Part Four
Friday

Genesis 11:4

Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

 

The Denver Public Library doesn’t open until ten. We sit down on a bench outside and wait. I wonder who designed this place . . . the exterior is like fifteen differently shaped and colored towers, from fifteen different eras, all sewn together into one architectural Frankenstein monster. I think maybe it’s supposed to look industrial, a sort of parody of a massive, multitiered brick factory.

In the courtyard in front of the building are all kinds of weird sculptures; some sort of obelisks that are like enormous stone tentacles protruding from the ground, an amalgam of thick red pipes that might be fun for kids to play with during the day, but at this predawn witching hour it looks more like a trap, a web of bloodstained pipes and distended shadows.

What is with this city?

Staring at the building, my eyelids grow heavy, and I manage to doze off for a few hours.

Wrapped up in a jacket—it actually gets cool in the early hours before dawn—I have nonsense dreams. Sadie is in many of them, and even from inside of the dream I’m disturbed by how hard it is to picture what she looks like now. There’s a moment where I’m walking side by side down a red velvet hallway next to Oliver Vicks, who’s wearing the wax mask of Rico’s face.

Concealer of faces.

I reach for his mask, take it off his face, and beneath there’s a smiling headshot—that twenty-five-year-old photo that Mindy found on the internet. One of only two pictures I’ve ever seen of his real face.

The alarm on Courtney’s phone jars me awake. Not him—he’s out cold, lying flat beside me on the bench, his knees tucked into his chest, and everything enveloped by a flannel shirt. I’ll bet he crashed pretty hard from that upper. I shake his spindly leg.

“C’mon Court,” I say. “Library’s open.”

We’re not the only ones waiting for the library to open. Lots of kids. Summer vacation. Some are with parents, some are in daycare-type groups. When the guards open the doors, kids swarm toward the opening, like they’re worried the place is gonna run out of books.

The front doors open into a long, open hallway. An American flag and a Colorado state flag hang prominently from the ceiling, three stories up. Around the second floor stretches a panorama depicting the Denver skyline and Rocky Mountains. Archways along the length of the hallway have signs that indicate the Western Legacy collection, African-American Research Library, exhibition spaces, a place to research your genealogy . . .

Then there’s the book listings: computer science & information, philosophy and psychology, religion, social sciences, language, literature.

“This place is enormous,” Courtney says. “We could spend days looking through here. There are a million places he could have stashed those books.”

“Let me see the text again,” I say.

Courtney raises an eyebrow.

“You don’t know it verbatim yet, Frank?”

I reach into the pocket of his jeans and pull his phone out. Scroll until I find it:

Left Boks wher they belong, where Soph never goes. Ya

“Ugh. ‘Hey, I left the needle in the haystack for you guys.’”

“I think we’re in the right place though,” says Courtney.

“Me too . . .” I say, looking around to absorb the immensity of this building. “Where do the books ‘belong’? Religion?”

“Sure.”

We shuffle through a few rooms: galleries of Western landscapes, empty this early in the morning, until we get to the religion stacks. Countless rows of books.

“Would he just slip them into the stacks?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” Courtney replies. “They don’t have stickers on them. They’d be found out pretty quickly.”

“So then what the hell are we looking for?”

Courtney doesn’t say anything.

“We don’t have time,” I say. “It’s ten fifteen. Sampson is expecting the books at four. It would take us a week to search this whole building. At least.”

Courtney licks his lips.

“Let’s go to the information desk,” he says. “And show them the text. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.”

“There’s nothing we’re missing,” I hiss. “It’s like fifteen words. And the librarians don’t know who ‘Soph’ is.”

“What if he’s talking about a different Soph . . .” Courtney says. “Sophocles . . . Should we check philosophy?”

“That’s ridiculous. Fine, let’s go to the desk.”

The woman at the info desk is in her forties, and plump and butchy.

“Hi,” I say, sidling up and smiling. “I was wondering if you could help us. Our friend wants us to find a book somewhere in here—kind of a scavenger hunt type thing.”

“Alright.” The librarian’s face betrays no signs of comprehension.

“He sent us this kind of cryptic text. Was hoping you could make something of it.”

I hold the phone out to show her. She slides a pair of reading glasses out from behind the counter—dunno why she doesn’t just keep those on constantly, seeing as how she works in a library—and takes an inordinate amount of time to read the text.

“I think Boks is a misspelling of Books,” she says finally.

I swallow the biggest eye roll of my life.

“We guessed the same,” I say. “Anything else jump out at you? Any library lingo we might have missed?”

“What’s Soph,” she asks.

“Our illiterate friend,” I say. “It’s sort of a cruel joke. So where wouldn’t an illiterate person go?”

She shrugs.

“Dunno.”

I can feel my heart actively sinking in my breast.

“So, nada?” I ask.

“Why did he say ya at the end?” she said. “Did you ask him a question before that he’s saying ‘yes’ to?”

“We thought it might mean yaki—” Courtney starts.

“We’re not sure,” I say. “Does that mean anything to you? Ya?”

She shrugs.

“Could mean the book is in the Young Adult section,” she says.

Courtney’s hand grabs my shoulder from behind and squeezes wicked hard. I turn to him. His eyes are blazing. I grin.

“Thanks so much,” I say, turning back to the butchy librarian.

“Just doing my job,” she says dispassionately. “Young Adult is on the third floor.”

We must make it to the Young Adult section in under twenty seconds, scrambling up the stairs on all fours like hungry wolves.

There are kids in here. Kids around thirteen reading graphic novels while reclining in bean bags, playing some card game on a circular table, most on their laptops . . . We get a judgmental glare from the bow-tie-clad male librarian behind the info desk in here, ignore it. Scan the area.

“Okay, okay . . .” I say. Off to the right are traditional stacks of books, nine shelves high, at least ten feet tall. Computer booths . . . only place to stash them would be under the desks, but they’d be found almost instantly. Then there are the shelves meant for younger kids. These only go up to neck level and are stuffed with brightly colored volumes.

“You’re Rico . . .” I mutter to myself. “You rush into this library, looking for someplace to stash these.”

I look around again. The guy in the bow tie is still staring intently at us. I can’t say I really blame him—I wouldn’t want my kids hanging around us either. Especially Courtney. I always thought he could have had a killer acting career being typecast as a pedophile.

The guy straightens his bow tie and coughs a little conspicuously.

“You go look around those tall stacks,” I whisper to Courtney. “I’ll see if this guy saw anything on Tuesday.”

I pad across the carpet to him. Try my best to smile. He’s in his thirties—way too young to make a red bow tie acceptable. But, I do begrudgingly admit, it displays his status as an employee as surely as any name tag would.

I put my elbows on the desk and grin.

“Hi, I’m wondering if you can help me.”

The guy smiles in a way I find singularly unpleasant.

“Sure. What are you looking for?”

“Were you by any chance working here last Tuesday? Late afternoon?”

He furrows his brow.

“I’m sorry, are you looking for a book?”

I flash my phony FBI badge.

“I don’t want to alarm you.” I lower my voice. “But we think someone may have left a bag in this section of library this past Tuesday.”

He doesn’t even bother looking at the badge.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see anything.”

“So you were working on Tuesday afternoon?”

He smiles again, too widely. And suddenly I get it:

He thinks I’m a paranoid vagrant. This is a public library after all . . .

“I don’t work then,” he says kindly. “Feel free to look around, the library is for everyone. But maybe this area isn’t the best choice. This is exclusively for children, or their legal guardians.”

“We’re just going to have a quick look around.” I smile at him and retreat from the desk. He smiles back, but doesn’t take his eyes off me.

Shit.

I join Courtney in the Young Adult stacks.

“Hurry. The librarian thinks we’re deviants.”

Courtney throws up his hands.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“We should have worn the suits, and shaved. Just hurry. You look through the stacks. I’m going to see if there’s anywhere around here he could have just thrown the whole bag.”

The YA/kids section is extensive. I weave past computer stations, kids sitting at tables reading magazines and laughing. There are other adults: parents and babysitters trying to instill in their wards a love of the written word. I glance under all the tables, behind a few bookcases that have a few inches between them and the wall.

Anybody seen a bag of books bound in human skin?

I look over at the bow-tied librarian. His eyes are locked on me from across the room. I pretend I don’t notice.

The far end of this section opens into an area which an arched sign over the entrance proclaims to be the reading garden. A sign being held by a plastic gnome adorably insists no shoes! And then, double underlined, as if there’s been problems enforcing this in the past, that this area is kids only!

The reading garden is half low-impact jungle gym, half reading nook. The floor is covered in carpeting thick enough to protect kids from themselves, like a psych ward. There are indentations in the walls where kids can cuddle up with a good book, tables covered with Legos, and something called the monkey house, which is a double-decker structure made of wood which kids can climb around in. And to my left, just inside the entrance, there’s a closet where kids can kick off their shoes, hang up their coats, and drop off their backpacks. It’s too dark for me to tell if it’s there, but there’s certainly room for a duffel bag in the bottom of that closet.

