“One night I went to bed in a chain motel in Grand Island, Nebraska, and I woke up in this place.”
It took Hardie a minute to realize that Eve was answering his question.
“Why were you in Nebraska?”
“Looking for you.”
“Why did you think I was in Nebraska?”
Hardie had never been to Nebraska—at least, not that he knew of. And he’d never heard of Grand Island before. How could there be an island in the middle of a landlocked state? Briefly he considered the possibility that the prisoner here, this “Eve,” was making shit up off the top of her head.
But if so…how did she know Deke’s name?
“I was following a lead,” she whispered. “There was a rumor you were there. Turned out to be a trap, and it was a pretty good one, too. Usually I can detect a grab site from a hundred miles away.”
“And you say Deke Clark hired you.”
“Yeah. Which is why I was pretty shocked to find you popping up out of the drain in the shower room. Kind of thought I’d botched the case, being kidnapped and thrown into a secret prison and all. But with you standing here—gee whiz, I can finally call Deke and collect my final check.”
Hardie blinked. “You’re in contact with him?”
Eve gave him a squinty-eyed duh look, then said,
“Hit me again.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Somebody’s watching. If you don’t brutalize the prisoners, it looks suspicious. Especially with you being so new. So hit me. Later you can explain it away as punishing me for the shower-room incident.”
“No.”
“I can take it, believe me.”
“No.”
“Charlie, it’s vital you stay the warden if we’re going to get out of this, and if you want to stay warden, you need to fucking hit me now.”
Hardie removed his hands from her head, slid backward, then searched for his cane.
Eve sighed. “Then we’re done talking. Come back when you find your balls and your brains. But whatever you do—stay the warden. It’s our only chance.”
“What do you mean, stay the warden?”
“Keep your fucking job,” she hissed. “The guards are the bad guys. We’re the real guards, trapped in these cells.”
Victor turned the corner and appeared at Hardie’s side, as if he’d materialized out of thin air. “What did she just say?”
18
If you’re standing out in the yard in San Quentin and something’s going to come down, you’re scared to death and you can’t show it. Inside you’re dying, but outside you’re saying, Bring it!
—Danny Trejo
VICTOR’S EYES DARTED back and forth—prisoner, warden, prisoner, warden—waiting for someone to answer.
“Nothing,” Hardie said. “She’s crazy.”
“Okay, come on. Fun’s over. X-Ray’s coming back soon.” Then turning his attention to Eve: “And you—put that mask back on.”
As they walked back toward the control room in silence, Hardie glanced over at Victor. Seemed like a perfectly nice man. But didn’t all the nice young psychopaths? Hardie tried to summon his inner Nate for some guidance. Nate told him: No idea, buddy. You’re on your own here.
The situation boiled down to two possible realities, didn’t it? Either Eve was lying, in an attempt to worm her way into Hardie’s brain so that she could turn him against his own team. Or Victor was lying, along with the rest of them—and they were cunning psychopaths just toying with him before destroying them.
Neither made sense—not really. That’s what bothered Hardie the most. There was a Sherlock Holmes line that Nate Parish was fond of quoting: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But that was the problem. Which possibility was more improbable? Both were absurd. This whole facility—his whole life—was maddeningly absurd.
Why couldn’t Mann have just put a bullet in his face and been done with it?
“You get what you needed?” asked Victor.
Hardie just nodded.
“Hope it was worth it, because I had no other choice but to pull Zero’s real urine tubes. Got piss all over myself. So not only do I have that evil bastard’s waste products sinking into my skin, I’ve forever incurred his wrath.”
They ascended the metal staircase up to the break room.
“Well, I owe you one,” Hardie said.
“I should say you do,” Victor said. “So what did she say?”
“Nothing useful.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Great. All that effort for nothing useful?”
They went back toward the control room. Hardie had been awake for what—three or four shifts straight? There was so much to process, to get straight in his own mind. If this prisoner, Eve Bell, was telling the truth, and the real bad guys were the guards, then what was he supposed to do? Incapacitate them one by one, then free the prisoners and restore order? He was a broken man who needed a cane to walk. And that’s if he trusted her. Big if.
“Seriously?” Victor asked as he opened the door to the break room. “She didn’t tell you anything?”
“No.”
“She didn’t say, ‘Hurt me, stupid asshole’?”
The blood in Hardie’s veins went frosty.
“She didn’t say, ‘The guards are the bad guys. We’re the real guards, trapped in these cells’?”
Inside Hardie’s room, X-Ray, Yankee, and Whiskey were waiting for him.
“We heard the whole thing,” Yankee said.
Whiskey added, rather unnecessarily:
“You are fucked.”
Hardie quickly pulled the tactical pen from his pocket—X-Ray slapped it away. The weapon flew out of Hardie’s hand, bounced off a wall, landed on the cement floor, and started spinning. Whiskey, who was closest, punched Hardie in the head, drawing blood. At almost the same time Yankee attacked from behind, kicking the cane out from beneath his hand. Hardie’s arms pinwheeled. He collapsed to the ground. Victor pinned Hardie to the floor with a meaty forearm.
“Thought you’d be different,” he said, a childlike bitterness in every word. “I really did, mate.”
“Listen to me, Victor…”
“No, listen to this—”
Upon that last syllable Whiskey smashed a boot into Hardie’s stomach, which immediately forced his body into a fetal position. Come on, breathe through it. Breathe. Breathe… Hardie stretched his fingers out, grasping at the floor as though he were trying to claw through the cement. Victor loosened his grip to let him respond to the pain; Hardie took the opportunity. He’d been hit in the stomach many times before; he knew how to contract the muscles to minimize the damage. And while Victor thought he was fighting for air and trying not to puke, Hardie marshaled all the strength he could into his right arm. And then he launched it up like a guided missile directly into the space between Victor’s testicles.
Victor’s entire body seemed to float up in the air a moment, just a few millimeters in orbit above the surface of the floor. His mouth curled into an O shape.
Hardie blinked the blood out of his eyes and saw that X-Ray and Yankee had their electrified batons out. The ends of them sparked and snapped, like portable Tesla coils.