19. Solitary
19
Solitary
Twelve years earlier
The duct tape fell off my mouth the second time I puked. I’d called for help until the men outside pounded on the door and told me to shut up. It was night and they were trying to sleep. How would I know? It was near black in this cramped, hot closet. The water heater hissed and its blue flame flickered, thickening the air and soaking me with sweat.
I huddled in the corner, my pajamas crusty with blood and piss. I hadn’t dared to ask to go to the bathroom, just curled up and cried until my eyes burned.
Behind my back, my wrists were bound with the same tape that pinned my legs and ankles together. I couldn’t have stood if I tried or even wanted to. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Beyond the heavy, metal door, the men were awake, and arguing—all they did was argue—about me.
“He oughtn’t be here,” someone said. The British guy, I’d heard him before. Always cranky and speaking in a low voice like he’d rather not talk at all. “It’s no place for children, Grimm. It’s no life for a boy—”
“He earned his admittance fair and square,” another man, probably Grimm, replied. “You know the rules, Vaughn.”
My eyelids dragged open and closed like sandpaper. Everything hurt. My arms and shoulders, my feet and legs. My hands were the worst at the beginning—puffy and aching with building pressure. I’d worried my fingers might split open like overcooked hot dogs. Now they didn’t feel anything at all.
“To hell with the rules. And all this nonsense.” The British guy snorted. “Are you going to leave him to bake in that hot box? It’s been two days. Whatever you’re about to do, get bloody on with it.”
Two days? It felt like forever. I wanted to go home, but what would I find there? I’d been dragged away kicking and screaming, but I’d seen enough to know that my family was gone. There was no one to go home to.
Approaching feet scraped the cold, concrete floor. The door opened and light poured in, blurring my vision with black and bright sparks. I pressed against the wall, crushing my dead hands.
A silhouette appeared in the doorway, standing over me. Before I could make out his face, I saw another man hanging back. Not a man at all. A scrawny high schooler in black clothes, only a few years older than me. He watched with wary eyes, one dark and the other solid white, staring until the shadow before me spoke again.
“Make yourself scarce, Ripley. I’d like to speak with our newest member alone.”
I tried to shout, but my voice made no sound as the teen sauntered off.
I was left with Grimm, whose features gained definition as he crouched before me. Shoulder-length hair framed his bearded face. He smiled.
“Fitch Farrow, is it?” he asked. “We weren’t introduced.”
My lips quivered, wordless. I didn’t want to make him angry. Didn’t want the door to close and trap me in the hot, sweaty darkness with dirty clothes and bad memories. So, I nodded.
Grimm’s smile broadened, flashing teeth. “You’re a killer, you know that? Murdered one of my best men.”
He leaned in as I cringed away.
“I don’t blame you.” Grimm chuckled. “I’m not even mad. I’m impressed. And I’d like to see if you can do it again.”
“What?” The word croaked out. I shook my head, slumping into the wall when dizziness struck with force.
The man’s chuckle swelled into a laugh as he stood. I stayed on the floor, squinting at his shadowy face.
“You want me to… kill people?” The whisper clawed up my throat, followed by a cough that stung sharp. I tasted blood and my eyes pulsed with heat.
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Grimm said in a sing-song voice. “You take a life; I’ll give you one back.”
I gaped up at him, silent.
“How would you like to see your brother again?” he asked.
It could have been a lie. Bad men were known to lie, and I knew for a fact these were bad men. But, if my brother had somehow survived, I would do anything to keep him with me.
My eyes flew open to the brick wall that now defined my existence. A box made of stone and mortar, six by six feet, steeped in dirt like a coffin. I wasn’t dead, but I was beginning to wish I was.
The lights never turned off. No one came or went. The only way to measure the passage of time was by the arrival of meal trays, I assumed three times daily. It felt foolish to think food had been my biggest complaint a few days ago. Now, withdrawal was my worst enemy. I hadn’t realized a prison stint would double as forced rehab. I didn’t want to quit drinking or smoking, but patches weren’t offered to isolation inmates, and it was hard to bum a cigarette from the cockroaches that occasionally scurried by. I’d tried.
I stood, staggered by the nightmare hanging on. I could thank Ripley Vaughn for that. In my younger years, my entry into the Bloody Hex had been the cause of many sleepless nights. I’d outgrown it, or thought I had until the unexpected reunion with the former Hex member brought the past to my present mind.
I remembered him in very brief flashes. Enough to believe everything he’d told me. Enough to worry about Grimm’s plans for him and Maggie because the line between the fate of Vinton’s new zombie and my kid brother was far too thin.
But there was nothing I could do about any of that because I’d counted five days’ worth of meal deliveries so far, and all signs indicated they planned to leave me in this hellhole until the trial. No telling Donovan the good news or waiting for the Bloody Hex to raise Cain in this place. Mine was a slow march to the guillotine. Marionette would be put down in his prime, and the press would make bank selling pictures of my decapitated corpse lying bloody on the Capitol’s stage.
Bile surged in my throat, but I choked it back down. I’d been doing that a lot lately.
Rubbing a hand across my eyes, I surveyed my too- familiar surroundings. The cell was bare save for a slab of wood hanging from the wall and a toilet I’d considered as an escape route more than once.
I would have killed for a hamster wheel to run around on or a scratching post where I could stretch out.
Jokes aside, I would kill for much less.
My mind circled back to Ripley’s statement about sleeping at night and being at peace with his thoughts. Smug bastard. I had devils on both shoulders and the ghosts of thirty-one murder victims who made a sport of haunting me.