That’s where I’d leave it. 100%.

I again peer back at the librarian. He’s observing me with something that might be longing, like he’s just daring me to make his day.

I gotta check that closet.

I cross under the threshold, into the reading garden. The librarian immediately picks up his phone and covers the mouthpiece, staring intently at me all the time.

I’m guessing this isn’t because I’m wearing shoes.

There are only three kids in here, all playing quietly at the Lego table. I dash to the closet and my heart sinks as I see it’s basically empty. No jackets, because it’s summer. And no bags. It’s early in the day.

And they might clear it out every night anyways . . . put everything in lost and found.

As long as I’m here, I scope out the whole perimeter of the area. The bag isn’t small, and the books are a pretty distinct color. It takes one lap for me to be pretty sure they’re not here. I stick my head in the window on the second floor of the monkey house. It’s a room of dark wood, just high enough for a kid to crouch in. There are some stuffed monkeys in one corner, but not enough to conceal a whole bag.

“Hi.”

I nearly jump out of my pants. Swivel to the left to see a young girl—probably eight—sitting against the wall. She has a big book open in her lap. My heart shoots to my throat.

It’s bound in yellow leather.

Where are the rest of them?

“Hi,” I say, and a high-pitched ringing whines in my right ear. “What are you reading?”

I jerk my head out quickly to check the status of the book Nazi. He’s been joined at the desk by another colleague, a woman, and there’s little doubt that they’re discussing me. Plunge my head back into the darkness.

“What?” she says.

“I said, what are you reading there?”

“A cool book,” she says.

“Looks like a picture book,” I say.

She shakes her head adamantly.

“No. It’s a grown-up book.”

I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

“Where did you find it?”

“Secret place. I found it yesterday.”

“Could you show me?” I ask. “Please?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to read those books too.”

“What’s your name?”

“Frank.”

“I’m Lina.”

“Hi Lina.” I try to smile. “Where are your parents?”

“My mom leaves me here when she works.”

“Please, can you show me where you found that book? It’s very important.”

“You won’t like this book. You won’t understand.”

I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

“Do you understand?”

She nods wordlessly.

“What do you understand?” I say. “What’s it about?”

“It’s not about anything, she says. “It’s just pretty and fun. Like Legos,” she says, pointing through the wall to the Lego table behind me.

“Please.” I try not to sound too desperate. “Please show me where you found that.”

“If you promise,” she says.

“Of course,” I say. “Promise what?”

“Not to take them.”

“I promise not to take them,” I lie.

She nods, satisfied, then closes the book and crawls down the ladder to the first floor of the monkey house. Comes out to join me, clutching the yellow book to her chest. As soon as he sees the girl, the librarian’s eyebrows shoot to the ceiling and he’s back on the phone.

This time he must be calling security.

“Here,” she says, leading me to one of the indents in the wall, a ledge where someone under four feet could lie down and read. She lifts up the bench to reveal a storage space underneath. I look inside and there’s the green duffel bag, unzipped.

I pull it out and quickly count the books.

Please, please, please let them all be here.

They are. Twenty-three. Two of them are unbound, just held together by twine. She’s holding the twenty-fourth.

I sling the bag over my shoulder, then kneel to look her in the eyes. Over her shoulder I see a rotund security guard making his way over.

“Listen, Lina,” I say. “I’m very sorry, but I misled you. I have to take these books or else people are going to get hurt. Including the one you’re holding.”

She stares straight into my eyes, still hugging the book to her chest.

“Sir?” The security guard is at the entrance to the reading garden. “Sir, please come over here. This area is for children only.”

“Please, Lina,” I whisper. “If I don’t have that I’m in big trouble.”

She considers this for a second.

“Okay,” she says, reluctantly handing me the book. “But you shouldn’t read them before you sleep. They gave me weird dreams.”

I throw it in the bag, zip it up and rush out to the security guard.

“I’m leaving,” I say. “Sorry.”

“That area is for children only,” he says. I can tell he’s trying to figure out whether he should let me go, or hold onto me and call the real cops. In other words, whether I’m a threat, or just a bit nutty.

“I’m a child,” I say, and grin. “How do you know I’m not a child?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave the library,” he says. “Come on, I’ll escort you out.”

“Alright,” I say, and follow him out of the young adult section. The bow-tied librarian is so relieved to have us gone that he doesn’t inquire about the green duffel bag tucked under my arm.

 

I suck down my second refill of black coffee at a veggie restaurant a few blocks from the library. We ordered a red pepper hummus and chickpea fries to share, both taking tentative turns forcing some food down. I was chummy with a few murder detectives back when I was a cop. Best I could tell, there were only two types: Those who lost weight during nasty cases, and those who stress-ate and gained it. I’m glad Courtney is also in my camp—I have a grotesque memory of a colleague stuffing his face in the HQ break room while examining full-glossies of a double homicide.

The duffel bag holding the books is beside me in the booth. I thought maybe I’d feel relieved to have them in hand. But instead I feel only dread at what’s yet to come today, one way or another. It’s a few minutes after noon. I call Sampson on speakerphone. It takes him several rings to pick up.

“Hi,” he says. I raise an eyebrow. Sampson sounds tired or resigned. Courtney dunks a chickpea fry in some kind of vegan sauce, and then takes a tiny mouselike nibble.

“We’re in Denver,” I say. “Heading up soon. Should be there in an hour and a half with the books. Okay?”

A long pause.

“Okay,” he says. He sounds like a sad little boy. “’Bye.”

I place the phone back on the table, look at Courtney in confusion.

“What the hell?”

Courtney frowns at the phone, like he doesn’t trust it after that exchange.

“Worrisome,” he says. “Very worrisome.”

“Finish eating and let’s get up there ASAP.”

“Okay,” he says, then takes the phone and starts dialing.

“Who are you calling?” I ask.

“Mindy again. I’m going to tell her we have them. Don’t worry, we’re going straight to Sampson with them.”

He eyes me warily, like waiting to see if I oppose the idea. Instead I swallow a spoonful of dry hummus. “Send my regards.”

Courtney dials Mindy. Surreptitiously takes it off speakerphone. He holds his breath for a moment, then sets the phone back down and exhales despondently.

“Her phone is still off,” he says. “It didn’t even ring.”

“Mmm,” I say. “Maybe she decided to go to London.”

“You’d think she’d want to stay in touch with us.”

“Maybe the battery just died, Court,” I say. “Or she was hit by a car. One of the two.”

Courtney’s face distends and I quickly add: “I’m kidding. I’m sure she has her charger with her. Listen, let’s go get paid, get my passport, and take it from there.”

I wave my hand in the air to get the check for our processed plants. Pay with my dwindling bankroll, and head out into the sun-drenched afternoon, my personal duffel on one shoulder, forty-eight million dollars’ worth of books tucked into my sweaty armpit. At the first intersection we come to I hail a cab and poke my head into the passenger side window.

“Can you take us somewhere in Aspen?” I lean in and ask the cabbie. He laughs.

“You serious?”

I nod.

“That’s three hours at least,” he says. “Will cost you five hundred.”

“We’ll give you a thousand,” I say.

He shrugs. “Fine by me. Pay up front though.”

I wince.

“We’re going to see Senator James Sampson,” I say. “He’ll write you a check when we get there.”

The cabbie chortles. “Sure, pal.” He starts rolling up the window. “Find another sucker.”

“Wait,” I say. Show him Sampson’s credit card, then my phony Ben Donovan FBI ID. “I’m telling the truth. And we’re federal agents—it’s against the law to refuse us service.”

He looks at the documents, confused, then finally buys the lie. We hop in the back of the taxi.

“You shaft me on this, I’m gonna tell whoever you work for. The gas alone—”

“We’ll take care of you,” I promise the cabbie.

Beside me, Courtney has formed a nervous steeple with his long fingers.

“I’m sure she’s fine, champ,” I say, putting a hand on his flannel-clad scapula.

He looks at me.

“You think I’m worried about Mindy?” he says. “I’m worried about what happens now.”

“Huh?”

“We have to follow Sampson to the swap point, and bring in Oliver Vicks. If we don’t find him first, he’ll find us. He’s not going to let us just walk away, not after seeing what he did to Rico in the red house.”

I hiss. I kind of forgot that we’d discussed that. My face must betray me.

“You don’t have to come, Frank,” he says. “I’m the one who got you into this. You’ve done more than enough. I’ll go myself.”

 

I step out of the taxi and press the gate buzzer for at least ten minutes before Sampson’s weary voice crackles through.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Frank and Courtney.”

A pause.

“Door’s unlocked. In my office.”

Then a buzz and the gate retreats.

“This really where Senator Sampson lives?” the driver asks, taking in the nude statues, manicured grass and of course, the glass monstrosity that seems to be swallowing the harsh afternoon sun and spitting it back out violently in our faces.

