Chapter 3 #2
Sandee tilted her head to one side. She sure could turn it on and off. The look in her eyes was almost like dreamy fascination. “You’re trying to act super mean,” she murmured. “But you know what? I can tell it’s all just an act.”
Fuck. I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt. “You’re wrong. Don’t fool yourself.”
“I can see right through you.” She lifted her hand, and put her spread-out fingers delicately against the glass. Her nails were painted a glittery, opalescent blue.
I had the crazy urge to touch my fingertips to hers, just to see if her body heat transferred through the glass, but I killed it in time. “You only see what you want to see. You’re living in a fantasy world and you’re gonna get slammed.”
“No.” That luminous smile again. “I see more than you think. I could see more if you shared with me. Let’s start over. Go slower. We can write to each other. Talk on the phone before I visit again. We could be, you know. Intimate. On the phone.”
“No, we couldn’t.” My voice was getting thick. “I’m not interested.”
“I could know you, James.” Her throaty voice was low, caressing.
“Like no one ever has. And you could know me.” Her hands caressed the glass, silently pleading for contact.
“You want to be known, underneath your super tough-guy act. And I think…I think you’d like it.
If you tried it. To have someone…love you. For real.”
A shudder jolted through me. Oh, please. Stop. As if this crazy shitshow was for real. As if this silly, painted doll of a woman could see inside my head. See the gears grinding in my private darkness, and then turn around and talk to me about love.
I was getting all flustered. Breathing hard.
Get real, Clearwater. Two possibilities.
One: Sandee was a honey-pot, sent to destroy me.
Two: Sandee was a lonely, dippy girl with a wild imagination and incredibly poor judgment.
Either possibility was a disaster, because being cruel to her exhausted me.
This chick needed to get out of my face. Right. Fucking. Now.
“Fuck off, Sandee,” I said. “Go home. We’re done here.”
Her mouth tightened. “Please,” she pleaded. “Don’t do this. I love you.”
“You’re nuts. Get lost.” I stood, and a CO took notice, moving toward the cubicle.
“No! I won’t give up on you! I won’t—”
I put the phone down. Sandee leaned forward as if she could reach through the barrier and hold on to me somehow. She knocked frantically on the glass.
A female guard appeared at her side and took her by the arms. Hustling her out, heading off trouble. An old pro.
And I felt like I’d just kicked a kitten to death.
The shackles hobbling me on the walk back to the cellblock bugged me.
I’d been playing it cool, keeping my inner garbage ruthlessly organized.
Keeping things slotted into their appointed boxes.
Bill’s and Hank’s and Franco’s murders, the fiery clusterfuck at the Ready Line complex.
Being betrayed by a former comrade in arms. Being framed for murder.
My best friend, Shane, kidnapped and dragged off to God knew where, suffering God alone knew what.
And his brother, Ethan, also my friend, convinced I had sold Shane out.
Like I’d ever given a fuck about money in my life. Like I’d betray a brother for it.
The timeline just got moved up. I couldn’t articulate why, but I had stayed alive in deadly hot zones around the world by following my gut instincts, and right now, my guts were screaming at me to move, move, move. Get the fuck out of here. Tonight.
Sandee’s arrival was a terrible omen. Even if she genuinely was exactly who she purported to be, the fact that I’d caught her attention made me feel like a fucking neon sign.
If a bubblehead like Sandee had glommed on to me, who else might have?
Who else had noticed James Craig’s mugshot, splashed all over a public website frequented by lonely hearts?
The whole thing was dangerous as all fuck, and not just for me.
I made straight for the hiding place for the cell phone I had bought from a smuggler as soon as I got here.
The plan had been to contact the Drake brothers, Amos, Remy, and Darius, ten days from now, when they were scheduled to be waiting right nearby.
I didn’t have ten days. Maybe it was instinct, maybe just my poor delicate nerves, but I was sure of it.
That hammer was coming down. Any second now.
I counted ceiling tiles from the end of the east wing, to the blind spot in the security camera, and made sure no guard was looking.
I reached up, popped the tile on one side, letting the phone slide off into my other hand.
When I turned it on, it still had some charge.
I punched in Amos’s number. He picked up swiftly. “Dude. All good?”
“It goes down tonight,” I told him.
Amos whistled. “Shit, dude. We can’t get there in time. You’ll be on your own.”
“Where are you guys?”
“Nairobi. On a mission for Hobart. Back in three days. Can it wait?”
“No,” I told him, wondering how the fuck I was so sure. “Has to be tonight.”
“Fuck me,” Amos muttered. “We should’ve cleared our calendars until you were out of there.”
“Not feasible,” I told him. “Would have looked suspicious. Don’t sweat it. We planned this so I could pull the trigger myself if I needed to.”
“I don’t like it,” Amos said darkly. “Too many variables.”
“The Jeep is ready?”
“Yeah. Remy checked the battery ten days ago. Full tank of gas. Still completely covered in brush. Probably snow, too, at this point. The safe houses are ready.”
“Good. I need you to get that money delivered to Ramon’s team. The list I got you last time. Ten grand apiece. They’re handling my diversion tonight.”
“I’ll call my guy right now and get it done,” Amos said.
