“I know. Me neither.”
“Then what’s the solution? What’s the right answer?” Silver asked, putting her fork down disgustedly.
“I don’t think there is one. I think there’s just a right answer for you. I think the hard part is when you remove all the rules and have to decide what’s right, not because you’re afraid of being punished or caught, but because of what you’ve decided. For me, I think all we can do is try to be happy and be glad we’re not in Howard’s position.” Richard took another bite of pasta.
“That’s it? Try to be happy? That’s your solution?”
“I didn’t say it was a complete solution. But it’s the only one I’ve come up with. So I’ll keep going to work every day, put one foot in front of the other, put a bad guy in jail every now and then, and try to focus on the good in my life — of which you are one of the big things at the moment.”
“The good?”
He nodded. “The best.”
“Is this where we talk about us?”
“I think we just did. You want a chocolaty dessert?”
Chapter 27
The guards moved with Rob through the prison corridor, his feet shuffling due to the hobbling from the restraints around his ankles. His wrists were likewise bound, and the two huge guards escorting him towered over his lanky frame.
He had been pulled out of his cell at seven a.m. with no warning or explanation other than that he was being transferred to a new facility. No reason had been given, but he knew when he heard the words super max that his life was about to change for the worse.
The larger of the two guards grinned his enjoyment of Rob’s predicament. “Hey, buddy, I hear you’re headed to Southport. That should be fun, huh? Rest of your life in an eight by twelve box. If you’re good, you get one hour a day in the yard. Rest of the time you’re in solitary.”
“I’ll be back before you know it. They got no grounds to move me to super max,” Rob said with confidence.
“I won’t be putting any money into that pool. I hear you pissed off the wrong people.”
Rob struggled vainly against the four point restraint system as he was led to the prison loading dock, where a truck much like an armored car waited to ferry him to his new home. Three guards stood impassively by as he was manhandled into the back of the truck, which was a specially constructed vault designed for prisoner transport. The driver signed a sheaf of forms, and the back slammed shut with a heavy thud. A few moments later, they were moving.
After several hours on the road, the truck lurched to a halt, and the door opened. Four guards stood waiting, and a fifth signed the paperwork, taking receipt of the former motorcycle gang chief. He glared at them. The guard that had signed for him moved into his field of vision. Rob noted that part of his face had burn scars on it.
“Hello, douchebag. Welcome to Southport. This is your new home until the end of time. There are some rules you’ll need to learn, and I’ll let the boys fill you in about them. But I’m here to let you know about the only ones you need to remember. You are not here to be rehabilitated. You are not here to improve your mental health. You are not here to operate a criminal enterprise, or network with others, or piss anyone here off, or you will find yourself in an absolute world of hurt. Contrary to what you might believe, you have no rights. You have no expectation of fair treatment. You live and you will die by however I feel, and I’m usually pissed-off that my life consists of looking after scum like you. That makes me very angry on a good day. You do not want to test that anger. It is sudden and swift, and it will land on you like a piano dropped from a twenty-story building if I even imagine you’re giving me problems. I’m the head of the day shift on your block. The night guy is not as patient or compassionate as I am. You will sit in your cell and rot until you die, which for me can’t happen soon enough. I won’t bother asking you if you have any questions because I don’t care. You are nothing. A zero. So begins the rest of your miserable life, which my sole aim is to make as unpleasant as humanly possible.”
Rob blinked at him without expression. The man nodded at his fellow guards, who jerked him into motion.
A solitary figure in a suit stood watching the procession at the far end of the receiving facility and nodded when the head of the day shift approached him.
“If there’s anything you can do to make his life worse than it will be just by virtue of being here, think of it as my special request for you to do so. He put out a contract on an FBI agent. We’ll keep him here until that works its way through the system, or until he dies — whichever occurs first,” Agent Heron said.
“People die all the time. He doesn’t look particularly healthy.”
“No, I suspect he isn’t.”
“Consider it my pleasure, then. You need an escort out?”
“I was never here.”
Silver adjusted the cushion at the base of her spine and swiveled the chair a little as she tried to get comfortable. The headaches had receded over the last three days, but the back was still prone to aching. Her doctors had assured her that in time it, too, would fade; as far as she was concerned, it couldn’t happen fast enough.
This was her first full day back at work, and she studied the pile of paperwork with loathing. A week off and she’d accumulated enough on her desk to require a month of her time just to get even. The good news was that she didn’t have much else to do — with Howard in custody, the task force had wound down, so she was between assignments at present.
Sam avoided her as much as possible, which was fine. If she never had to deal with him again that would be too soon. He’d taken her success in apprehending Howard almost personally, as a deliberately contrived sleight, and had been moping all morning after coming in and giving her a desultory, obligatory congratulation.
Some people were just magnets for bad karma. Sam was clearly one of those.
Whatever — it wasn’t her problem.
Dendt had died the prior morning from radiation poisoning. She’d deliberately avoided paying too much attention to the descriptions of his decline. Perhaps he was a malignancy, as Howard had posited, but still, nobody deserved to go that way.
Seth knocked lightly on her door jamb. She looked up from her pile with relief.
“How does it feel to be back in the saddle?” he asked with a smile.
“Like being a third grade teacher with five hundred homework assignments to grade.” She gestured at the mounds of reports.
“Hey, at least it’s over, and the good guys won again,” he said as he sat down. “And you’re now an official legend in Bureau history. I think taking a serial into custody while flat on your back and on leave is a first. I’m not sure how you top that.”
“I’m not planning to. Besides, that was mostly luck.”
Seth gave her a disbelieving look. “I sort of figured.”
“Sam doesn’t look too happy about it,” Silver observed.
“Yeah, well, he was gearing up to hang the whole thing on a Muslim fundamentalist terror cell, or the mob, or both, and you spoiled his party. It would have made quite a name for him if that had turned out to be right.”
“I was thinking exactly the same thing when I didn’t win The Big Spin again last night. If only…”
They both chuckled, then Silver raised an eyebrow in warning.
Brett’s suited form filled the doorway, causing Seth to jump to his feet.
“I was just leaving,” he said.
Brett nodded.
Once Seth had departed, Brett closed the door behind him and took a seat in front of her desk.
“How are you doing?”
“Not bad. Tough to get back into the swing of things, but then again, I was never much for pushing a