“It is,” I respond.

“Always knew he was a weirdo.” He looks back over his shoulder at us as he pulls into the driveway. “You two are feds . . . is he in trouble?”

I don’t respond. Courtney says: “We’re all in trouble.”

I tell the cabbie to keep the car running while I dash in to get Sampson and his checkbook. Courtney stays back. Hairs standing up on the back of my neck as I step in through the unlocked door. Three days ago, Sampson would have chopped off the baby-maker all over again to get those books back. And now he can’t even be bothered to meet us on the front porch?

Something is very wrong.

The transparent rooms induce a wave of nausea . . . evoke that night I saw Sampson whipping himself. I make my way as fast as I can to his office, in the Spine. Big wooden door is ajar, as is the one leading into his office. Takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, realize Sampson is sitting hunched on his brown leather couch in a bathrobe.

“Senator,” I say, stepping in.

“Hi,” he says, without even looking in my direction.

“We need you to write a check. We took a cab here.”

Soft exhale.

“Checkbook is on my desk. Sign it yourself.”

I steal a glance at him as I rush to his desk. He doesn’t even notice. This is the first time I’ve seen him without his hair perfectly combed. The skin on his face is pinched and pale. At his feet are perhaps forty empty Diet Pepsi cans.

The phones on his desk are dark, and I see that their cords have been ripped from the wall.

I wonder how long a Senator can call in sick, before the press gets wind . . .

“Are you alright?” I ask, the answer already pretty damn self-evident.

“I can’t go out there,” he mutters, waving vaguely in the air.

“Where?” I ask.

“It, it . . .” he says. “It’s driving me crazy,” he snaps bitterly.

I decide to clarify this later. I find his checkbook and rush out of the office, through a few glass rooms, and back to Courtney—who has the books slung over his shoulder—and the cabbie. Write him a check for $1,200 and sign it myself.

“Thanks, man.” The cabbie grins.

“The extra two hundred is to not tell anyone about any of this,” I say. We wait till the driver leaves, then Courtney turns to me.

“What’s he like?” he asks.

“Bad,” I say. “Really bad.” I bite my lip. “I just realized, he didn’t even ask me about the books.”

Courtney frowns, then follows me back into the house.

Back into the office. Sampson doesn’t look to have budged an inch. We sit down across from him, in the same chairs we were sitting in when he showed us his stump, and throw the duffel bag on the coffee table. Courtney unzips it, pulls one out and displays it to Sampson.

“Here they are,” Courtney says. Sampson doesn’t even glance up. Just takes a long, sad slurp of soda.

“Thank you,” he says emptily.

“So,” I say, leaning in, “I know it took a few extra days, but the job has been done, as you liked. So there’s the matter of—”

“I can’t pay you,” Sampson says. “I have nothing left. Take whatever you want from me. Take the cars before they’re seized. Some of my furniture is worth something. I have some watches . . . whatever. Take whatever you want. I’m sorry.”

I swallow.

“And my passport . . . my identity . . .”

“Fine. All the papers are in the top drawer of my desk. Take them. What do I care.” Sampson finishes his Diet Pepsi and drops the empty can, letting it join the growing pile at his feet with a clatter. “He took my money. Not Rico. Him. Sophnot.”

I hear Courtney’s sharp inhale beside me. I bite my lip.

“Half of the other eight million were phony,” he says. “I couldn’t get more than four. Sophnot tried to liquidate them, and called me . . .” Sampson’s voice is trembling, and he’s staring at the space between us. Then he reaches into the bag and pulls out a book. Studies it with something like disgust, and drops it back in. Neither Courtney nor I say anything.

“I know I can’t understand everything he does, but I don’t know what I did to deserve this.” Sampson shakes his head slowly. “He’s taken everything from me.”

Courtney clears his throat.

“Well we still have these. We know they’re worth something. Mindy . . .” Courtney trails off, not wanting to incriminate her. Sampson hardly seems to have heard him, in any case.

His drink shakes along with his usually steady hand. And then he drops the still-full can onto the carpet, and collapses, slipping off the couch into his pile of empties, clutching his sides and sobbing.

“Oh god,” he moans into the carpet. “Oh sweet, sweet Lord. Please, please . . .” A chill shoots down my spine. “Please help me. I’ve made so many mistakes. I deserve nothing, I know . . .”

What has he done?

We let him cry for a while, awful choking sobs, sounds like a cat being strangled. Finally, Courtney can take it no more.

“What are you talking about?” Courtney asks. “What did Oliver do?”

Amidst his cries, Sampson manages to gesture to the fax machine beside his desk.

Courtney and I are there in a second. There’s two dozen pages in the tray; received faxes. Courtney grabs them before I can.

“Cover page says these were sent today at nine-thirty this morning,” he says, then tosses the cover page aside. The first page is a picture of Sampson, posing naked, looks like for a timed camera. His face looks younger, but it’s post-surgery. In fact, it looks like the point of this photo is to display his new anatomy.

“Where’s this from?” Courtney demands.

“I sent it to him,” Sampson whimpers. “A lot of pictures. As proof that I did as he instructed.”

Once it’s clear that they’re all in the same vein, Courtney combs through them pretty quickly, until arriving at a second cover sheet.

“Sent at ten this morning,” says Courtney. He lets this page fall to the floor, and then stops breathing.

The next group of pictures is all Mindy. She’s sitting on a wooden stool, a copy of this morning’s newspaper on her lap. Around her neck is a thick leather collar.

Courtney drops the pictures onto the wood floor, puts his head in his hands.

“Oh god,” I say. “Court—” I try to put a hand on his shoulder, but he slaps it away. Wordlessly walks back to Sampson and sits down on the couch, over his writhing form.

“What happened, James?” he says, with terrible calm.

“I don’t know!” Sampson howls. “Yesterday he started to threaten me, what would happen if he didn’t get the books. I told him he would! I told him it was all going to be fine, but then he sent those pictures. Of me. And then he took Mindy. I don’t know how. And he says if he doesn’t get his books he’ll slaughter her and send those pictures to the press.”

Courtney breathes fast.

“Alright,” he says, voice wavering. “So we’ll just go give him the books now and everything will be fine.”

“But it doesn’t matter. He took my money! It was all some kind of game. He took everything from me.” He gestures to his groin. “Everything.”

Courtney rises a few inches out of his chair.

“Call him,” Courtney says softly, voice trembling. “Tell him you have the books and ask where to bring them.”

Sampson rolls onto his side and vomits, violently retching through his cries, his whole body heaving in anguish.

“I can’t call him,” he whispers. “I can’t talk to him. I’m so ashamed.”

Courtney shoots to his feet, upends the glass coffee table which Sampson is cowering under, and lets it crash off to the side. He bends over Sampson and grabs him by the hair, jerks his head up until it’s even with his.

“Call him!” Courtney roars. “Call him!”

Sampson looks up at Courtney with eyes more dead than alive, and then sullenly pulls his cell phone from his pocket. Puts it on speaker as it rings. The Darth-Vader voice answers immediately.

“Yes?”

“I, I . . . I have the books, Father.” Some horrible mix of saliva and vomit dribbles down Sampson’s chin. “Where shall I bring them?”

“Bring them to me in the prison, and we will study and celebrate the Sabbath together.”

Courtney wrenches Sampson up a few inches by his hair and whispers in his ear.

“Father . . .” the Senator says into the phone. “What about the girl. What about Mindy?”

A short pause.

“She’s learned to read the holy writings meant only for my eyes. The punishment for that is death. She will be sacrificed this Sabbath.”

“But the pic . . . the pictures?” wheezes Sampson.

“Bring me my holy writings, and I will deal with you as if you were my own son. With nothing but love and compassion.”

“Okay,” Sampson gasps. “Okay.”

Courtney hangs up the phone.

“How could he bring her into the prison?” Courtney grabs Sampson’s neck and lifts the much larger man up until their eyes are nearly level. He’s choking him a little.

“Courtney, easy,” I say. My partner doesn’t seem to hear me.

“How could he bring a girl into that prison?” Courtney demands. “Is he a prisoner or not!?”

“I don’t know any more than you!” Sampson cries. “You heard him. He wants the books delivered to the prison.”

Their noses are nearly touching.

“We’re going now to fix your mistakes.” Courtney shakes his head like a doll. “You understand that right?”

“Yyyes. Yes.”

“Frank, check that your papers are in the desk.”

I move to the desk and slide open the top drawer. There’s a passport, a Social Security card, a birth certificate and a driver’s license. My new name is Grant McRoberts.

“They look good, Court,” I say, flipping through the heavy pages of the passport.

“All of Frank’s new information is in the system?” Courtney demands from Sampson. “All those documents are legit?”

“I . . . Yes. It’s all in the system.”

