“They have dogs?” I asked.
“They always have dogs.”
There were no hounds at the prison, we would have heard them. Maybe they called in a hunter from outside. I’d worry about that if – when – I got that far.
“I have to go,” I said.
“O’Keefe?”
“A bounty hunter. There’s a price on my head. A big one.” Old Jack didn’t seem surprised by this, which was flattering in a way. “You coming with me?” I asked.
Jack thought about this and then shook his head. “I’ll take my chances in here. But I’ll help you. Tonight you and me will be drinking and talking and singing like we did last night – only this time I’ll be playing both parts. I’ll give you as much time as I can.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“You’re a good man, Quin,” he said again, nodding to where Paulie and Augie were huddled against the prison wall watching us.
“Just helping out a friend,” I said.
“If O’Keefe is coming for you, you’ve got to get away,” Jack said. “Off the planet.”
“If I had money for passage off this rock, I’d have been gone long before now.”
“Maybe I can help you with that,” Jack said. “I’ll give you my map.”
“Hidden treasure?”
“Lots of it!”
Chapter Three
This wasn’t my first prison escape. I’ve broken out of some pretty high-tech jails in my time. But this place was distinctly old-school. Old-school as in bars at the windows, human guards, and big rusty locks. This didn’t necessarily make escape easier, but it did require different skills.
Technically I wasn’t a convict. I was being held pending an appearance before the circuit judge and he might decide that I had no case to answer and let me go free. But he wouldn’t. One look at my record and he’d have me extradited back to civilisation to answer for my many crimes. Once there, I wouldn’t live long enough to see trial. There were people I’d upset who would have me killed within hours of learning my location. And it wasn’t likely to be a quick death. It’s a long story but the moral of it is never steal from the big bad guys. I’d done it by mistake but they don’t take mitigating circumstances into account.
The judge’s arrival in Margotsville was still a few days away, so I had believed I had plenty of time to plan my escape. During the seven days I’d been behind bars I’d already gathered some of the equipment I might need. I had an old torch and some batteries; I’d made a set of crude lockpicks, and accumulated some bits of wire and tinfoil. I’d also managed to make a couple of skeleton keys; one from a flattened spoon and the other from a piece of iron I took from the shower block. I didn’t have a laser cutter so I had to file the metal the old-fashioned way. The way that gives you blisters on your fingers and rust under your nails.
I had been making slow progress, but I hadn’t felt any need to hurry. Until the warden told me O’Keefe was on his way. This was bad. Very bad. How had he found me? The reason you hide out in the ass crack of the universe is so no one can find you. I needed to escape – and quickly.
But before I could break out, I needed to break in. I had to get into the warden’s office to retrieve my gun, my computer, and my leather jacket. I don’t usually get sentimental about possessions, but these three things were important to me. And I didn’t want to leave them behind for anyone else to find.
It was twilight when I slid my home-made key into the lock of our cell door. I turned it slowly. I’d tested it before so I knew it worked, but I also knew the lock made a grinding noise and a loud click when it was opened. I muffled the sound as best I could and then waited a few minutes to see if it had alerted any of the guards. Hearing nothing, I pushed the cell door open.
“Last chance to change your mind,” I whispered.
Old Jack lay on his bunk. He shook his head. “Thanks, lad, but I’ll take my chances here.”
I’ve heard that some prisoners spend so long behind bars that they’re afraid to leave, even when their sentence is served. Had Old Jack been here that long? I had tried all day to persuade him to come with me, but he said he’d only slow me down. “Come back and buy me out of here when you have the money,” he said. And he pressed the map into my hand. I told him I would come back for him. I liked the fact that he trusted me when I said that. And I liked the fact that I was actually telling the truth. You don’t make many friends in our business. I waved goodbye and locked the door behind me.
The setting sun was turning the sky the colours of flames and the breeze still felt warm on my face. This was the best time to break-out, I had decided, because it was dark enough for the shadows to conceal my movements but not so dark that the guards turned on the searchlights and set them to automatically sweep their beams around the prison buildings and along tops of the walls. The guards would also be more interested in their supper and with sneaking an evening drink than in patrolling the grounds. If I did run into any of them, I would rely on the element of surprise and a swift blow to the head from the sock full of sand I was carrying.
Although Old Jack was covering for me, there was still a slim chance that one of the guards would discover that I wasn’t in my cell. I didn’t want them searching the prison building for me, so the first thing I did was lay a false trail for them
