Clara raised the pistol and pointed it directly at the woman’s burnt face. “I will use lethal force if you don’t—”
A bare foot came in from the left, fast and hard enough to break boards. It hit Clara’s gun hand and she screamed in pain. The pistol clattered to the floor.
“I didn’t break any bones,” the owner of the foot said. She stepped into the light and just smiled at Clara. It was the kind of smile you might see on the face of a shark as it circles a drowning sailor. Clara was disoriented by the pain in her hand, but not enough to miss the fact that this new assailant had her feet slight apart, in a martial arts fighting stance, and one fist balled at her waist, ready to punch at the slightest provocation.
There were tattoos on this one’s face, dark blue prison tattoos that looked as if her eye makeup had melted and run down her cheeks. Clara looked closer and saw that they were in the shape of teardrops.
“I’m Guilty Jen,” the woman said, and gave Clara a slight bow.
Clara had taken four free lessons in Tae Kwon Do before deciding she didn’t have the discipline to keep going. She’d thought they would at least teach her how to punch somebody, but instead they had just made her stand in various postures and move her feet back and forth, over and over, for hours at a time. She had, though, learned one valuable lesson about unarmed combat. If someone bows to you like that, whatever you do, don’t bow back. That just means you want to fight them.
Judging by the precision and the force in the kick that had disarmed her, Clara very, very much did not want to fight this woman.
“Special Deputy Hsu,” Clara said, keeping her posture perfectly straight.
Guilty Jen’s smile broadened. She relaxed her fighting stance a little. “So you’re Caxton’s famous girlfriend. Well, well, well. How lucky for you that we found you just now.”
37.
She looked younger. And skinnier,” someone said. Someone still back in the shadows. These people were smart enough not to all reveal themselves at once.
“What are you talking about, Queenie?”
“You know, in that movie. There was a whole scene of them making out. My man must have watched that scene a hundred times.”
Clara managed to blush, even though it felt like all the blood had drained out of her head and into her feet. She’d never been thrilled with the television movie they’d made of Laura’s exploits. It was called
“But you are Laura Caxton’s significant other?” Guilty Jen asked. “Think carefully before you answer. If you lie to me I’ll break a bone in your foot. Not so you can’t walk, mind. Just enough to make it hurt like fuck.”
Clara swallowed convulsively. “I’m her partner,” she admitted.
“Caxton and I have bad history,” Guilty Jen said. “She messed up my set pretty bad. Before I could fuck her back the hogs came in and ruined everybody’s fun. Fucking hogs.”
“Hogs?” Clara asked.
“The guards here, man, you know.” Queenie supplied.
Guilty Jen nodded. “So now I have a respect deficit with her, which is no good when I’m trying to organize things and do business in this place. If she was here right now I would just break her face and we’d be even, maybe. But she isn’t. You are. Now, I can get my respect back by putting my mark on you. I have my girls train you—you know what that is, a train?”
“No,” Clara said.
“That’s when they take turns fucking you. The nastiest way they can think of.”
“Oh.”
Guilty Jen’s face clouded with thought for a moment. “You might like that, though. ’Cause you’re a lesbo. So maybe I just kill you, that’s a pretty clear sign that Caxton can’t protect her own. That she’s my bitch. This is a very tempting proposition.”
Clara squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think logically. “But—but—but you wouldn’t even be telling me this,” she said, “if you didn’t have something else in mind.”
“Yeah, good point,” Jen said, as if she hadn’t considered it before. “See, things have gotten weird in here lately. Did you notice? All these vampires and shit?”
Women on three sides of Clara laughed at that.
“Bleeding everybody dry, killing some. Making lots of new rules.” Guilty Jen raised her hands as if to say, what can you do? Vampires will be vampires. “Now, I considered offering my services to that vampire, but I’m guessing she’s not looking for lieutenants. What she is going to be looking for, real soon now, is hostages. She’s going to have SWAT teams on top of her, and maybe worse, maybe National Guard if that boss of yours thinks you’re in trouble. Worse still, she’s going to have Caxton hanging on her tail, and maybe Caxton isn’t as tough as me, but I understand she’s hell on bloodsuckers. So our friend the vampire is going to need somebody to serve as a human shield. That’s where you come in. I hand you over to her, she gives me what I want.”
“Which is?” Clara asked.
“Not much. I just want her to hold the door open while me and my set walk away. We’re going to appreciate this shitstorm from a distance.”
Clara licked her lips. “Maybe we can arrange the same result a different way. Maybe I can talk to my boss. Get your sentences commuted, get you out of here before anything happens. I can get you some money too, and a car. That’ll get you a lot farther than anything Malvern can offer.”
Guilty Jen’s smile vanished from her face. “They teach you that in cop school? Hostage Negotiation 101, offer ’em all kinds of shit, get ’em on your side, then when it all turns out to be a lie you shoot ’em in the back while they’re running away, thinking they’re home free? Yeah, I bet they teach you that trick. What they should teach you is that I am not fucking stupid.”
Guilty Jen’s hand lashed out and Clara’s head snapped back, fast enough and hard enough that she worried she would get whiplash. It took a second for the pain in her cheek to arrive, a hot blossom of agony that grew and grew.
“Okay,” Guilty Jen said. “Lesson learned. Let’s move. Featherwood, what’s it look like out there?”
The burned woman was over near the door. She cracked it open for a quick peek, then said, “Looks clear. Those ugly sons of bitches were running around like welfare moms on a first Monday two seconds ago, but now they’ve cleared out.”
Guilty Jen nodded. She scooped up the pistol off the floor and put it inside her jumpsuit, deep enough that no one could just reach in and grab it away from her. “We need to get someplace we won’t be interrupted. Lucky for us, my crew here’ve been in and out of Marcy so many times they got the place memorized. There’s an interrogation room up on the second floor of the admin wing. There won’t be anybody there, and it’s nice and quiet.” She gave Clara a knowing glance. “Soundproofed.”
The women under Jen’s charge moved quickly and silently through the dark corridor that led back toward central command. They acted like a trained military unit, effortlessly responding to their leader’s hand signals. There was one exception, though, and it wasn’t a woman. Jen had a CO under her care as well, a living human prison guard still dressed in his navy blue uniform. He had some bad cuts on his face and his hands were bound behind him in plastic handcuffs. He moved like it hurt him to do so. Jen made him keep pace with the others by repeatedly jabbing him in the kidneys with his own collapsible baton. Occasionally he would shoot a glance Clara’s way, as if imploring her for help, but every time she returned his gaze he just looked away as if he were embarrassed to have anyone see him in this condition.
Clara could sympathize.
