of the hallway at the turn. He pulled a rubber-handled dental mirror from a pocket in his sleeve-the analog equivalent of fiber optics-and used it to take a look down the perpendicular hallway. He advanced it with the lens pointing toward the floor to guard against an unintentional flash of light, or an errant reflection fairy on the wall.
What he saw made his stomach flip. Two young people, late teens, early twenties-a boy and a girl-stood about halfway down the hall, flanking a heavy door. They both wore holstered sidearms and appeared heavily engaged in a whispered argument, the text of which he couldn’t hear. The girl was the one standing farthest from him, and she was turned so he could see her face.
When he realized that he recognized her, he nearly gasped. That was the shooter from the bridge.
In his ear, Boxers whispered, “Okay, we’re pegging the weird-o-meter up here. They’re changing into robes. Think Klansmen without the hoods.”
Jonathan withdrew his mirror, replaced it in his pocket, and quietly unslung his ruck and placed it on the floor. They needed to be able to watch what was happening in that hallway.
“This is a trial,” Boxers whispered. “But the defendants aren’t present, and there’s not a lot of doubt how it’s going to go.”
“You’re talking a lot,” Venice said. “Are you under enough cover?”
There was a pause. Then Boxers tapped his microphone to say yes.
Jonathan found the wireless camera and transmitter he was looking for in the left-side pocket. He splayed the flexible wire legs that served as a tripod, and he placed it on the floor, using the point of his finger to move it past the angle of the turn. About the size of his thumbnail and black, it would be visible to anyone who looked at it, but if you didn’t know what you were looking at, it could easily be written off as an insect. In fact, he’d had a few of these babies stomped on over the years.
“I’ve got your signal,” Venice said in his ear without him asking. “I see two people standing in a hallway. They’ve made no indication that they’ve seen you.”
Jonathan acknowledged with a tap to his transmit button. What he needed was a way to peek inside that room they were guarding. If the Nasbes were there, and they were together, he’d pull Boxers in, snatch them both, and make a running getaway. But he couldn’t do that with the guards there.
With nothing better to do, he headed back to his makeshift FOB to wait out the next event, whatever that might be.
While he did that, Venice polled them for situation reports. Boxers replied by breaking squelch, and Gail said that she was bored.
Boring was good, Jonathan thought. But he doubted that it would stay that way for long.
CHAPTER TWENTY – FIVE
The pain in Ryan’s arm had dulled to a low, constant throb, punctuated by occasional jolts of agony when he gave in to the urge to test if it still hurt to move his fingers or wrist. It was a stupid thing to do-it always hurt, and why wouldn’t it since the bones were broken?-but he couldn’t resist. It was like testing the wet-paint sign, only with high-voltage paint.
The splint and the sling definitely helped. He supposed that he should feel more grateful to Sister Colleen than he did. She showed him kindness that no one else showed, after all, and she liked his muscles. But even if she blew him, there’d be no getting around the fact that she was a flaming nut job.
He refused to believe that they were really going to kill him. That thing with Brother Stephen had been an accident, after all. Wasn’t a broken arm punishment enough? Besides, why go through all the effort to splint his arm if they were just going to murder him anyway?
He tried not to think about what might have happened to his mom through all of this. If they knew about Brother Stephen, then they had to have done something about her. He tried telling himself that it couldn’t be any worse than what Brother Stephen had been trying to do, but he knew that wasn’t true. He’d seen movies, and he’d read books. He knew all about how awful people could be to each other.
For the life of him, though, he couldn’t begin to understand why it was happening to them.
He pushed it all away, because the only way to keep the panic at bay was to keep yourself from thinking about it. Besides, he had a far more pressing matter to address. With difficulty, he rose to his knees, and then to his feet. He walked through the dark to the seam of light he knew to be the door, and knocked on it with his left hand.
“Hey!” he yelled. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“What do you want?” a male voice yelled, startling Jonathan out of an empty place in his head. He shifted his eyes to the remote image and saw that the sentries at the door down the hall had both turned to face it.
“Well, hold it,” the guard said again.
Jonathan couldn’t hear what was being said from the other side of the door, but the phrase “hold it” could only mean that the prisoner was asking to use the restroom.
The female guard-the shooter from the bridge-sagged her shoulders and said something that Jonathan couldn’t hear, but looked like an argument in favor of bladder maintenance. She held out her hand, and her partner gave her a key.
“Looks like they’re opening the door,” Venice reported from her screen. By giving the updates to the rest of the team, she saved Jonathan possible exposure by being overheard.
The door down the hall opened, and out stepped the young man Jonathan recognized from his picture to be Ryan Nasbe. He was smaller than Jonathan had been expecting, and he carried himself as if he was in pain, sort of hunched at the shoulders, consistent with the broken arm that Kendig Neen had alluded to in his telephone conversation.
The male guard led the way down the hall, directly toward Jonathan’s camera. He looked young, fit, and strong-exactly the opposite of what Jonathan would have liked. He was big enough to block the camera’s view of Ryan until he passed the lens, and that’s when Jonathan got his first solid look at the boy’s arm.
“It’s definitely Ryan Nasbe,” Venice reported. “And his arm is heavily bandaged. Looks like it might be broken.”
“Do you need me, Boss?” Boxers asked, his whisper barely audible.
“Negative,” he whispered.
“I’m on my way,” the Big Guy said.
“Scorpion says negative,” Venice said. “He’ll call if he needs you.”
“We need to take him now,” Boxers insisted. “These guys up here just sentenced him to death. Him and his mother both.”
All of them were past the camera now, but Jonathan could hear them in the hallway outside his door.
“Hold your position, Big Guy,” Venice said. “Scorpion is very exposed. You’ll have no cover.”
A door on the opposite side opened. “Make it fast,” the male guard said.
Jonathan considered firing up another camera so he could peer under his door into the hallway, but decided that it would take too long and risk making too much noise.
“Can you at least close the door?” Ryan’s voice sounded young for sixteen, but Jonathan liked the attitude he heard. He was more impatient than whining.
“Just do what you need to do and get it over with.”
Jonathan realized now that the unlocked door he’d encountered was the bathroom for this level.
“For heaven’s sake,” the female said. “There are no windows in there. Let him go to the bathroom in peace.”
A cell phone rang.
“I swear to God, kid. If you step out of line-if you lock the door or even think an ugly thought, I’m going to bend that break backwards.”
The door closed.
The cell phone’s third ring was cut short. “This is Brother Zebediah.”
Boxers said, “Scorpion, I know you can’t respond, but listen to me.” He was speaking a little louder now, less guarded. That must mean he was no longer directly in harm’s way. “I urge you in the strongest possible terms to
