Jalicia matched his smile. Reaper was already serving three sentences of life without possibility of parole for a triple homicide, which included two young black girls, so any kind of early release wasn’t an option. ‘What is it that you want that I can actually deliver?’ she prompted.
Reaper leaned forward. ‘I’ve been in solitary confinement for the past five years. In my cell twenty-three hours out of twenty-four. Out only to shower on my own, or exercise in a tiny concrete box not much bigger than this room.’
‘We could arrange for you to be transferred to the THU,’ Jalicia suggested.
Lieutenant Williams nodded in agreement. ‘We could definitely do that.’
The Transitional Housing Unit was where former gang members lived together inside the prison. It lay, like purgatory, somewhere between the hell of solitary confinement (also known as the Secure Housing Unit, or SHU) and the relative freedom of the general housing units, where the majority of prisoners could move much more freely.
Reaper shook his head. ‘I want to be back on the mainline.’
Jalicia laughed. The mainline was the other name for the general housing units. ‘A federal witness on the mainline? You wouldn’t last two seconds.’
‘That all depends,’ Reaper said with another wry smile.
‘On what?’
‘Let’s just say I have some new friends now, friends who think the leadership of the Aryan Brotherhood might have had its day.’
So that was what this was all about, thought Jalicia: a power play, with Reaper testifying against his old comrades and being rewarded by the new regime.
‘Which “friends” are we talking about here?’ she asked. ‘The Nazi Low Riders? The Texas Circle?’
The Nazi Low Riders and the Texas Circle were both up-and-coming white supremacist prison groups who had long envied the Aryan Brotherhood’s stranglehold on the prison system’s drug and protection trade. If Jalicia and the Federal Prosecutor’s office took the Aryan Brotherhood down, it would create enough space for one of the other prison gangs to step in and take over a trade inside and outside the country’s prisons worth tens of millions of dollars.
Reaper looked up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t name names, but you know as well as I do that nature abhors a vacuum.’
‘So, you take the stand, testify against the Aryan Brotherhood, and in return I convince the prison authorities to let you back into general population.’
‘That’s right,’ said Reaper.
‘But the Aryan Brotherhood would come after you.’
‘I’m prepared to take that risk. Plus, like I said, I have new friends looking out for me.’
Jalicia knew that, in the normal course of things, a snitch was an automatic target on the mainline, fair game for everyone. But Reaper was different. Most prisoners would see his treachery as existing on a plane high enough that it wouldn’t be their job to intervene. In some ways it was akin to the kind of deals governments cut all the time with other nations when it served their purposes. It was realpolitik at its most base.
‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘We might be able to return you to general population, but only after you testify.’
Reaper’s smile disappeared. ‘No. I go back before then or you can forget me as a witness.’
Jalicia folded her arms. ‘Why the rush? You wait a couple of weeks, you give your testimony, we move you to the mainline — everyone’s happy.’
Reaper leaned forward, and once again Jalicia found herself mesmerized by the blackness of his eyes. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? I’ll be safer before I testify out on the mainline. In solitary, all it takes is someone to bribe a guard, a cell door being opened at the wrong time. At least out on the yard I can see them coming.’
Jalicia nodded slowly. Reaper was probably right. To an outsider, he might seem to be safer in solitary, but nowhere would be entirely free of risk.
Reaper rose slowly, indicating that he was done talking. ‘So, that’s my offer. I get my move, and I’ll give you the leadership of the Aryan Brotherhood on a plate. Take it or leave it.’
And then he was gone, shuffling with his two-guard escort through a heavy metal door, leaving Jalicia still seated.
The deal Reaper was offering went like this: if he kept his end of the bargain, the death penalty for the six men who’d ordered Prager’s murder would be a slam-dunk, and her name would be right up there with Eliot Ness as the woman who had smashed a seemingly untouchable crime syndicate that operated from inside prison. After the trial, if the Aryan Brotherhood took their revenge on Reaper, that would be his problem.
Those few weeks before the trial, though — that was the problem. Especially the final five days, because five days before Reaper testified Jalicia would be obligated to reveal his identity to the defense lawyers representing the gang.
Five days. That was what it boiled down to. Keep Reaper alive for those five days after naming him and Jalicia would secure justice for Ken Prager and his family, and send a clear signal that if you ordered the execution of a federal agent, you paid with your life.
Jalicia unclenched her hands and tried to let go of some of the tension. There had to be a way to make this work. Some way of keeping Reaper alive during the critical period while he was on the mainline and before he took the witness stand. She just had to find it.
3
Six Weeks Later
Ryan Lock stared out across San Francisco Bay towards Alcatraz Island. The city’s trademark fog had briefly given way to a cloudless deep-blue sky, and he could make out not only the sharp outline of the infamous island but also the main prison buildings themselves, etched in chalk-white. Clusters of tourists filed past on their way to the boat that would take them out to the former residence of America’s most wanted criminals, but Lock wasn’t going on the tour with them. He was here on business. Although exactly what kind of business wasn’t yet clear.
The previous evening he had received a call at the New York apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Carrie Delaney, a TV news reporter. Unlike most calls he received of a business nature, this one came direct to his home, and the woman on the other end of the line was insistent but calm. Usually potential clients were insistent and panicked, often with very good reason.
After a career in the military, Lock now worked in high-end private security, often taking on jobs that no one else would touch. At least that was his reputation. In short, he made sure that no harm came to people whose lives were being threatened, or who faced other menaces such as blackmail, kidnap of a family member, or extortion. Outsiders might describe him as a bodyguard, or a bullet catcher, but Lock hated the macho connotations of both terms and saw himself simply as a troubleshooter.
The woman on the other end of the line had identified herself as Jalicia Jones, a Federal Prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office in San Francisco. She’d said there was a matter of a very sensitive nature she wished to discuss with him — in person.
‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ he’d said, using his free hand to stir the pasta sauce he was cooking for dinner.
Jalicia had given him one more detail: the job involved protection of a witness for a major federal trial.
‘Don’t you have the US Marshals Service for that sort of thing?’ he’d asked her, scooping up some of the sauce and tasting it.
‘This is a rather unique set of circumstances, Mr Lock.’
‘You can’t find someone on the west coast who provides close protection?’
‘Not of this type. It’s high-end. Super high-end.’
Lock knew that ‘high-end’ was not-so-secret code for ‘might get you killed’. He could only surmise that ‘super high-end’ was a job likely to get you killed.
‘Mr Lock, you’ll understand when we meet,’ she’d continued. ‘Your flight leaves Kennedy at six o’clock tomorrow morning. A first-class ticket will be waiting for you at the Virgin America reservations desk.’
