and the wounds on his face, and Nick screamed incessantly to distract himself from the unbearable.
JOHN
“Nick! Where the hell are you?” asked John. The call was coming from an unknown cell phone, probably a burner.
“I didn’t run.” Nick’s voice sounded wrong. Tight, anxious, thick. The reception was awful.
John made himself lower his voice. There was something vulnerable in those words, something pleading not to be yelled at.
“Where are you?”
“In jail.”
“Oh. Good.” The tension drained out of his body, and he let out a sigh of relief.
There was a low chuckle at the other end of the line. “When a friend calls you and says he’s in jail, ‘Oh, good,’ is not the hoped-for reaction.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly hoping you’d run for it,” said John dryly. “Let’s call it even.”
“John, I was wearing the anklet. I wasn’t running, I swear.” All of a sudden, Nick sounded shaky as hell, almost frantic. It wasn’t a good sound on him.
“No, you just mysteriously happened to be walking down the street, and it went blank,” said John, rolling his eyes. Trust Nick to have an excuse for everything.
Nick drew in a deep, gasping breath. “One of the cops told me - these things fritz out all the time. They’re always arresting people until there’s an investigation.”
John nudged a garbage can with his foot a little too hard, giving it a misplaced glare. That was one reason Nick was wearing the most advanced, most expensive GPS tracker on the market. Damn thing was supposed to not lose his prisoner. He expected it at a very minimum to avoid getting Nick arrested without cause.
“Where are you?” asked John.
“Rikers. John - when I was in prison, you said to call you if I was ever in danger. That extend to jail?”
John shivered. The tension was back, big time and in an instant. “Yes. Nick, yes.”
“This isn’t a con, John, please get me outta here.”
In five years of maximum security prison, John had never gotten this call. He knew it wasn’t a con.
Nick complained about grunt work, bad wine, and having to wear suits that didn’t have tags like Armani and Gucci sewn into them. He didn’t complain to get out of prison, or about being hurt on the job, or even about being shot by the FBI.
“I’ll get an emergency hearing with a judge to get you transferred to my custody. I’ll be there for you today. You gonna be okay until then?” asked John.
There was a long silence followed by a determined, “Yeah.”
And that was a no if John had ever heard one. “I’m not waiting for a judge,” said John. “I’m on my way, right the hell now. You hang in there, Nick.”
“Thanks.” Nick sounded faint, and the connection went dead.
John bounded down the stairs two at a time and dialed Daniel Curry at the same time. By the time he reached his car, he had Daniel up to speed and he could pretend his heart was thudding in his chest because he was running.
“I’ll take care of everything,” said Curry. “You drive safe and fast, I’ll have them waiting for you when you reach the gate.”
“Thanks, Daniel,” said John, firing up the engine.
“You let me handle this, you hear me? You just go to Aster and protect him if he needs protecting. I’ll be right behind you with an investigation team and paramedics just in case.”
John’s breathing eased slightly. It was times like this he loved his grouchy boss. Curry was a brilliant agent with a sharp mind and the ability to trust his people when it counted. If John said Nick was in trouble, Nick would be rescued and that was that.
“Thanks,” said John again.
“Get there,” said Curry.
John was halfway to Rikers thanks to some creative ignoring of speed limits when his phone rang again. Another, different anonymous number. John’s gut tightened when he answered.
“Fed, where’s Nick?”
Ahh, the accusing tones of Nick’s favorite conspiracy theorist and all-round lovable nutcase. Theo Wellington Gorstwick - and that probably wasn’t even the man’s real name. He was just the sort to choose Theo Wellington Gorstwick as an alias.
“Uh - at Riker’s jail, Theo. I’m on my way to get him,” said John.
“Shit!” Theo’s voice was high, with a more urgent terror than his usual theatrics usually held. “John — someone put out a hit on him.”
“Shit.” And now John was scared. Terribly scared. “I’m on my way. I’ll tell Curry to bully the jail even more than he probably already was about protecting him.”
“Can we go off the record, Fed?”
John sighed. That was not a smart thing to agree to, with Theo. But if it involved Nick’s life or death.... “Yes. You’re some random informant I don’t know.”
“Nick has some powerful enemies, but he has even more powerful friends. People who will track down and dismember anyone who lays a hand on him, and I mean dis ‘member’ literally. He was in prison with some horrible, awful, well-connected people, and conned his way into their hearts.”
“What’re you trying to say, Theo? If he dies, it’s a bloodbath?”
“No, that only a moron would put a hit on him or do the hitting. But there are lots of morons out there - mo
rons are breeding, morons are everywhere, morons are taking over our world, and it’s more than possible the word of money to be made spread faster than the word that they won’t be alive to enjoy that money. Nick’s presence could spark a prison riot, and that would be a really good chance for someone to kill him on the down low.”
“Damn it, Theo! I’m Art Crimes. I don’t deal with hits and mobsters and riots and-”
“Shut up, Fed. You’re the one who threw him into prison with all these people he never would have even spoken to. His blood is on your hands if he dies!”
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 2
