A bone snapped. They both crashed to the ground with Slane beneath, screaming in pain.
But now the other tattooed man arrived, swinging his fist at Danny’s head like a club. Danny shifted and blocked the blow down and away with his forearm. In any other circumstance he would have caught the arm and wrenched it back for either a break or a dislocation.
As it was, he helped the man find the ground with a kick at his ankles and quick shove at his back. Arm deflected and twisting, the man landed on his shoulder with a grunt.
Slane was moaning. He’d been struck with a head to his arm, now broken. The first attacker was back on his feet, facing him like an ape. But Danny had disrupted their circle and he now backed away from the three standing men, hands lifted in partial surrender.
“I don’t want to fight, but I’ll defend myself. Please, this isn’t necessary.”
“Fight!” the warden roared.
All but Slane found their feet and came together, screaming bloody murder. Four grown men unfamiliar with tactics any more strategic than brawling with fists or backstabbing with shanks. Without a dark corner from which to spring, without an element of surprise, with only their fists and muscles, they were at a hopeless disadvantage.
They came fast, sure that four abreast could overwhelm one man. But all four had two legs, and all eight of those legs were propelling them forward.
Danny feinted back one step into a half crouch, but instead of retreating he surged toward them and threw himself down, perpendicular to their path.
He hit the ground at their feet and crashed through them.
The two on the ends had time to jump, but still he caught one of them by the foot. The two in the center—Randell and one of the tattooed men—took the full weight of Danny’s body on their ankles. Their forward momentum carried their bodies where their feet could not go.
Another bone snapped. Three of the men sprawled headlong onto the concrete. Two rolled and came up, panting. The tattooed man lay on the floor near Slane, twisting with the pain of a broken ankle.
Danny had missed the skinny one entirely, and now the man twisted back to take a vicious kick at Danny’s head.
There was no way to avoid the contact. Danny arched his back and took a glancing blow on his temple.
The man left his legs exposed, and Danny could have struck the side of his knee, perhaps disabling him with one kick. But doing so stood a good chance of putting the man out of commission for more than a single fight.
Instead, he rolled away and came up in time to deflect a second blow aimed at his head. This time he took the man’s feet out from under him.
The skinny, bald man landed on an unpadded seat. Hard.
Danny backpedaled on light feet, hands up. “You don’t need to do this. You must understand, I won’t fight, but I must defend myself. Please…”
“You call that not fighting?” Slane blurted from the ground.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
The warden wore a mild grin, whether truly impressed or shocked and attempting to cover it, Danny didn’t know.
“You’ve made your point,” Danny said.
“Have I?” The warden held up his hand toward Randell, who was circling in, eyes crazed. “No, I don’t think I have. The point is, we accept only deviants in this place. Bring your broken and wounded and I will make them whole, isn’t that the way it works? I will rehabilitate you. But you, Danny, don’t want to accept that you’re broken. You’re as evil as the rest of them, but you really do think you’re better. How can I help you if you don’t first show me just how broken you are?”
“I am broken!” Danny shouted.
“Then kill him!” The warden jabbed his finger at Slane. “Kill the man who broke my rules and killed young Peter. An eye for an eye. Take his life!”
“I can’t!”
Pape stopped. Stared at Danny for a moment.
“Captain?”
Bostich took one step away from the wall. “Yes, sir!”
“Kill Slane.”
A beat of silence.
“Shoot him, sir?”
“He broke a fundamental rule and killed a man, did he not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then do the same to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bostich lifted his rifle, aimed at Slane, who was just beginning to grasp what was happening, and shot him through the head before the first cry of protest could be heard. The loud crash of gunfire echoed through the room.
Slane dropped flat, hole in head.
“Now,” the warden said, addressing Danny. “Kill Randell.”
28
“TELL ME, OR I swear I’m pulling this trigger,” I snapped.
The judge was trembling from head to bloody feet, furious that I’d maneuvered him into baring his deepest secret. But he still wasn’t telling me.
“I swear…”
“I received a call from Basal this morning,” he breathed.
“That’s not enough. We’ll start over. Three, two,…”
“The warden called me an hour ago.” He was breathing hard. “He said there’d been an accidental death. A rape that went too far.”
A rape?
“You know the warden? Why would he call you? Who was raped?”
“I was instrumental in transferring a young man convicted of statutory rape to his prison. The boy was evidently raped.”
“What about Danny?”
He held his silence and I knew that this was the information that had him resisting all along. He could have told me about the boy earlier, but it was something about Danny that he wanted to keep from me.
“What was the name of your son?”
The muscles along his jawline bulged.
I pressed the gun in tighter. “Tell me!”
“Roman,” he said.
“He was a pedophile?”
“Yes. Now move the gun.”
So I really had been right. I stood back and lowered the gun to my side, still trying to connect the dots. Franklin Thompson had made the one confession he never imagined making, but I needed more. Danny had killed the judge’s son, and for that maybe I was sorry. But that was the past.
“What does the boy’s rape have to do with Danny?”
“The warden said there could be some trouble, and he wanted legal advice. If any of this comes out, you know I’ll deny it.”
“Tell me what I need to know and it won’t. Trouble with who? With Danny?”
The man’s eyes shifted. “He told me that the inmate behind the rape wants to kill Danny. And that he’s inclined to allow it. That’s all I know.”
“What do you mean kill Danny?” Waves of heat washed over my face. “Who’s going to kill Danny?”
“That’s all I know! I sent the boy there because the warden said he needed him to break Danny. I didn’t know he would be killed. Danny murdered my son!”
“If you could prove that you’d have gone through legal channels.” But my mind was on Basal. Randell was going to kill Danny, and the warden was in on it. “You have to help me stop it,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? You set this up—you have to!”
“I didn’t set it up. I only got him the boy.”
“Call the warden and tell him I know everything.”
“I can’t. And you don’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“The warden knows too much. He would turn on me. My life would be over.”
“I don’t care if your life would be over! You set Danny up, you get him out!”
Keith banged on the door. “Renee?”
“Hold on!”
Blind with rage, I walked back up to the judge and put the gun against his teeth. “Now you listen to me, Judge. I really have lost it. You hear me? I’m a neurotic, manic mess. I don’t care anymore if I live or die. You’re going to call that warden and you’re going to get Danny out of there, or I swear I’m going to blow off another body part!”