‘My witnesses are all fine,’ she said.
‘Not what I hear,’ Gross said. ‘Seems there’s been a little incident up at Pelican Bay.’
Jalicia’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘I know,’ she lied.
The door behind Gross and his team opened and Coburn stalked in with a couple of men she recognized as members of the US Marshals team that had transported Lock and Ty up to Pelican Bay. Jalicia excused herself and made her way across to them.
‘Something’s happened?’ she asked.
Coburn spread his palms to the floor. ‘Take it easy. Reaper’s fine.’
She ushered Coburn and the two US Marshals out into the corridor, away from the prying eyes and ears of the Aryan Brotherhood leadership and their hotshot attorneys.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Give it to me from the top.’
‘There was a riot on the yard,’ Coburn said.
‘They tried to get to Reaper?’
‘Reports are confused about precisely what happened. The California Department of Corrections just released some of the footage from their CCTV system.’
‘But Reaper’s OK?’
‘A little bruised,’ offered one of the Marshals.
‘What about Lock?’
‘He put a couple of other inmates in the medical wing,’ Coburn said. ‘They’ve stashed him in solitary confinement with Reaper for safe keeping.’
‘Reaper’s gonna love that,’ she said.
‘Better pissed off than dead,’ Coburn said.
The look on Coburn’s face suggested that there was something he wasn’t saying.
‘What is it?’ Jalicia asked.
‘It’s Lock’s partner. The guard didn’t know he was one of us.’
‘Which guard?’
The two Marshals looked away.
‘The one in the gun tower,’ said Coburn.
‘Ty’s been shot?’ Jalicia said.
‘He’s breathing. But we don’t know how bad he is.’
Jalicia massaged her temples. ‘Give me a minute, would you?’
She took a deep breath, then another, trying to push away her shock at what had happened to focus on the real dilemma: what to do with Reaper. There was nothing she could do about what had happened at the prison, but she could still deliver her star witness’s testimony.
‘OK, listen. I’m going to try and get the judge to halt proceedings temporarily. Give us some time to sort out this mess.’
‘You think he will?’
‘No, but it’s got to be worth-’
There was an ear-shredding boom, and the floor under Jalicia’s feet rippled with the shock waves of a massive explosion. She was lifted up by the blast, then deposited on to the ground with a thump as clouds of dust turned everything around her grey. Fire alarms wailed in protest. She swiped at her eyes, aware of gritty powder clogging her nose and throat.
Jalicia shook her head, trying to figure what the hell had just happened, then began to crawl forward on her hands and knees. Looking up, she saw flames curling round the door of a bathroom twenty feet ahead of her. She turned round, still on all fours, and headed back in the direction of the courtroom. The dust thrown up by the explosion mingled with an acrid black smoke from the nearby fire.
Stay calm, Jalicia.
She kept moving, her hand eventually finding thin air where it should have found floor. She leaned forward, reaching down to see if the space led to the first tread of a staircase, or whether it was simply a hole. She lowered her hand into a void, and quickly withdrew it.
The dust was beginning to settle, but the smoke from the fire continued to billow around her. She backed up a little, keeping her face as low to the ground as she could. She could hear a man’s voice close by.
‘Jalicia?’
It was Coburn.
‘Over here,’ she said, realizing the absurdity of what she’d just said. Even she hadn’t a clue where ‘here’ was.
‘You OK?’
‘I think so.’
A beam of light punched through the colloidal mix of dust and smoke off to her left.
‘You see the light?’ Coburn said. ‘I want you to come towards it.’
Jalicia began to crawl towards the light. Her knees and elbows ached, and there was an insistent high-pitched whine drilling into her head, but she kept moving.
‘Keep coming. You’re almost there.’
The news spurred her on. A few moments later she felt a hand on her shoulder as Coburn pulled her back up on to her feet, then propelled her through a doorway and into a stairwell. Cops and US Marshals were moving up, towards the top floors, against a tide of bodies heading down.
Two flights down, she signaled to Coburn to stop. Hands on her knees, she stood for a moment and caught her breath. She glanced up at Coburn. ‘Thank you.’
‘No trial without our lead prosecutor,’ Coburn said, clamping a hand on to her shoulder. ‘You good to start moving again?’
Jalicia straightened up, studying the heavy bags under his eyes, his grey-flecked hair turned white by the dust. ‘Yeah.’
In the lobby, the blue-blazered security guards were busy trying to get as many people out of the building and away from the immediate area as possible. Coburn split from Jalicia to go and talk to a San Francisco Police Department sergeant. A few moments later he was back.
‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
Jalicia glanced around at the people still pouring from the stairwells, their faces blackened by the smoke on the higher floors. She was still shaken from the explosion and badly in need of a caffeine hit. ‘There’s good news here?’
‘All the defendants are accounted for. The Marshals are moving them to a secure facility until we can get the trial up and running again.’
‘So what’s the bad news?’
‘There’s been another bombing.’
Jalicia felt her stomach churn. ‘Where?’
‘The Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles.’
21
Blood vortexed across the room, splattering the far wall of the medical center’s triage area. Ty opened his mouth to scream. Despite the intense pain in his stomach, he thought quite calmly, abstractedly almost, That ain’t good.
He lay back as a woman’s face hovered above him. She was Asian. And really pretty. And somehow human in a way he’d forgotten, even in this short space of time, people could be. He tried to open his mouth again, this time to speak. Something bubbled at the corner. He reached his hand up and the tips of his fingers came away red.
‘Take it easy, Tyrone,’ the woman said. ‘I’m going to give you something for the pain.’
Ty felt a jab in his hand, like a cat scratching him, and a few moments later his arm went cold, and then there was a warm feeling, and he didn’t feel quite as bad.
He licked his lips, his tongue tasting iron behind the salt.
‘Am I gonna die?’ he asked, realizing the absurdity of the question. As if anyone was going to answer yes.
‘I don’t think so, but we have to get you stable.’
Ty grimaced with the pain. Damn. No one had told him that getting shot hurt this much. Another hot spike of agony stabbed through his shoulder. He could feel tears, hot and wet, forming in his eyes.
‘Jesus, make it go away,’ he groaned.
He tried to focus, to think of something. Anything.
He’d heard the first shot. But he’d been so lost in the violence that he hadn’t even considered stopping. Even though he realised now that the guard in the tower had no way of knowing who he really was, he somehow, stupidly, hadn’t believed that the first warning shot was just that, a warning.
Man, he’d been dumb. He’d gotten so far into playing the part he’d forgotten who he was, and now he was paying the price.
He felt himself grow weaker, a warmness spreading through his body. He tried to clasp his hands but felt his fingers fall away from his palms. His spine, arched with pain a second ago, gave way, folding into the mattress beneath him.
He closed his eyes, consciousness drifting from him. As his eyes closed, he prayed that he’d be able to open them again at some point.