Courtney lets Sampson drop, and the Senator lacks either the will or the strength to prevent his limp body from smacking back against the ground. Courtney zips the duffel bag back up and slings it over his shoulder. Stands over Sampson, glowering at him with revulsion.

“You should never have gotten us into this mess,” Courtney says.

“I’m sorry,” Sampson wheezes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Give me the keys to the Hummer,” Courtney says.

“On my desk.”

“You’re not a bad person,” Courtney says. “I mean that.”

Sampson looks up from the floor, face ashen, a bleak kind of hopefulness in his eyes.

“You’re just weak,” Courtney says, and for a second I think he’s going to spit on the Senator. “Horribly, horribly weak.”

He turns to me.

“If you leave now, I won’t hold it against you.”

I wince. Look down at my feet at a picture of Mindy, gasping for air through the thick collar.

I was never her biggest fan, but nobody deserves that.

And even if she did, there’s simply no way I can let Courtney go meet Oliver Vicks alone.

“You drive.”

 

Courtney’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Since pulling out of Sampson’s estate, he’s been gripping it feverishly with both hands, like he’s trying to strangle the life out of the Senator by proxy with his vehicle.

“Is Oliver Vicks coming and going from prison as he likes?” I ask. “Is that possible?”

“All we know about what happened there is based on what the warden told us,” Courtney says. “Either he’s remarkably unaware of what’s happening right under his nose, or he lied to us.”

“Why?” I say.

“Think about it,” Courtney says, eyes pinned to the dotted yellow line on the highway; he’s going so fast it appears solid. “He thought we were from the FBI. Instead of admitting that he still doesn’t have control of his own prison, he made it sound like the problem was all resolved. And it worked. We left him alone.”

I breathe through my teeth. Courtney takes the exit for Golden. According to the GPS, we’re twenty minutes from the prison. It’s about five thirty, but it’s a long summer day. Still no trace of dusk.

“Let me see your phone,” I say. Courtney pulls it out of the front pocket of his ratty jeans and hands it to me. “I’ll call him.”

“Speakerphone,” Courtney insists.

He picks up after one ring.

“Nathan Heald,” he says.

“Hi, Nathan, it’s Ben Donovan. Me and my partner visited you a few days ago to discuss Oliver Vicks.”

“Hi Ben,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

“We have reason to believe Oliver Vicks is still in your facility.”

Heald pauses a moment.

“I told you what happened. He hasn’t been here for years.”

“I know what you told us. I’m suggesting that it may not have been accurate. Is there a chance that he’s continued to operate from your prison, without your knowledge? That some of your officers are loyal to him?”

Heald laughs.

“If a mouse moves in this prison, I know about it.”

“Oliver Vicks is in your prison,” Courtney shouts into the phone. “And he has a woman with him.”

Heald sighs.

“You’re welcome to come inspect my prison, but I think you’ll both be sorely disappointed.”

“We’ll take you up on that,” Courtney snaps, reaches over and ends the call. “He’s bluffing. Lying to save his own ass.”

There’s a vein pulsing in Courtney’s neck and the speedometer is ticking past 100. We rapidly advance on a red Chrysler. Courtney accelerates to pass it so abruptly that I think I can feel the g-force pinning me to my seat. The countryside is blurring into a sage-colored soup.

“Courtney,” I say, “slow down. Pull over.”

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

“Pull the fuck over!” I yell in his ear.

He slams on the brakes and jerks the Hummer onto the shoulder.

“What?” he snaps, breathing hard. “Every minute we wait it becomes more likely he’ll kill her.”

“Courtney,” I say as calmly as I can. “Something very wrong is going on there. Either because he’s an idiot, or because he’s complicit, Heald is letting Oliver Vicks come and go as he pleases. It sounds like there’s a guard at the front gate waiting for us. So . . . obviously we’re not going to just bring the books in with us.”

“What?” Courtney’s eyes narrow.

“Let’s not be rash. We’ll stash the books outside, go in and see what’s going on, see what he’s done with Min—negotiate to get Mindy back, then we’ll go get the books and bring them to him.”

Courtney’s cheeks are cherry-red, narrow face tight with concern.

“I don’t want to negotiate with him.”

“Look man, what’s the most important thing to you. Getting Mindy back, right? Prison security is going to take our guns. So if we go in with the books like a couple of chumps, Oliver or his guy will just take them with a smile and then it’s all over. But we go in without the books, we have a chance to draw things out. Negotiate.”

Courtney is silent for a moment.

“Court, I know you’re eager. But we can’t be stupid about this. Gotta be thoughtful. Patient.”

He smacks the steering wheel with a flat palm.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine, fine, fine. Where you wanna put them?”

Outside the car window is nothing but gently sloping hills. Boulders as grey as bone, waving grain, trees that seem to be hunched, cowering as if hiding from the fierce sun. Beside the highway runs a little creek.

“C’mon,” I say, stepping out, swapping leather upholstery for gravel and dust. Courtney gathers himself for a moment, then slams his door and comes out to join me.

I scan the landscape, looking for someplace that I know will stand out enough for us to identify later. About every twenty seconds a car zooms past, throwing up a little cloud of dust that stings my eyes.

“You want to leave them out here?” he says. “In the middle of nowhere? What if it rains? They’ll be ruined.”

“We’re only a fifteen-minute drive from the prison,” I say. “We’ll go in, figure out what the fuck is going on in there, then come back and get them. It hasn’t rained in weeks. It’s not gonna rain in the next few hours.”

Courtney bites his lip.

“What if he gets upset, Frank? And hurts—”

“We want him upset.” I glare at Courtney. “Listen, I know you got a thing for Mindy, but you gotta get a grip here. He’s in your head, man. Think about it, if you’re scared about the books being damaged, think about how freaked out he’ll be. That’s called leverage.”

Courtney shifts his weight uncomfortably.

“Okay,” he says.

“We’ll leave our guns in the bottom of the bag too. If someone brings us back here to collect them we can blast their brains out. And we can’t bring them into the prison with us anyways.”

I unholster my Magnum, give it a nostalgic once-over, and tuck it in the duffel bag.

“I gave mine to Mindy,” he says. “At the red house.”

I don’t respond to that. I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing I am:

Did she even get a shot in at whoever abducted her?

Wordlessly, we look around us for a place to stash the bag. A dry breeze flaps through my T-shirt.

“There,” Courtney says, guiding my line of sight with his spindly finger. Perhaps fifty meters from where we’re standing, the earth curves up into a modest hill, and halfway up there’s a low tangle of bushes that contrasts a bit with the landscape, on account of their purplish blue color.

“Let’s just bury them,” I say.

“Digging a hole that big will take forever,” he says. “C’mon.”

We have to jump over a little wooden fence that runs parallel to the highway. I wonder if this is private property.

It’s farther than it looks to the blue bushes. We step awkwardly through high grass, sharp rocks, avoid little bramble bushes that have prickly burrs that stick to your pants. Despite my best efforts, I have a million little brown husks wrapped around my ankles by the time we get to the bush. Try to pick one off and it pricks my finger.

The purple bush thicket is very dense, and covers as much area as a baseball diamond. I bend down to sniff a prickly blue pine branch. It smells fresh and springy.

“What is this, juniper?” I ask Courtney. Juniper, I think, is the only kind of bush I know.

“Some type of dwarf evergreen,” Courtney says.

I scan across the canopy of needles. At some points it grows taller than me.

“How are we gonna remember where we put them exactly, Court?” I ask.

Courtney scratches his scalp, then roots around in his red bag, pulls out a small tube of black spray paint.

“Why do you have that?” I ask.

“For security cameras.” Courtney looks up at me like I’m an idiot. “Obviously.”

He squats at a little red boulder that rests on the dirt and sprays a C on the face of it. Then picks up another small boulder, sprays an F, and places it at the edge of the thicket.

“I don’t think you’d notice these if you weren’t looking for them,” he says, content, “these two form a straight line into the bushes. You crawl in a couple meters and drop the bag.”

“Me?” I say. “What the fuck.”

He picks at his scalp.

“Too cramped in there, you know . . .”

I roll my eyes. Forgot about his claustrophobia.

I get down on my stomach next to the F boulder, put the duffel out in front of me to protect my face, and crawl ahead, soldier style. Pine needles and branches immediately claw at my body. I can hardly see anything; the branches above block out most of the light in here. It’s kind of like being at the bottom of a deep swimming pool, the surface seeming miles away. I have to keep my eyes closed every time I move anyways, to avoid them being scraped and poked.

I push forward, having to really muscle the brambles out of my way, and once I’m pretty sure I’m at least a few body lengths deep, I release the bag.

It’s going to be nearly impossible to rotate and go back headfirst. Equally implausible is standing: The branches are so thick over my head that I don’t think I could push through. They’re just thin enough close to the ground to maneuver through.

“Courtney?” I yell.

No response. I guess the sound in here is really muffled by the foliage.

