This most recent escape – number nine – had been all him. He’d been heading south of the border and was planning to contact June when he’d got settled. She must be sick of the orthodontist husband by now. Arthur knew a guy who could get him across the border, no questions asked – Buddy. He was one of Arthur’s true prison friends. Buddy, it turns out, had sold him to the Razorbacks. Arthur was beginning to realise that he was a poor judge of character.
That wasn’t his biggest problem, though. Throughout his life – as documented by teachers, his long-suffering mother and every assessment he’d ever had in the various jobs he’d held – he’d been told he lacked focus. If he had been born later, then maybe the great and good of medical science would have anointed him with a diagnosis of ADHD or ADD, or one of those other acronyms. As it was, he was just dismissed as a jack-in-the-box by his mother. Everyone else used considerably less kind soubriquets.
You can say this for prison: it really does focus the mind. It was only when he found himself behind bars that Arthur discovered what he could accomplish when he devoted his attention to something. Initially, that focus had been trying to qualify as a lawyer. He dreamed that he and June would set up their own practice together. Yes, there were potential issues around a convicted felon practising law, but nothing was impossible – not when a man had the winds of true love beneath his wings.
This had been before the first escape – the one he hadn’t wanted to be part of. After that, he’d had his library privileges severely restricted. Arthur soon grew disillusioned with the law and instead turned his energies to escapology. Every cage a man is placed in has a weakness, and all you have to do in order to break out of it is watch and wait. Eventually, the way out presents itself to you.
The restroom in which he now found himself – in contrast to the various correctional facilities from which he had absconded – didn’t take a great deal of consideration to crack. There was a window up on the far wall. If anything, it was too easy. He suspected Joy would be waiting right outside it. This was why he was taking his time. His plan was to sneak a peek out the bathroom’s front door and, when he’d confirmed she wasn’t sitting across the forecourt on her bike, he’d leave that way and see if he couldn’t hitch a ride.
Arthur was blessed with a remarkably trustworthy face. More than once, he’d been told that he reminded people of the Hollywood actor Rick Moranis. Rick Moranis wasn’t going to hijack your vehicle; he was the geek who shrank the kids to hilarious effect. Even the handcuffs weren’t much of a problem, he’d just use the “bachelor party prank that got out of hand” defence again. Being within a hundred miles of Vegas made it all too believable.
It had worked so well last time that a nice man called Reggie had driven far out of his way to drop Arthur at Las Vegas airport. Arthur had spent the trip there explaining about his intended, June, of course, and regaling Reggie with romantic stories of their life together, which he’d invented as he whiled away those long nights in his cell. After being arrested at check-in, he’d spent his first few hours convincing the cops that Reggie had been entirely oblivious to the escape he’d inadvertently become part of.
Arthur dried his hands on a paper towel, tossed it in the waste basket and casually walked over to the restroom door. He opened it a crack and was shocked to see Joy sitting on her bike, drinking a bottle of water and reading what appeared to be a comic book. He closed the door and shook his head. One of the many things he’d learned in prison was that there was no accounting for crazy. The woman had an irate biker gang on her trail, an unaccompanied prisoner in the john, and there she sat, looking as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Arthur moved quickly to the other wall and started to pull himself up to the window. He was stronger than he looked, which wasn’t saying much, but still, the push-ups he forced himself to do every morning had really paid off. He was able to heave himself up to the window in one fluid motion and used the wall of the end stall to push himself through. Landing in a dumpster was neither graceful nor pleasant, but he’d once gone out via a sewer, Shawshank style, so he’d known worse.
He looked left and right. Admittedly, the desert wasn’t an ideal place to escape to, but all he had to do was get out of sight, wait for Joy to start panicking when she couldn’t find him, and then, when she’d headed off searching for him, he could scurry back and pick up a lift. Either that or he could talk his way into a car, or sneak aboard one of the big rigs when they stopped for fuel.
He was maybe twenty feet from the window when the pain hit. His first thought was that he was having a heart attack. It shot up both arms with enough power to make him crumple to his knees, unable to breathe. As he kneeled there, he realised that the cuffs were vibrating. What the hell?
He got to his feet and staggered forward. This time the shock caused him to stumble and fall down face first.
Through watering eyes, he looked at the cuffs. Alright, he just needed to put something between them and his skin, to prevent the—
As if reading his mind, the cuffs tightened themselves around his wrists before he could finish the thought.
“You’ve got to be—”
The next shock
