Chapter 11
eleven
Sabin had been in the room long enough to name the cracks in the ceiling.
The long diagonal one he called Bayou because it split and reconverged like a river tributary.
He knew the floor was thirty-six tiles. He knew the fluorescent light flickered twice every forty minutes.
He knew the guards rotated on a schedule that was either random or designed to appear random, which amounted to the same problem.
Sabin let out a slow breath, stared at the ceiling, and wished the Bayou crack was actually a bayou. He missed home.
The lockpick was still where he’d worked it after Vivi’s visit—tucked into the hem of his waistband, which had taken two hours of patience and significant discomfort. The little ceramic pick poked him whenever he moved, but he was grateful Vivi had managed to slip it to him.
Pride swelled, warm and familiar. His p'tite s?ur hadn't lost her edge, no. Still sharp as ever, that one.
His left hand was wrecked. The two broken fingers were splinted and throbbing in steady pulses, and his grip strength on that side was all but nonexistent. But his index and middle fingers moved. His right hand was intact, zip-tied to the chair arm at the wrist but otherwise functional.
He’d picked locks in worse shape. He’d picked locks one-handed in the dark in a moving vehicle, drunk on Chartreuse, while Vivi kept watch from a window ledge three stories up.
Mais, two broken fingers and thirty-six tiles? C'était pas rien. Practically a vacation.
He let himself run through the escape in his head the way he used to run through a job — not rushing it, not skipping steps, treating it with the respect of a thing that would kill him if he got it wrong. Free the wrists.
There was one guard who had a conscience, or something close enough to one to be useful.
He brought food when the others forgot, positioned himself slightly apart from the group when orders were given, and answered Sabin’s question about Vivi with a single shake of his head that he almost certainly hadn’t been authorized to give.
That guard was the variable. If the man could be convinced to look the other way—or better, to open the right door—then the escape became a problem of logistics rather than a problem of force.
Force, in his current condition, with his hand wrecked and his body still not fully clear of whatever they’d given him in those early sessions, was not the play.
He tucked the thought away when he heard footsteps.
The footsteps were wrong. Not the heavy, even cadence of the guards.
The locks turned. The door opened.
A man in a white coat entered carrying a black case. He didn’t introduce himself.
Sabin watched him set the case on the metal table and open it with the practiced click of latches he’d operated a thousand times before. Medical supplies. Real ones, not the basic field dressing the guard had brought before. Blood draw equipment. A pressure cuff. A penlight.
“Don’t get me wrong, cher,” Sabin drawled, “I love a good medical drama, but I’d rather not play the part of patient. Can I be the doctor?”
The man didn’t react. He wrapped the pressure cuff around Sabin’s right arm and inflated it with the bulb, reading the gauge and noting something on his tablet. Deflated. Noted again.
“You know, most doctors at least pretend to be interested in their patients. It builds rapport. Makes people feel cared for.” Sabin watched him remove the cuff and reach for the blood draw equipment, selecting a vein with clinical efficiency.
“I’m told bedside manner is the cornerstone of the profession. ”
The needle went in. Sabin didn’t flinch — he never flinched for needles; it had been trained out of him years ago — and watched dark red begin to fill the tube. The man made another note.
“What’s all this for?”
“Establishing a baseline.” The man didn’t look up.
“Baseline for what?”
Nothing. The tube filled. He withdrew the needle and pressed a small square of gauze against the puncture point without looking at Sabin’s face. Two more notes on the tablet. He checked Sabin’s pupils with the penlight and then packed everything up and closed the case.
“Pleasure talking with you,” Sabin called as he walked away.
The door closed.
He listened to the footsteps recede down the corridor and stayed very still, staring at the small square of gauze taped to the inside of his elbow.
Baseline.
A baseline implied a before. Which implied an after. Which implied something was going to happen to him that would change the numbers—change the measurements—enough that having a record of the before state mattered.
He wasn't a man scared easy, him. But that white coat, the way the man looked at him like he wasn't even there — that put a cold on Sabin he hadn't felt since he was a boy.