I push backwards, going feet first through the path in the bush I cleared on the way in, and am deeply relieved when I feel my feet break out. I scurry out backwards and pant for breath. I’m sweating very heavily and can feel scratches all over my face and arms.

I glare at Courtney as I stand up and try to brush the dirt off my shirt, pants and arms.

“These neuroses of yours sure do come in handy, don’t they?”

We lope back down to the car, me not even bothering to avoid the stick burrs. My lower back is killing me from the crawl.

When we get back to the car, Courtney spray paints a crude X on the gravel shoulder. I climb into the passenger seat and close the door.

Courtney walks around the front of the car and sidles into the driver’s seat, turns the key and cranks the AC.

“We’re going to get fucked, you know,” I say, panting. “We keep thinking we’ve figured everything out. But at every turn we get fucked.”

“I disagree.” He frowns. “At no point during this have I thought we had anything figured out.”

Before pulling the car back onto the highway, Courtney rips open his red acrylic purse and riffles through it with trembling fingers. Finally removes two plastic tubes, each a little narrower than a drinking straw, sealed at both ends. He holds one up to the sun, squints.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

“Blowgun,” he says. “Loaded with a poison dart.”

He peels off a layer from the outside, and I see the whole outside is sticky like tape.

“It goes between your gum and your cheeks,” he explains, and hands one to me.

I take the lethal instrument from him with the pads of my fingers. I frown at the little tube.

“What if it pricks my gums? What if I swallow it!?”

“It’s sealed. When you’re ready you roll it with your tongue until it’s just sticking out from between your lips. Then blow, and it will pierce the seal and fire.”

I peel the tape off the tube and use the rearview mirror to slide it into my cheek. He tapes in his own, and then jerks the Hummer into gear and takes us back onto the highway. A blue vein is pulsing in his slender neck.

“How hard is it to aim?” I ask. “Easier or harder than blowing kisses?”

“Not hard,” he says. “Aim for the chest, just like you’re shooting a gun, but anywhere it pierces the skin will do the trick. There’s enough Tetrodotoxin in here to kill a horse. A person, even a large man, should be paralyzed in under a minute. Death in three.”

“Christ.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” he says, “if it comes to it, I’d like to be the one to kill him.”

Courtney’s grip on the wheel is so tight, his shoulders so tense, that his sinewy biceps are quivering like frightened kittens. This man is vegan—doesn’t even eat eggs because he thinks it’s cruel. Oliver Vicks has filled my gentle friend with all-consuming bloodlust. In this sense, Oliver has already won.

 

As we approach Saddleback Correctional Facility, the highway straightens, and the earth flattens, like we’re on Satan’s private boulevard.

The vein in Courtney’s slender neck bulges rhythmically with his pulse. It’s just past six. The sun is closer to dipping behind the mountains than it is to hanging over our heads.

“Listen,” I say. “Again. I appreciate the irony of me saying this to you, but try to stay calm and patient. You’re more riled up than me. Let me talk.”

Courtney doesn’t respond. He’s hunched forward against the wheel like he’s urging the Hummer to gallop even faster. Watching Courtney, I have the fleeting sensation that the car is being propelled by his sheer willpower.

The prison walls rise in the horizon like they’re growing from the earth in fast-motion. I realize my hands are shaking in my lap, and the chest of my T-shirt is soaked in sweat.

“Courtney,” I repeat. “I’ll do most of the talking, okay? And I’m not blowing this thing until we’re sure we have an escape route.”

“If he . . .”

Courtney trails off limply. I suspect I know what he’s thinking: If he’s done the same to Mindy he did to Rico . . . cooler heads will not be prevailing.

We grind to a halt at the front gate to the prison. The first checkpoint. A dozen khaki-clad guards mill around a gate, a few sitting in booths behind bulletproof glass. I glance up at the guard towers resting along the tops of the walls garnished with barbed wire.

One of the COs, a slender man, approaches the car.

“Let him talk first,” I mutter to Courtney.

Courtney has our phony IDs out before the officer sticks his head in the window. The CO’s cheeks are thin and creased with worry, but his polarized sunglasses betray little else.

“Help you?” he says, disregarding the IDs. “Visiting hours are Monday, ten to two.”

So how was Sampson supposed to get in?

“Warden Heald is expecting us.”

The guard blinks.

“Just a sec,” he says.

He walks a few meters away—out of earshot—and speaks into his walkie-talkie. Nods. All the other guards blankly assess us, as if we’re just part of the dull landscape. My throat is suddenly terribly dry . . . can’t remember the last time I drank anything. The guard returns.

“You two were here a few days ago right?”

Courtney nods.

We run through the same deal as we did a few days ago. Car search, vigorous pat down . . . I don’t recognize any of the guards from last time, but they all run through the procedures in almost identical, mechanical fashion. This time though, it’s infinitely more discomfiting giving up our tools, knowing Oliver Vicks is somewhere in here.

Would I even know him if I saw him? Our photos of him are so old.

They don’t search our mouths, and the blowguns don’t set off the metal detector—that dart probably has less metal content than a filling. The only holdup is the iPhone.

“No phones or cameras,” says the CO drearily.

Courtney narrows his eyes.

We might need this to call Oliver. Tell him we’re here . . .

“We keep the phone,” I say. “If you have a problem with that, call the warden.”

The wormy guy conducting the search, who doesn’t look accustomed to making tough calls, wilts, and hands the phone back.

“Keep it in your pocket,” he says. “No pictures.”

Sergeant Don is waiting again at the end of the tunnel. His slight hunch makes him look like a dog excited to see us. He’s standing beside three big-chested COs, who all dwarf him.

“I knew you’d be back.” He smiles, eyes shining. I can almost see my reflection on his sweaty head. Looks like polished obsidian. “Nobody can resist this place!”

“That’s right,” I say.

He leans forward and peers into my face.

“What have you seen since you were last here,” he says, not as a question. And then he promptly turns and walks the same way we did last time, toward the admin building.

We don’t even try to make small talk this time, as they lead us through the same door in a chain link fence as tall as three men, one of several nested interior barriers.

We walk along another chain link fence, toward the admin building. On the other side is the big dusty yard. This time it’s filled with hundreds of prisoners in identical grey onesies. Weeds spring up through cracks in the basketball court cement. There’s some cheap plastic lawn furniture in one corner, beside a bench press and smattering of dumbbells. At the edge of the yard, the tall white brick buildings that house the cell blocks seem to be taunting me with their innocence. They could just as easily be college dorms or low-income apartment buildings.

The inmates glare at us as we walk past, with some kind of revulsion.

To the west of the yard, behind another fence, the construction on the new tower looks to be done for the day, and the white tarps have been removed.

The bottom ten floors are fully finished, the others are partially outlined in scaffolding, I-beams, metal, and strange, colorful shapes that glimmer in the dying sunlight and are impossible to discern from down here on the ground. The exterior of the tower though does not look normal. From our distance, still two chain link fences away, the outside reminds me of the scales of a sand-colored crocodile.

Apart from the glimmering glass top, each windowless floor is demarcated by horizontal stripes. There’s something horribly organic about the color and texture of the tower’s exterior—like it’s the finger of a subterranean giant pointing toward heaven, or a distended, dried-out earthworm.

As we continue on the dirt path toward the admin building, nearing the tower, I see that there’s a raised wooden platform at its base. Last time we were here it was covered in tools and construction equipment, but now it’s totally cleared off. And on three stools sit three forms, all burdened by glinting chains. Two in khaki CO uniforms.

The third is Mindy.

Courtney falls out of line, and presses his face into the chain link fence, stares in disbelief at the tower, the hundreds of unruly looking inmates milling around its shadow, and Mindy. The hot sun beats down on them mercilessly. It’s hard to see from this distance, but it looks like Mindy is wearing some kind of sackcloth and tied up so tightly she can’t move.

He turns to our escorts, eyes wide.

“Do you see this?” he gasps. “There’s a woman there—what the fuck. Go get her!”

Two of the big COs manage to keep stiff poker faces. The third can’t contain a grimace at the prospect of entering the yard.

Sergeant Don exhales slowly and rubs a palm over his slick head, like to make sure it’s still well lubricated. Then he walks to Courtney and places the same palm on his shoulder.

“It’s a delicate situation,” he says. “We can’t go in there. All will become clear.”

Courtney rears up to his full height.

“Delicate?” He gestures helplessly. “You’re corrections officers! You’re the ones with the guns! Go unlock her!”

Sergeant Don nods patiently. He seems totally unperturbed by the scene on the other side of the yard.

“The warden will explain. Come on.”

Don and the officers gesture for us to keep following them. Courtney stares at me in shock, mouth half agape.

“What . . .” he tries to muster.

“I don’t know,” I say, grab him around the waist to fall back in line. “I know. Something’s fucked. Keep your head.”

