Page 12 of Master of Lies

Timing was key. The riot would start at seven fifteen, when I’d meet Mickey in the north wing, and use my cell phone to detonate the device that would disable the locks in the north cell block, the grid that fed the electric fence and the first backup generator. The second generator would kick in quickly, but Mickey and I would have three minutes of darkness, floodlights down, to cut through the temporarily deadened electrified fence. Once through, we ran for the Jeep, hidden under a pile of brush about a mile away. It was a tight window. Also, we had no outerwear, and it was a blizzard.

I’d be fine. I’d dealt with worse. But I was worried about Mickey.

Cafeteria food was shitty, as always. Processed crap cooked in rancid fat. Barely recognizable vegetables. Mold was growing on the bread. I’d dropped thirty pounds in here, but it wasn’t a problem tonight. I was too tense to eat.

I glanced at Ramon, who sat with his team, chowing down. He’d looked in my direction when I’d walked in, and given me a barely perceptible nod. We were good to go.

Amos by now would have initiated the various payments to the wives, girlfriends, etc. Ten grand apiece, which was expensive, but what else did I have to do with my money? There was nothing I gave a fuck about but this. It was everything to me.

It sucked that Mickey was late. It sucked that Sandee had hunted me down in here. Why would Boer send someone like her to sweet-talk me? It wasn’t his style. A knife between the ribs would be more in character.

But she couldn’t be for real. How could she have noticed me? I’d been brought into the prison with no press or fanfare. Darius Drake knew a guy with prison admin contacts who owed Darius his life from back in their time in the military. He’d quietly arranged for me to be arrested for an unsolved murder and held without bail at Kalaharee while awaiting trial. The paperwork wouldn’t stand up to intense scrutiny, and no administrator at Kalaharee knew about it right now, which was how I hoped things would stay. I hadn’t expected to be in so long. Courting Mickey took time.

My thoughts kept circling back to Sandee. How she must fend off propositions and tedious grab-assery every day of her life. So why fixate on incarcerated felons?

I hoped she’d gotten back to the motel safely. That she had good snow tires, and warmer clothes to change into. I also hoped all the pieces of my puzzle were still in place. Bolt cutters, sealed in heavy plastic and buried near the fence. The first backup generator had to fail exactly when I made the call, or it all went to hell. But all of these preparations had been made months ago. Too much goddamn time had passed.

I’d prepped the explosives myself, arranging to blow out just the part of the grid that controlled the door locks in the north wing, and the electric fence, all with a call from my cell phone. Three minutes was enough, if the guards were busy with a riot in the cafeteria. By the time a search was initiated, Mickey and I would long gone.

If all went well.

I sensed movement behind me, and turned. Darryl Weeks and his gang of thugs were approaching, circling around my table. Darryl led the white power contingent. They were beefy, pasty-faced guys with scraggly beards and tattooed faces, all with that flat-mouthed, dead-eyed glare. Darryl’s eyes were puffy slits, and his grin showed off the rotten, discolored teeth of a methhead.

“Hey, Jimmy boy,” he drawled. “So sad to see you all alone, without your little pet. But hey, man, nothing lasts forever, right? Better get yourself another fucktoy. After tonight, he’ll be all used up. Might as well flush him.”

“You saw Mickey?” I asked.

Darryl’s smile widened. He took the brownie on my tray and crammed it into his mouth. Crumbs sprayed from his lips as he spoke. “He was heading toward the south shower room with some big, bad motherfuckers when I saw him,” he said. “Shoulda kept a closer eye on your bad little boyfriend, cupcake.”

I breathed down panic. Truer words were never spoken. I should have kept Mickey stuck to me like glue, but I hadn’t wanted to attract attention. Mistake number one. Darryl could be lying, just to get a reaction. Or baiting a trap.

But Mickey wasn’t here, and the clock was ticking. “Fuck off,” I said.

The snake tattoo on Darryl’s throat writhed as he swallowed. He leered, his blackened teeth slimed with chocolate. “You’re gonna be so lonely, Jimmy.”

I walked away, feeling the weight of many eyes as I left the cafeteria. I had only ten or so minutes to get to the north wing. If I checked the south wing bathroom and Mickey wasn’t there, I’d be cutting into our precious diversion time, having to search for him elsewhere. Was Darryl leading me into an ambush, or just rattling my cage?

It wasn’t the first time I’d been forced to make a life or death decision with insufficient information. Wasn’t the first time I’d fucked it up, either.

Shane could attest to that. Billy, Franco, Hank. Mom, too, for that matter.

Not helpful.I shoved that thought back into the dark before it could fuck my concentration and picked up speed, trying not to let myself sprint. Tonight was not a night to catch the attention of any of the COs. My heart galloped.

I stopped outside the bathroom. The fluorescent lights in that room buzzed like a dying bug. A shower was running. The sound was ominous.

I didn’t see anyone as I walked in. The room had tiled shower stalls and toilet cubicles, chest high. The air was heavy, damp. Steam clamped around me, a smothering embrace. Every wall sweated and dripped. The place stank, but that was normal.

A dark object lay on the floor in the end of the room. As I moved closer, I realized that it was dark red, not black, with a pinkish cloud around it, and it was clogging the shower drain, causing a puddle to form. A pinkish puddle.

Get the fuck out of here.My brain stem was screaming it, shrinking from the horror, but the need to know drove me deeper into that death trap. Water from the shower was flooding out of the stall, creeping over dirty white tiles. Tinted pink.

The object in the drain was a human tongue. Oh, fuck, fuck,fuck…

I spun around just as Russ, Finn, Cody, and Bobby, Darryl’s goons, rushed me from behind. I barely blocked the jab from the white plastic spike Russ held in time. It scored my arm, but I seized Russ’s wrist, wrenching and torqueing until he howled. He bent over, spinning around, and I drove that spike into Finn’s eye just as he rushed in at me with a screwdriver.

A wet sound, as the spike jabbed in deep—and Finn flopped down into the water, the spike protruding from his eye. A sharpened toothbrush. The other eye was wide in surprise. I kept twisting Russ’s arm until he screamed, until I felt the wet crunch of bones, tendons, popping and splintering, and flung him away, ducking to avoid a roundhouse from Cody. I swept Cody’s leg, and he hit the wet floor with a grunt.

“You know what’s about to happen to your new girlfriend, right?” Darryl’s taunting voice, from the door. Darryl liked to stand back and let his guys fight for him.

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