Both red dots return to their respective groups, immediately turning those whole groups red. These dots now begin to disperse throughout the room, spreading the idea further and further.
Thirty-eight minutes after he’d entered the room, Jackson Diller – or Carl Worthington as everyone there knew him – was back beside the doors through which he’d come. He was finishing his glass of orange juice, which was the sum total of the buffet he had consumed, when Amber Gunterson came up to him and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Carl, have you heard? Martha is holding a super-secret event at a place called Drake’s Crossing, like, an hour out of town.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, patting him on the arm. “Now, keep it to yourself. We don’t want everybody knowing.”
Diller nodded and smiled.
His work here was done.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Breakfast was tense.
Conversation was stilted. Cuts said little more than, “We’re all going to eat breakfast as normal, and then we’re all going to go back to our cells. Cool?”
This received mumbled responses for the most part. Harsh informed everyone that they were a compelling collective case for compulsory sterilisation, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He turned on his headphones and ate in silence while Enya encouraged him to sail away.
On the one hand, Bunny knew he was screwed. Breida had spoken to him and used his name. Cuts, Harsh, Handy and Jesus had all been there, but the rest of the landing would have seen and heard it too. Even allowing for the inmates who might not understand what was going on, that still left far too many people with a juicy piece of knowledge in a place where information was currency.
Worse still, these were people who had no power – the lowest of the low. To them, the temptation to use it as an opportunity to move up a few rungs would be immense. Soon after it had happened they had been locked down for the night, and nobody got to leave their floor until after breakfast. Bunny was also painfully aware that none of the prisoners owed him anything. Most of them didn’t know him beyond his participation in an impassioned argument concerning what constitutes a biscuit.
On the other hand, while he was screwed, it was time-dependent. Today was the day. Whatever the Sisters had planned, for better or for worse it was going down imminently. All he needed was a few hours, and he’d be either completely out of trouble or in so much more of it that this bit really wouldn’t matter that much.
He was just waiting for the moment when the light under any of the cameras flashed three times. The signal for him to put in his earpiece. He’d left it tucked inside his pillow case in case of any spot searches. Whatever happened, he needed to get Breida anyway.
Stats pulled a face and barked, “Eighty-one percent of Floridian murder victims are killed by someone known to them.”
Once they were all done eating, they placed their trays on the meal cart and headed back up the stairs. Cuts kept looking around him, like a nervous teacher leading a school trip. The group travelled together by default. It wasn’t so much that they fitted in up on the sixth-floor landing, but at least they stuck out there less.
Cuts stood at the top of the stairs and counted everybody back in again.
“OK, then.”
He visually relaxed once that had been done and they all returned to their cells.
Harsh detached himself from Cuts’s arm and informed them all that he hoped they got syphilis – the bad kind. Maybe it was Bunny’s imagination, but he could’ve sworn that Harsh said it in a way that was as close as he got to happy. Given the relentless abuse that he dished out, his tone of voice was all-important.
Bunny went back to his cell and lay down. Breida thankfully didn’t speak to him again, having realised the mistake he had made. Still, Bunny found another Snickers under his pillow and ate it gratefully as he watched the light under the camera. Since he’d been in Longhurst he’d constantly been some degree of hungry. He was looking forward to a good meal, being able to talk, being able to be in a room on his own and, more than anything, taking a long, glorious dump in blissful solitude.
He watched the light that continued to refuse to flash. As he stared at it, the effect became almost hypnotic and he fell into a near trance.
He was only pulled out of it by Cuts’s voice. “Don’t you dare do it!”
Bunny got to his feet. Cuts was standing at the door to his cell, pointing accusingly across the landing. The person his finger was attempting to skewer was Jesus.
The man who definitely wasn’t the son of anyone’s god looked offended. “May I not stretch my legs and walk amongst my people?”
“You aren’t stretching your legs. You do this and you’re out of the card game, you hear me?”
Jesus took a step towards the stairs.
“Gambling is the devil’s work.”
“So is snitching.”
Jesus turned around and headed back to his cell. Then, with a sudden burst of speed he pivoted and darted for the stairs.
“Damn it!”
By the time Cuts reached the top of the stairs, Jesus was already on the landing below. For a guy wearing a sheet, the man sure could move.
Cuts hollered in frustration after him. “You’re not Jesus,