Courtney’s eyes are glued on her as we near the admin building. She and the two chained officers are sitting totally still beside what must be the entrance to the tower: a yawning black hole as tall as two men.

The guards lead us to the same entrance of the administration building as last time. I have to grab Courtney by the elbow and pull him inside, so reluctant is he to let Mindy out of his sight.

We lock eyes for a moment in the white plastered hallway as we follow the officers through the lobby. His distraught face belongs in some black-and-white documentary about war atrocities.

“What’s going on here?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.”

I subtly tap the cheek holding the dart.

We just have to get in to see Oliver. Then we can end this.

Courtney’s eyelids are twitching real bad and his hands are bright pink. I’ve seen this before—on guys withdrawing from a serious substance, just before they snap and do something they regret.

The lobby is a loud buzz of inefficient, decades-old air conditioners, dispassionate employees in stiff short-sleeved white button-downs—all men. I shudder. They all know a woman is in the stocks a few hundred meters away, but seem to be going about their business as usual.

Oliver Vicks is close. I try not to believe in chakra or “vibes,” but whether he’s sitting in an office somewhere in this building, or in a cell across the yard from here, I’m suddenly positive he’s somewhere inside of this facility. I feel it—a kind of vibrating in my chest, or tingling in my temples, like wherever he is, he’s emitting a sort of awful electricity.

Like last time, only Sergeant Don squeezes into the old elevator with us. I force a smile as the elevator begins its creaky ascent. The withered man smiles back.

“When I’m scared,” he says, “I like to pray.”

“Why don’t you just do something about it?” I ask. “Go into the yard and get her.”

Sergeant Don laughs.

“I was making a suggestion for you two. I fear nothing. I walk in the footsteps of the Lord.”

I taste bile in my throat.

Have we just walked into a trap?

I force myself to smile.

“Yes.” I swallow. “Maybe we’ll pray.”

Courtney’s arms are crossed across his shallow chest, and he’s staring at the dirty elevator floor, trying to contain his shock and rage.

I rub my tongue over the sheath containing the dart, confirming I haven’t swallowed it. Just have to convince the warden to get us in to see Oliver . . .

The elevator doors open into the drab waiting room. The warden’s assistant—Allen?—looks up briefly from his computer when we walk in and says, “Take a seat.”

Sergeant Don again takes a seat across from the two of us and sits gripping his veiny biceps. The AC is loud in here, as is Allen’s percussive typing. I check my watch: a quarter to seven.

“It’s late,” I say to Sergeant Don. “When do you head home?”

He smiles like this is a joke.

“I’ll rest when my work is done,” he says.

I turn to Courtney, sitting with his knees together, hands clinched into fists on his lap, thin eyebrows knitted in anguish. He tugs nervously on the bristles of his burgeoning mustache. I want to talk to Courtney, but don’t want Don to overhear. Want to talk it through with him:

So the warden is just letting these prisoners, and Oliver Vicks, do whatever the hell they want?

Courtney is doing something weird with his hands. Trying to signal me. He has two fingers outstretched on his left hand, four on his right.

He looks at me, then to his hands, his pupils are oscillating from side to side ever so slightly, like his eyes are marbles floating in a glass of unsteady water. His complexion is green.

I give him a look: What?

Look at my hands.

Two and four? Six?

Sergeant Don looks away for a moment, and Courtney mouths: twenty-four, and nods with his head in the direction of the elevator.

I look at him confused. Twenty-four what?

He mouths: floors.

Floors? He must be talking about the tower outside. The one Mindy is chained in front of. My stomach does a little somersault as I realize what Courtney is trying to convey. Twenty-four floors. Twenty-four books.

That is Oliver Vicks’s tower. And the inmates are building it for him.

“You two can go in,” says Allen.

He buzzes us through the first door, into the closet-sized hallway. I’m about to ask Courtney to clarify if I understood what he was saying correctly, when Nathan Heald pulls open the interior door to his office.

“Welcome back, detectives.”

He’s wearing a different, but equally unflattering Hawaiian shirt. Thick horizontal stripes of alternating hues of bright purples, set against silhouetted palm trees. The shirt seems purposely designed to display his paunch, like it’s some kind of trophy.

“Come on in,” he says.

Thanks to the western exposure, and translucent lime-green curtains, his office feels a little like we’re on the inside of a kiwi. But maybe due to our collective mood the air feels dark and heavy in here. He sits down behind his desk with a little hiss of relief. Picks at his salt-and-pepper beard with agitation. Courtney glares at him with withering contempt.

“There’s a woman chained up in your prison yard,” he says as calmly as he can. “And you aren’t doing anything about it. I think you better start explaining. We know you lied to us. Oliver Vicks is still here. And by the looks of it, you’ve lost control of this facility.”

Heald remains remarkably poised.

“And what would you like me to do?” he asks.

Courtney leans forward in his seat.

“We’re going to need to speak to Oliver directly,” Courtney says.

Heald shakes his head.

“No chance. None of my men will set foot in the yard.”

“You lied to us.” Courtney’s face turns crimson. “You said he wasn’t here. He’s been coming and going for years, hasn’t he?” Courtney shoots to his feet and points to the lime-colored window. “Do you know what is going on out there? What your prisoners are building?”

Heald stays completely still.

Courtney strides to the window and pulls back the curtain to reveal the tower.

“Do you understand what the books are?” he half yells at Heald.

The warden is silent for a moment, then gives the slightest nod of his balding head.

“Yes.”

“They’re blueprints, aren’t they?” demands Courtney, who then jabs a finger out the window. “For that thing. And you’re letting them build it!”

Heald lowers his forehead into his palms, then sits back up straight, his thick bifocals filled with pain.

“That’s just how things work around here. Oliver has run things inside of that fence for a decade. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You could have reported it years ago,” I say.

“By the time I realized what was happening it was too late,” he says. “I didn’t know which of my men were loyal to him . . . they would have killed me.”

“Where is he,” Courtney spits, his eyes twitching in rage. “Right now?”

Heald gestures helplessly in the direction of the prison yard.

“He’ll never let you get close. I’m sorry.”

“Order your men to go in there and get her right now,” Courtney says, “or we’re calling this in.”

“Call it in? To who, the FBI?” The warden leans forward and puts his elbows on his desk. “How stupid do you think I am? I know you two aren’t from the FBI. I’ve been in law enforcement for forty years, and if you two are FBI agents, I’ll eat my shirt. I figure you two are true crime junkies, investigative journalists or something, that got caught up in something way out of your depth. And it was all fun and games, but now you’re realizing that somebody might get killed”— Heald gestures to the window—“because you poked your noses into something you shouldn’t have. But I’ve got good news.”

Courtney is still standing by the window, trying to hold a poker face together. My heart is beating so fast it feels like my head is going to explode from blood pressure.

“I don’t want anyone to die today either. And if we keep Oliver happy, nobody will. I can get Oliver to let the woman go. I’m sure of it. You just need to give me the books you’re holding onto—that’s for him—and turn over any written or photographic evidence of anything you’ve seen or heard relating to what’s happening in this prison—that’s for me. Do that, and you two and the woman walk away.”

Courtney starts to say something and Heald holds up his palm in protest.

“And think carefully about lying to me, telling me you don’t have the books. I happen to be pretty sure that you do. That’s the only reason I’m even talking to you right now. But if I’m wrong about that, well—” He again gestures to Mindy, outside the window. “Then my hands are tied.”

I hope my chest isn’t rising and falling as hard as it feels like it is.

Courtney slowly returns to his seat beside me and sinks in.

“You’re Oliver Vicks’s pawn,” Courtney says.

Heald sniffs, and pushes his glasses up a bit higher on his nose.

“I keep this prison running smoothly,” he says. “Oliver Vicks wants his books. Do you have them or not?”

My nails are digging into the armrests of my chair. I turn to Courtney, assuming we’ll think about how to play this for a moment, but he hardly hesitates:

“We have them.”

Heald nods, pleased and relieved.

“Where are they? I’ll send Don to get them.”

I put a hand on Courtney’s wrist, to stop him from blurting anything out.

“Nobody is getting them but us,” I say, “and not until we know we’re getting out of this. We want Oliver Vicks standing out in front of the gates with Mindy. Just the two of them. Then we’ll swap.”

Heald takes off his glasses to rub his eyes with his wrist, then puts them back on and looks up at us.

“You’re really not in a position to negotiate with me,” he says. “But we all want the same thing here. Go. It only takes one of you to go show my officers where they are. The other one will stay here while we talk to Oliver.”

My mouth is so dry I can hardly speak.

“You’re keeping one of us hostage?” I say.

Heald looks annoyed.

“Call it what you want. I can’t have you two taking my officers on a runaround. I need to get him those books before sunset.”

“Why?” Courtney asks.

Heald ignores the question, picks up his telephone receiver and says: “Allen, arrange a car and an escort for one of our ‘investigators.’ Mmhmm. Have them meet him downstairs outside the elevator. Five minutes.”