Vinton did a séance with me years ago. Real necromancer shit, not the scams charlatans sold on daytime TV. I’d only killed about ten people then, but seeing them all, hearing them screaming at me, surrounding me, while Vinton cackled like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen... I didn’t sleep for days.
Scuffling in the hallway outside drew my notice. The tray from lunch sat untouched beside the steel slab of a door. Peanut butter and jelly on stale bread with a bruised banana as a side.
They didn’t usually collect dishes until the next meal was delivered—I’d learned nothing in five days if not the schedule of this place—so curiosity lured me closer. I got belly-low on the stone floor, my face inches from the metal plate at the foot of the door that allowed food to pass in and out. I’d caught glimpses of the guards that way. Boots and legs were the nearest thing to human contact in this desolate place.
Someone approached, walking without stopping, and getting closer with every step.
Anticipation drummed up my heart’s rhythm. Anything out of the ordinary was enough to hold my attention rapt. Paint drying could have been an Olympic sport these days.
The unseen someone stopped outside. Metal clanged and clattered, then the door slid open.
The guard stood before me, looking straight ahead. He must have expected to find me upright or on the bed until my hasty retreat drew his gaze.
I’d rehearsed this. I had a grand plan. The door would open and, when it did, I would tackle the guard at the knees and take them to the floor. Get my hands on their baton and bash it against their skull until… until…
In fantasy, my brain supplied images of broken bones, slick pooling blood, and exposed gray matter. In reality, I fell onto my back and raised both hands in cowardly surrender.
The guard stared only a moment before grunting a gruff command. “Get up.”
My mind raced. Were they sending me back to gen pop? Or was a courtroom in my immediate future?
I stood, so wracked with nerves that my whole body shivered, while the guard produced a length of chain. He looped it around my waist and attached a pair of handcuffs, then clapped those onto my wrists. Leg cuffs completed the ensemble, and the guard waved for me to follow as he exited the cell.
Going somewhere new, or maybe this was standard fare for problematic inmates. I tagged along, overeager, and giddily grateful to see anything beyond the isolation box.
My eyes swam around the space, taking everything in as it passed. Cell doors lined both sides of the walkway, all closed tight. Without windows or signs on the walls, I wondered how they knew who occupied each room, or if they cared.
The hallway stretched sixty feet or more. My pulse kept a rapid tempo, bringing breaths just as quickly until I caught sight of a dark puddle leaking from under a dented cell door. Cooled, coagulating blood.
The guard kept walking. I thought he didn’t notice the liquid pooling into our path, but then he sidestepped so purposefully it was obvious he saw and chose to ignore it.
He didn’t pause or even glance back, trusting me to follow. Which I did.
When we neared the end of the passage, I found my voice at last. “Where are we going?”
“You have a visitor,” he replied.
Donnie?
I didn’t dare hope.
We rounded the corner and approached an open doorway, the first I’d seen that didn’t lead to a jail cell. Inside was an interrogation room identical to the one I’d seen when Holland Lyle last graced me with her presence. And there she stood now, her forehead creased and arms crossed in a rigid pose.
“Oh fuck, it’s you,” I groaned.
Holland managed a tight smile. “Hello again, Fitch.”
The guard indicated the chair on my side of the wide metal table. The rail across its middle proved superfluous with my hands already shackled to my waist. When I sat, though, the guard grabbed the cuffs attached to the table and clipped them onto my belly chain.
I pitched back to frown up at him. “Who do you think I am? Fucking Houdini?” I rattled the restraints in protest.
True to form, the guard didn’t reply. He slipped silently out the door to leave me alone with Holland.
Still standing, the investigator appeared pensive. I envied the sunglasses giving her the ability to discreetly stare, but she wasn’t very sneaky about it now. I hadn’t been let out to shower since the cafeteria fight, and I could tell she was inspecting me from my cheese sauce-ratted hair to my bloodstained coveralls.
At last, she sat. She crossed and uncrossed her legs a few times before asking, “How are you holding up? You look—”
“Like I’ve been sleeping on a wood board for the past five days?” I interjected. “Trapped under a nonstop spotlight like a lab specimen? Surviving on the shit they sweep off the cafeteria floor?”
Heat singed my face. Anger. At her, at Grimm, mostly at myself. I’d passed the denial stage of grieving while staring at the walls in the isolation cell. After this came bargaining, which may have been what Holland counted on. I’d get there soon enough. I’d experienced enough loss in my life to know how to power through a step program.
“I was going to say tired,” she said.
Breath left me like a teakettle’s whistle. “What do you want, Investigator?” I asked.
There were no snacks this time. No pretense. This meeting was as bare bones as the room that housed it.
“I want to give you one last chance to consider the trajectory of your life,” she replied. “And your ability to change it.”
Was I worth all this effort? According to Ripley, he’d taken this bait over a decade ago and the Capitol gained little, if anything, from it. He didn’t come out of it looking like much of a winner, either.
But they had me against a wall. Cooperate or die. I’d faced that decision when the commandoes surrounded me with guns in Jacoby Thatcher’s den. I’d gone along then and, while I had some cause to regret it, I was awfully young to die.
The door opened, and a briefcase-toting man burst in. Not a guard, judging by his green velvet suit with a black shirt and tie underneath. A lime-colored orchid boutonniere adorned his jacket lapel. He beamed a smile at me and Holland, who rose quickly from her seat.
“Now, Miss Lyle,” he said, “I hope you aren’t conferring with my client in the absence of his legal counsel.”