MacNally took five steps-and stopped. Two men were approaching his targets. They laughed and started jawing at one another. The odds were no longer in MacNally’s favor. Despite the need to act fast, it would be foolish to force his hand. Acting prematurely could-likely would-get him killed-in which case, his damaged reputation would be moot. As problematic as being labeled a lop would be, he had to exercise restraint. At this point, an hour or two’s delay would not matter-and might, in fact, be time well spent.
He had to channel his anger and use it effectively. Given what he had been through the first night in his new cell, summoning up his rage was not difficult. If there was any doubt that he could raise a weapon and drive it through another man’s skin, it vanished each time he flashed on what his cellmates had done to him. The anal soreness would likely not subside for weeks.
But the emotional scar would remain long after his torn rectal skin had healed.
37
“Be right there,” Vail called to Dixon. She grabbed a couple tissues from the bathroom vanity, wrapped up the note, and slipped it into her jacket pocket.
When she pulled open the door, Dixon was standing there, her blonde hair disheveled and concern evident in fisted hands that were wrapped around her SIG Sauer handgun. She glanced around and behind Vail, into the room.
“Everything okay?”
Vail stepped aside. “It’s clear. He’s-he’s gone. Key’s on the desk.”
Dixon squinted at Vail, then moved into the room. Convinced all was okay, she holstered her sidearm, then walked over to the far end of the room and placed both hands on her hips. “Jesus Christ. He was in our room.”
“Yeah, Roxx, I know that.”
“That’s it?” she said, her eyes scanning the room. “Nothing else-just a key?”
The key and an incriminating note that relates to information he somehow got about my past. “What do you think it means?” Vail asked, skirting Dixon’s question. She hated lying to her friend. Omission of information was as much of a lie as answering her with a fictional response. But it didn’t feel quite as dirty.
“I think it’s pretty goddamn obvious, don’t you?” Dixon looked around the room, moving things aside with her shoe. “Did you call Rex Jackson? What did Burden say?”
Vail jutted her chin back. Shit. I’ve totally blown this. Where the fuck is my head? I know where it is. Where it was.
“No, I-I didn’t,” she stammered. She pulled out her BlackBerry and started punching numbers. “It kind of rattled me. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It took me fifteen minutes to get here. You just sat here the whole time? What the hell were you doing?”
“I don’t know, Roxx. I- It-” Burden answered. “Yeah, Burden, listen. I’ve got a situation here.” A situation? She mentally slapped herself. “I got back to my room, and I found-there’s a brass key on the desk. Just like the ones we found before.”
“In your hotel room? The scumbag was in your room?”
“That’s what I’m saying. He- It’s all clear. Roxxann’s here now. You want to get Jackson over here? Dust the place?”
“I’ll call him. Meantime, get out of there, wait in the hall.”
“Yeah. Right.” Of course. What the hell’s wrong with me?
Vail hung up and shoved the phone in her pocket. “He wants us to-”
“Get out of here. What you should’ve done,” she said, walking toward the door. “Get your head screwed on, Karen. I’ve never seen you like this.”
That makes two of us.
38
MacNally wished he had access to tools like the ones he had used on the Flaherty construction job. His momentary reflection on his time in Alabama only set him back to thinking about Henry. Although the First National robbery had gone as horribly sour as a glass of turned milk, he realized he had enjoyed working with his son-as perverse as it now seemed-while planning the heist and then executing it.
MacNally had no one… With Doris dead, his parents long gone and no siblings he kept in touch with, his existence was unusually solitary. It was not something he thought about when he and Doris had gotten married at such a young age-they had known each other since grammar school and had always assumed they were going to spend a lifetime together-the dreams of young lovers, with everything ahead of them, a future full of optimism and hope, plans for travel and a family.
With nothing left but Henry, he yearned to somehow reunite with him. Legally or illegally, he intended to find a way back to him. That his previous unlawful tactics were responsible for separating them in the first place was not lost on him.
Still, the bank heists were things they had done together, experiences they would always share. He wondered if Henry looked back on the events that landed them in their current predicament. How did he see them? Was he was able to claw through the negatives to reflect positively on his father?
Since the moment Henry ran off as the police cruisers descended on them, MacNally could not stop thinking-and worrying-about him. He had been informed that his son had been made a ward of the state and placed in an orphanage, a thought that bothered him as much as the concept of getting into bed across from Wharton and Gormack. He didn’t know much about such institutions, but he was certain they weren’t desirable places in which to grow up. And it would only get more depressing as a boy matured into a young teen.
MacNally shoved his new weapon in his pocket, in case he needed it when he least expected it. Rapes did not only occur in your cell; he imagined the community showers were also a likely place for such transgressions because of the number of inmates in one room, in close proximity, without immediate access-and direct supervision-by guards.
As MacNally pondered that, he realized that the very reasons that made the showers dangerous for him would also make it a reasonably favorable place for him to launch his attack. Other inmates would see what he had done, accomplishing the goal of establishing his reputation and-hopefully-reversing any damage caused by the stories Wharton and Gormack had undoubtedly unleashed in the cellhouse.
It was not without risk-as Voorhees suggested, guys like Wharton and Gormack had friends and established alliances, and if anyone stepped in, MacNally’s attack would end quite differently than he planned. His strategy demanded a fast and decisive approach-before they, and their buddies, realized what was going down.
He dropped his clothing off at the laundry, and trudged, naked except for his underwear, into the large tiled room. Water spouted from dozens of overhead faucets; vapor rose from the floor and migrated in billows ceilingward.
In front of him, Wharton walked up to his shower head; Gormack was behind him. As MacNally stepped under the water, his shank curled beneath his right hand and wrist, Wharton turned toward him. Smiled. And then he felt a hard, calloused hand clamp across his mouth from behind. Gormack.
Wharton stepped toward him with a suddenly visible erection.
MacNally threw his head backward as hard as he could, smashing his skull into Gormack’s nose. Wharton lunged forward, but MacNally swung and connected with a vicious right-handed uppercut, the bolt tearing into the obese man’s chin, ripping skin and sending a spatter of blood into the cascading water.