He sets down the phone and sighs. Shakes his head and smiles weakly.

“Believe me, I don’t want to be in this situation either. But it will be fine. I’ve dealt with Oliver for years. He’s frightening, but a man of his word. If he says he’ll make this swap, he means it. You two want a drink?”

“I’d actually love one,” I say.

Maybe this will be okay . . . just get the books and walk out of here, like he says. He is in a tough spot . . .

“It’s been a long week,” laughs Heald sadly. Stands up, snatches the same bottle of scotch we drank from a few days ago, and three tumblers. Pours three generous drinks, recorks the bottle, and sits back down. Raises his glass in a toast.

“Here’s to the weekend,” he says.

I raise my glass, ignore the glare from Courtney, and gulp down half my glass. Heald shoots his down and smacks the empty glass down on the tabletop. Courtney hasn’t touched his.

“You’re not going to waste that are you?” he says. “That’s 15-year-old scotch. Don’t make me drink it.”

Something happens to Courtney. His grip on his armrest suddenly tightens, and the blood drains from his face. Heald can’t see it, but Courtney’s legs are shaking under the desk. “I’m trying to keep a clear head,” Courtney says, voice cracking.

What’s wrong with him?

Courtney turns to me, eyes narrow.

“Ben, you go get the books, I’ll stay here.” He’s sweating, and looks like he might faint. He’s talking slowly, trying to convey something. “The warden is right. Don’t mess around. Go straight there. To the farm.”

The farm?

I shoot him a look of confusion, hoping he’ll elaborate.

“Go,” he says coldly, and the look in his eyes is so horrible that I feel I’m physically thrust up out of my chair, toward the exit.

“Hurry,” says Heald, buzzing the door open for me.

I rush out into the waiting room. Allen smiles cursorily at me.

“They’re waiting for you on the ground floor outside the elevator,” he says. Business as usual.

I step into the elevator, head buzzing.

The farm? That’s the name of Sadie’s boarding school. Is that what Courtney meant?

He doesn’t want me to give these officers the books. He wants me to run.

On the ground floor I’m greeted outside the elevator by Sergeant Don, two guards I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen before, and the guy who looks like a potato.

“Come on then,” Don says, eyes sparkling. “Let’s go get the books.”

In a daze, I follow them back through the admin building two behind me, two ahead of me. I frantically replay our encounter with Heald.

Courtney realized something I didn’t, which freaked him out even more than Heald admitting he was cooperating with Oliver Vicks.

When? There was a moment when Courtney suddenly tensed. It was when Heald gave us the whiskey.

No . . . It was after that, after he’d already drank his, and Courtney didn’t and he said . . .

That’s 15-year-old scotch. Something distant and awful flashes across my mind, for a second I think it’s an impossible blue-sky lightning over the mountains.

I stop in my tracks, and one of the guards collides into me from behind.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “C’mon.”

My legs resume, on autopilot, but I suddenly have zero awareness of my surroundings. Just thinking of what just happened upstairs.

It was a 12-year-old scotch. I saw that right on the bottle last time we were here.

The warden confused the 2 for a 5. Nathan Heald is dyslexic.

I haven’t seen a picture of Oliver Vicks more recent than twenty years ago . . . he was skinny, he didn’t have a beard . . .

The horror is compounding. My vision is getting a bit splotchy. I feel feverish, and close to fainting. Does this make sense?

Of course it does. Of course it’s fucking him.

There’s no standoff between the officers and the prisoners. Oliver Vicks converted every last person here. And now he sits in the warden’s office.

And I just left Courtney alone with him.

 

We clamber into an old cop car that says Security on the side, me in the caged rear. On my right is Potato, and his huge ass spills over into my lap. On my left is a younger guy, who is clearly very nervous, and trying to hide it. Don is driving. They start the car up, and then Don turns to look into the backseat. He licks his lip.

“Where we going?” he asks, not angry, but pretty clearly not in the mood for any more humor.

What the hell do I do? What happens if Courtney shoots the dart at Oliver?

He didn’t want me to bring back the books. He wanted me to try to escape.

Because he knows it’s hopeless.

“Sir,” Don repeats, focusing somewhere above my head. “Where are we going?”

“East on Highway 90,” I hear myself mumble. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The car shoots out through the security checkpoints. I can’t get Courtney’s face out of my head, the look he gave me when he had it all figured out.

Straight to the farm.

He knew it was over for Mindy, and whoever hung back. He was waiting for me to leave for him to take his shot at Oliver. Just trying to give me a puncher’s chance of escaping.

I’ve got to make sure I’m right about this.

“Any of you guys have a cigarette?” I ask. None of them respond. I keep pushing: “Don’t tell me the warden doesn’t let you guys smoke cigarettes on the job? That’s wild. What a tight ass.”

Neither of the guys in the front seat turn to look at me, and the two on either side of me suddenly seem super fascinated with the backs of the seats.

“Scary situation, eh?” I ask Potato on my right. “Having this guy Oliver around?”

Nada. Face as stiff and straight as a board.

I turn to the younger guy on my left, who is breathing a little too fast. “You ever seen Oliver Vicks yourself? In person?”

He pretends like he can’t hear me.

On the other side, Potato says:

“Please be quiet.”

I ignore him.

“He’s full of shit, you know.” I continue prodding the younger guy. “This schmuck, Oliver, just slaps on a mask, goes around doing magic tricks and suddenly he’s Jesus 2.0, right? He’s crazy. You know he convinced someone to cut off his—”

“Stop talking. How much longer?” Don interjects forcefully, from the front seat.

“C’mon Don, just talking a little theology,” I say. “Sorry, didn’t realize you and Oliver Vicks were fucking butt budd—”

Sergeant Don instantly slams on the brakes. Were it not for the seat belt around my waist I would have been propelled face-first into the grate. We come to a complete halt in the middle of the two-lane rural highway—he didn’t even bother to pull onto the shoulder.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

I haven’t figured that out yet.

“I told you, just keep going. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

Don rushes out of the front seat and rips open the back door on my left. I flinch, sure he’s going to grab me, but instead he pulls the young officer out onto the pavement. The much larger young guy doesn’t resist. The other two guards in the car sit horribly still.

“Strip,” Don tells the officer, his eyes like glowing coals.

“Don, what are you doing?” I ask. He ignores me. “What’s going on?” I ask Potato. No response. He’s not even watching as the younger guard unbuckles his belt and drops his khaki pants. Don stands arms akimbo, watching with satisfaction. Then the young guy unbuttons his shirt, pulls off his undershirt, and then, slowly, drops underwear, until he’s standing totally buck naked in the middle of the highway.

The younger officer drops to his bare knees on the asphalt. Don picks up his discarded belt and begins to snap lashes across his back. The kneeling guard remains totally still, only his mouth is moving, forming words that I recognize only because I’ve seen this before . . .

For Sophnot, my father my king . . .

My heart thumps in my chest. The crack of leather on skin, as rhythmic as a pendulum. After maybe twenty lashes Don stops and peers in through the open door at me.

“Where are we going?” he says.

The young guy is shaking badly. His back is a maze of red stripes, glinting in the afternoon sun. Then he keels forward, smacking stomach first onto the highway.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” I say.

“Where, exactly, are we going?” asks Sergeant Don, his voice dead.

I need more time . . . I need to get away from these guys. I can’t give them the books . . .

“Where,” Don repeats. “Answer me.”

“I’m not talking until we drop him off at a hospital.”

Sergeant Don blinks emptily at me. Then in a flash he unholsters his pistol.

I hear a scream escape my throat as Don puts the muzzle to the back of the kid’s skull and fires three times.

My stomach falls out from under me. I put my hand on the grate to brace myself.

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my god.”

Don peels the kid’s corpse off the highway, like a piece of roadkill. Slings it over his shoulder like venison.

“Pop the trunk,” he instructs the guy in front. I can’t bear to watch. Just hear the sick thump of dead meat behind me. Don reappears, picks up the young officer’s discarded clothes. I hear the trunk slam closed.

Don climbs back into the front seat and turns to me.

“Where are the books,” he says calmly.

What else can I do?

“It’s just past mile marker 419,” I mutter. “There’s a shoulder on the road with a spray-painted X. Drive slowly. I’ll tell you when to pull over.”

“No more talking.”

Sergeant Don jerks back around and gives the car some gas. The other two just keep staring straight ahead, like nothing’s happened. I’m horribly aware of the empty seat to my left.

My vision is swimming, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m crying. Not tears of sorrow, for Mindy, Rico, Sampson, this young kid . . . any of the dozens of Oliver’s victims whose names I’ll never know. These are angry tears.

Courtney didn’t kill Oliver with that blow dart. If he had, one of these guys would surely have gotten a call by now.

My fists are so tight that my fingernails are drawing blood.

I can’t run from this and leave Courtney there, but I also can’t just give them the books. Once Oliver has what he wants, there’s just no way he’ll let us walk away.