“Thanks. Gotta go,” I said. “Hey. Dude. Thanks for believing in me. All of you. Tell the others. You know. Just in case.”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, man. Get the fuck out of there. Call me when you’re clear. And watch yourself.”
“Will do. Later.”
I hung up, listening for a moment to make sure I was still alone, and stowed the phone in the pouch I’d fashioned, in the seam of the coverall’s pant leg.
Breaking out of the prison without any outside backup was not optimal, but that was just too goddamn bad. I strode through the recreation area, looking around until I spotted Ramon.
I found him playing cards at one of the tables. He was a tall, lanky guy, serving a sentence for armed robbery, and one of the first allies I had cultivated here, as soon as I figured out the power dynamics among the inmates.
I met Ramon’s eyes briefly, jerking my chin in the direction of the library.
He met me there a few minutes later, stopping right inside the door. I pitched my voice low. “Tonight,” I said. “Cafeteria. Seven fifteen.”
Ramon frowned. “Fuck. Short notice.”
I shrugged. I had paid for the privilege of short notice.
For months, I had been funneling large sums of money on a regular basis to Ramon’s wife, Filomena, in San Jose.
Enough money to cover her rent, keep all three of Ramon’s kids enrolled in private Catholic school, and pay for a nursing home for his Alzheimer’s-stricken father.
In return, Ramon and his crew had agreed to start a prison riot for me.
“You’re breaking out tonight?” Ramon asked.
I just looked at him, saying nothing. He knew better than to ask me that.
Ramon glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “I have fourteen months to go,” he said quietly. “If I do this, they’ll slap on more time.”
“They might,” I said. “That risk was factored into the deal.”
“You’ll send Mena money for the additional time I serve? Double for any time served beyond my original sentence. Ten grand apiece to my crew.”
“As agreed,” I said.
“Tonight,” Ramon said, his voice flat.
I walked out of the library and headed toward my cell.
Mickey Savelletri, my cellmate, sat on the bunk, reading a paperback book from the library. His nervous leg was jittering as if it were having its own private seizure.
He looked up at me, blinking rapidly, and brandished his book. “Hey. Did you know that forests talk via fungal networks?” he asked. “Wild stuff. My brain’s on fire.”
“Great,” I said. “Let it burn.”
Mickey was a scrawny guy in his thirties, with stringy black hair, dark olive skin and huge, shadowed dark eyes. He was on the autism spectrum, and he’d had been badly in need of the protection I could offer. Prison was hard on guys like him.
After the Ready Line massacre, I’d learned that Vito Adriani, a Las Vegas crime boss, had partnered with Boer, my ex-colleague.
Boer had his own security company, which occasionally had partnered with Ready Line.
I’d served in the Rangers with Boer for years, but the guy had never been folded into the core Unredeemables group, for some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
I’d pinpointed it now. Too fucking late.
Boer had faked his own death somehow. He’d ostensibly burned to death with all the others.
He’d stuffed me into my car, still unconscious, and shoved it off a bridge.
Framing me so it looked as if I was the one who killed everyone, and then died by accident, trying to get away from the scene of the crime. Like a blundering asshole.
Some digging had revealed that Adriani’s accountant, Mickey Savelletri, had just been sentenced to four years at Kalaharee. He knew Adriani’s business, and his associates’ business. And my prison info-mining scheme, such as it was, took form.
I genuinely liked Mickey. He was brilliant, but had no ruthlessness to offset it.
He was a numbers savant with a photographic memory.
Unfortunately for him, his abilities had come to the attention of a crime boss.
Mickey had been offered a job doing Adriani’s accounts, and Adriani was not a guy you refused.
Not if you wanted to keep your body parts attached.
Mickey wasn’t a criminal, but he’d taken the most recent fall for his boss. Four years in Kalaharee for fraud, but he didn’t dare rat Adriani out. He’d be dead in a day.
Mickey wanted out from under Adriani’s yoke, so freedom was the coin I had offered him.
In return, he had dirt he’d collected on Boer.
A thumb drive chock full of evidence that Boer had faked his own death, proof that he’d framed me for murder, etc.
, etc. Account numbers of where he’d stashed his money.
Things I could use to find him, nail him down, and eventually, clear my name.
And prove to Ethan Masters that I hadn’t sold out Shane Masters.
Mickey had agreed to spill the goods when I got him out, but he wouldn’t give me anything before, and I didn’t blame him. It took months to gain even that much trust.
Current plan: get Mickey out and keep him safe. Retrieve Mickey’s intel, which led me to Boer. Make Boer talk. Then, make Boer pay…screaming.
“It’s on,” I told him. “Tonight.”
Mickey’s eyes widened, darting nervously toward the door. “Wh-what? When?”
“After dinner,” I said. “Supply closet. North wing. Seven fifteen. Don’t be late.”
I left the cell before he could reply and paced the corridors, rehearsing tonight’s plan. My mind raced, and my dick was still buzzing from the sex kitten headcase.
Thinking about her made me want to kick the walls.
I didn’t want to feel bad about hurting her feelings.
I didn’t want to worry about her driving home in the blizzard, or think about her lips trembling.
Her big eyes, full of longing. I had problems to solve.
A sad girl trolling for attention did not make the cut.
I wasn’t going to think about that ivory silk thong, hot and slick with her lube.
I was busy, goddamnit. I had no fucks to give.