He’d been interrogated before by people who were genuinely trying to hurt him, and he’d talked his way out of it or endured his way through it, and come out the other side.
But he wasn’t so sure he’d see the other side this time.
Time passed. The fluorescent light flickered twice, so at least eighty minutes. Sabin kept his eyes on the door, waiting. Most people got bored when confined. They fidgeted. They sang. They went a little crazy.
Sabin counted.
When he was ten, his father had taught him and Vivi a memory trick—each number had a shape, a picture associated with it.
One was a candle. Two was a swan. Three was a trident.
By linking the shapes into ridiculous stories, you could memorize long strings of numbers.
Bank account details. Safe combinations.
The specific number of steps between a skylight and a motion sensor in a museum in Vienna.
Now he counted tiles. Guards. Minutes. Steps in the escape plan he was formulating.
The lockpick was his promise of freedom. If he could work his way through the zip ties without being caught, if the tall guard could be convinced to look the other way, if the cameras monitoring him could be fooled for just long enough...
A lot of ifs.
Math had always been his favorite school subject, and probability was math. The odds weren’t great.
Mais, sometimes a man played the hand he got dealt and prayed to le bon Dieu for a miracle.
He lifted his head when he heard footsteps in the corridor again. Not the white coat this time. Heavier. One of the guards.
The lock turned. The door swung open.
It was him. The tall guard entered carrying a plastic cup of water and what might generously be called a sandwich if you were very hungry and not too particular. Sabin was both.
“Mais, room service getting better every time, yeah.” Sabin sat up straighter, wincing as the movement sent fresh pain through his broken fingers. “You know what would really complete the five-star experience? Being able to feed myself.”
The guard said nothing, but his eyes—blue, so startlingly familiar—met Sabin’s briefly. There was something there. Hesitation. Uncertainty.
“Seriously, now. I can’t even scratch my own nose with these.” Sabin tugged at the restraints for emphasis. “What do you think I’m gonna do? Make a run for it? With my face looking like it went through a meat grinder and two broken fingers?”
The guard placed the water and sandwich on the small table within Sabin’s reach.
“Look, I’m not asking for a ticket out of here.
Just to eat with dignity. You can stand right there with your gun or whatever while I eat.
” He tried a smile, the one that had gotten him into—and out of—more trouble than was probably healthy.
“What’s your name, anyway? Seems like we should be on a first-name basis if you’re going to keep bringing me these gourmet meals. ”
No response.
“I get it. No fraternizing with the prisoner.” Sabin nodded toward his broken fingers. “Thanks, by the way. For fixing these up. You didn’t have to do that.”
The guard glanced toward the camera in the corner, then reached out and broke off a piece of the sandwich, bringing it to Sabin’s mouth. It was a small kindness—he could have just left Sabin to figure it out on his own—but it felt significant.
“Merci,” Sabin said quietly after he swallowed. “You know, I had a friend once. Military guy. Used to say that following orders isn’t an excuse when the orders are wrong.”
The guard stiffened.
“Whatever they have over you,” Sabin said, lowering his voice, “whatever’s making you do this—I hope you find a way out.”
The guard straightened up, his expression going blank again. But as he turned to leave, his gaze lingered on Sabin’s zip-tied wrists for a moment too long. Then he walked out.
Sabin waited until the footsteps had receded completely, then set to work. With a grimace of pain, he contorted himself enough to grip the lockpick between his first two relatively functional fingers and pull it free of his waistband.
Picking a lock one-handed was difficult. Picking a zip tie behind his back with broken fingers was going to be a new challenge entirely. But the ceramic pick was designed specifically for this—strong enough to wedge into the locking mechanism, thin enough to slip through.
He worked slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain in his hand. Every small movement sent fresh waves of agony radiating up his arm, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t afford to. Not with whatever that “baseline” measurement was preparing him for.
Twenty minutes of careful manipulation later, he felt the first zip tie give way. His right hand was free.
He immediately reached for his left wrist, untying that restraint much more quickly now that he had both hands. His ankles were still bound to the chair legs, and the chair itself was bolted to the floor, but having his hands free was a significant improvement. He could now—