excitedly in Italian, the words almost sounding operatic as his voice rose and fell in pitch with every sentence.
Victor rolled his eyes. “Talkative bastard. It’s so ironic.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you know how the mob’s always sending enforcers to scare potential witnesses?” Victor leaned in. “Rumor has it old Horsehead here was the worst mob enforcer of all. When they wanted to frighten somebody into stone-cold silence, they’d send him. Forget severed animal heads in your bed. This guy would do the sickest, most twisted shit you can even imagine. Vile acts that you can never scrub out of your brain, not matter how hard you try. He wouldn’t say a word. He would just show you, and instantly, you’d get it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now listen to him. Singing like a canary, ever since they put him down here. Or so I’ve been told.”
Yankee and Whiskey stepped into the frame to repeat the routine. “Prisoner One, back against the bars,” Yankee said. Horsehead stopped jabbering and meekly complied with their demands. This time, Whiskey inserted the key.
And nothing happened.
Yankee shook his head sadly. “Shit. Let me try,” he said. He took the keys from Whiskey, jammed one into the slot in the back of the mask. Nothing. Jammed it in repeatedly, like he was trying to churn the world’s smallest batch of butter. Still nothing.
In the control room, Victor shrugged. “Another wonderful bonus of this facility. Stuff breaks down all the time. And it’s not as if we can get a repair crew down here to fix anything—security being what it is. So usually, we have to make do with what we’ve got.”
Hardie watched the guards struggle to open the mask for another few moments. How was this son of a bitch supposed to eat?
“Come on. We’ve got to walk around to the other control room. Your leg doing okay? You want to go back?”
“I’m fine,” Hardie lied. His leg was killing him. But the sooner he saw the rest of the place, the sooner he could figure out how to escape.
The next door Victor opened revealed another guard’s living quarters—Yankee’s. Same spare furniture as Hardie’s and Victor’s rooms, only this space smelled like body odor and mold. Hardie couldn’t help but think that the guards’ rooms were not much better than the prisoners’ cells. Granted, you didn’t have to sit in your room with your balls touching a cold metal floor, but this wasn’t exactly easy living, either. For the past three years—right up until his run-in with Mann and her crew—Hardie had guarded fairly posh residences, stuffed with wall-to-wall audio and video entertainment. It distracted him from the shambles of his own life. If Hardie had to sit in an empty room and just contemplate shit, he might lose his mind.
Yankee’s cell led into a much bigger corner room lined with small metal doors, each of them a bit smaller than a cafeteria tray.
“This is where we receive food and fresh clothes,” Victor explained. “And any trash goes down here.”
“Who sends the stuff down?”
“The Prisonmaster, like I said. Our only link to the outside world. Only he knows where we are.”
“How do we talk to this Prisonmaster?”
Victor tapped his ear. “You don’t call him. He calls you.”
Hardie checked out the doors, which reminded him of both old-fashioned Automats and mausoleum crypts. Neither a very pleasant association.
“Aren’t you worried about, uh, prisoners escaping and crawling up the supply path?”
Translation: Maybe I could find a way to escape by crawling up the supply path?
Victor shook his head. “Impossible. The pathways are lined with razor-sharp metal—kind of like those traffic spikes you see in parking lots. The packages are fine coming down. But try to go up one of those things and you’ll be cut to pieces.”
Awesome.
The next door led to the saddest break room Hardie had ever seen. And Hardie had spent countless hours in the sad, soul-draining break rooms of many Philadelphia police departments. The centerpiece was a long wooden table with metal legs that looked like it wobbled all the time. Hardie made his way over and pressed two fingertips down on its tacky surface. Yep. It wobbled.
“We spend our leisure time in here,” Victor explained.
“Leisure, huh?”
“It’s actually nice to get out of your room every so often.”
“I’m sure.”
The door at the other end of the room led to the corner room that Hardie was already familiar with: the elevator vestibule, where he’d been shocked into unconsciousness. Good times, good times. Hardie looked at the elevator mechanism and once again wished he’d stayed in that stupid room upstairs. At least he could wither away in peace.
Now Hardie and Victor were on the other side of the room, and once they made their way through Whiskey’s accommodations—just as spartan as the others—they stood inside a second control room, facing a row of three cells.
Through the hard plastic window, Hardie could see a woman in the cage on the right.
Victor said, “That’s Prisoner Two.”
She wore a mask and a drab cotton smock, just as Prisoner One did, but she didn’t look particularly uncomfortable. She sat with her legs arranged in the lotus position, backs of her wrists resting on her knees, head perfectly straight, raven-dark hair touching her shoulders. She didn’t move. At all. From all outward appearances, she could have been a fiberglass mannequin, modeling the latest in prison attire.
“Watch this,” Victor said, a mischievous little smile on his bearded face.
He stabbed a button. There was a static pop and then—
—a hideous siren filled the room, the sound from coming from a speaker directly above the cells. Even inside this control room it was loud enough to burst eardrums. Out there, Hardie thought, it must be unbearable.
“Did you see that?”
“What?”
“I SAID, DID YOU SEE THAT?”
Hardie shook his head; Victor killed the siren.
“She didn’t even twitch,” Victor said. “It’s like she zones out of this place entirely. Sometimes we think she’s playing dead—and of course, one of us has to go in there to check on her. Creepy, isn’t it?”
Hardie watched the woman, who was utterly still. Not even a strand of her raven-black hair moved; everything was perfectly arranged, and she was somehow at peace with her surroundings.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Victor said. “She’s been trying to screw her way out of this place for months now. When her mask is off she gives you these eyes—and for a minute, you’ll be thinking, wow, maybe I should just forget this job and go for it, right? Give her a go, who’s to know? Well, let me tell ya, brother—I hear that’s how we lost one of your predecessors. It wasn’t pretty.”
“What’s she in for?”
“What?”
Hardie asked, “What did she do?”
“What does it matter?”
He wondered what her face looked like under the mask. Strangely, he found himself picturing his ex, Kendra, under the mask. His curiosity was soon satisfied as Whiskey and Yankee ordered her through the same drill as the others. Back against the bars, head kept still while they unlocked the mask. She slipped it off and turned around to face the guards.
Prisoner Two was absolutely gorgeous.
Prisoner Two was not in her cell.
Instead, she was sitting in a beautiful, lush suburban garden on the warmest day of spring.
Back in college, her philosophy professor had invited the entire class—seventeen freshmen—to his own backyard for a Friday afternoon barbecue. The professor and his wife lived in a beautiful little California oasis,