A strange peace comes over me as I realize how simple my situation is. Tonight I’ll either kill Oliver Vicks, or find out if I have an eternal soul. Were this a backgammon game, I’d forfeit. But I have to make a move now, even if it’s a dubious one.

Zugzwang.

 

The car creeps ahead, CO in the front passenger seat continuously looking at me for confirmation that we’re getting close. Sergeant Don spots the X before I do. He pulls over and turns off the ignition. We climb out of the car into the withering afternoon. They watch me expectantly.

“Out here?” asks Potato. I scope the landscape, takes me a moment to recognize the mass of blue bushes on the hillside.

“Yeah. In those bushes.” I gesture to an area a bit to the left of the true location.

“I’ll keep the car running,” says Don. “Take him to get them.”

Don staying in the car. That could make this tricky. Or impossible.

I lead Potato and the other guy—a wolf-faced man with sad grey eyes—to the bushes, high grass and gravel crunching under my tennis shoes. I hear them huffing behind me. Wonder if they have their hands on their pistols. We’re walking west, toward the mountains. The sun looks to have another ninety minutes before its base dips below their peaks.

At the edge of the bushes I stop and look around. Spot the marked rocks about five meters to my right.

“They’re deep inside the bush,” I say. “I think right around here,” I lie. “Go in and see.”

They glare at me, study the tangled web of foreboding branches. Raise skeptical eyebrows.

They take the bait.

“No, no, you crawl in,” says Potato. “We’ll wait right here.”

I feign reluctance.

“You’re the boss.”

I crouch down, and dive into the web of brambles. Don’t have the bag to push ahead this time. Just put my forearms out in front of me and let them get scratched and bloodied.

If that’s the worst that happens to me today . . .

When I think I’m at least two meters deep I pull the phone out of my pocket, wince as I get scraped up pulling it to my face, and dial 911. A bored-sounding woman answers:

“Emergency Response.”

“There is a riot in progress at the Saddleback Correctional Facility,” I whisper. “We need help. I’m requesting immediate backup.”

“The prison?”

“Yes. Please hurry.”

“Find anything?” It’s the distant voice of Potato. Must have heard me stop ruffling around.

“I’m sorry, sir,” asks the woman on the phone. “Who am I speaking to?”

“I’m a corrections officer,” I whisper, doesn’t take much creativity to sound like a panicked mess. “The prisoners have escaped. They’re everywhere. They’re going to kill me. There’s fire and blood—”

“Okay, and you said your location is—”

“I’m at the prison, it’s a fucking riot!” I hiss.

“Okay . . . Looks like I have a squad car about twenty minutes from your location. I’ll send him to check up on you right away.”

Fuck. She thinks I’m full of shit. Or an insane prisoner.

“No, you don’t understand, it’s a disaster. We need helicopters and the SWAT team—”

“I understand sir. Help is on the way. Stay calm. Can you describe what’s happening in more detail please?”

“Hey,” one of the guards is shouting. Any longer and he’s going to follow me in here. “What are you doing in there?”

I let the call drop.

Pigfuck.

Best case, 911 sends a few squad cars who will get to the front gate, ask if there’s a riot in progress, and get laughed at. More likely they’ll call the admin building first and be reassured that everything is fine.

“Wrong spot!” I yell.

I scoot backwards. As soon as it emerges from the bush, the wolf-faced officer grabs my ankle and rips me out backwards. I just barely have time to shove the phone back in my pocket before I’m back under the blue sky, eye to eye with the barrel of Potato’s pistol.

“What the heck are you doing?” he demands, face red. His hand is trembling. He’s scared of what will happen to him if he doesn’t get the books to Don. “You’re messing with us.”

“No, no.” I show him my palms. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. It’s in these bushes, I swear.”

Wolf grunts: “One more bush, then we’re going to blow your nuts off.”

I grin weakly.

“I hardly use the damn things anymore.”

Now I have only one plausible move, and I don’t like it. But I have to get back in the prison, and I have to do it without anyone knowing. The car is parked about forty meters away—far enough that even if Don is watching he probably can’t see exactly what’s going down over here. No point delaying this. Nothing good is happening to Courtney and Mindy back in the prison.

“Go,” Potato says.

I sit up, push myself up to my feet. Then, hands raised over my head, crunch over dead stalks and dry sand to the spot marked by the spray-painted rocks.

I give them a thumbs-up, and wriggle into the bush with abandon, like diving into a swimming pool. Hardly feel the sharp tendrils scratching my face. Smells nice in here at least, like fresh herbal tea. Dig in a little deeper, struck by the odd impression that I’m trying to squeeze back into the womb. There is something weirdly comforting about the cool dark in here. Like the whole world back there doesn’t exist . . . sort of like the feeling I got in the red house.

I spot the duffel. Hastily unzip it, plunge my hand in and grope until I find my Magnum. Then pull my phone back out of my pocket and call the only number I have memorized. Four rings.

Hi you’ve reached Sadie. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

I can hardly speak for a moment, her tender voice paralyzing me, awakening some part of me that I forgot existed. My feet feel heavy, chest numb.

“Hhhiii, sweetie,” I whisper. “It’s Dad. Listen I . . .” I swallow. “I just, I’m about to get into something very dangerous in a moment. I can’t give you too many details but . . . it looks like big trouble. So I just wanted to say, if you don’t hear from me in the next couple days . . . Christ. I’m sorry—”

Beep. If you’re satisfied with your message, press one, or just hang—

I hang up, well short of satisfied, but in a bit of a time crunch.

Zip back up the bag and yell:

“I got it, fellas!”

I squirm, manage to shove the gun into the back of my pants, pull my T-shirt down over the grip, and then back out of the bush.

Potato immediately snatches the bag from me, unzips it and peers inside. As soon as he recognizes them, his face twists into a kind of terrified awe. He quickly pulls out a walkie-talkie, keeping one eye on the books, as if he’s scared they’ll disappear.

“Sergeant. We have the books. Should we bring him back or sacrifice him ourselves?”

My jaw tightens and I reach for the butt of the pistol in my pants. Wolf is glaring at me. If the answer is the latter, I have no chance.

Potato nods and hangs up.

“You’re to come back with us.”

I exhale.

They’ve relaxed noticeably now that they have the books. They were worried about what Sophnot and Don would do to them. They’re actually a bit giddy now.

“Let me see them?” Wolf asks Potato. He hesitates, then smiles, unzips the bag and they both lean in for a glance.

I rip the Magnum from my jeans and unload, the sound of each shot echoing seemingly across the whole landscape. I empty the whole round, six shots, trying to avoid anything lethal. I go for the roasted chicken spots: thighs and shoulders.

Both drop to the ground. Potato is cognizant enough to reach for his weapon, but I’m on top of him in a second, pistol whip him in the forehead, then snatch the gun from his holster and chuck it. Wolf’s Glock, which still has a full clip, I keep. Look up to see what’s happening with Don. The car is nickel-sized, hard to see exactly what’s going on, but I hear the sound of a door slamming.

He heard the shots. Took the bait.

And now the hard part. I leave the bag beside Potato. Sprint downhill, at a diagonal that will take me about forty meters south of the parked car, staying low and taking a wide enough berth that Don won’t spot me on his mad charge up to the bushes.

I dash like a madman, until I’m about two-thirds of the way to the road, then drop and crouch behind a boulder. Can hardly breathe, adrenaline pulsing in my skull. I spot Don’s stooped form raging up to his fallen comrades, maybe two minutes away from reaching them.

He has to run uphill, I get to run downhill. I might actually have plenty of time.

I shove up and gallop down the last rocky slope, onto the highway. Look back up to the bush. I squint and am pretty sure I see Don holding the bag of books. I imagine he’s overjoyed that I didn’t take them, and figures I just ran off into the hills.

I stagger toward the car, trying to stay low, praying Don is too distracted to notice my shadow streaking across the road. My legs are absolutely screaming by the time I duck behind the vehicle and very quietly try the scorching handle to the driver’s side door. He didn’t bother to lock it, but he did take the keys with him.

I hit the button to pop the trunk, and then delicately close the driver’s door and open the backseat and sneak back to the trunk. Peer over the lip of the rear windshield. Don appears to just be leaving the scene—on the phone—with the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. No sign of his pals.

I try not to think too much about what’s about to happen, as I lift the trunk a quarter of the way up. I confirm that the young officer’s crumpled uniform is back here—it’s bunched up next to his head. I take a very, very deep breath, and then roll in, landing with a sickening squelch on top of what used to be the young guard.

I pull the trunk door down over us until the latch touches, but doesn’t click shut. It’s pitch black, very, very hot, and smells like a butcher shop. It’s so cramped I’m basically spooning the corpse. A thought flashes in my head that I try to ignore:

This is probably the most action I’ve gotten in a year.

I keep Wolf’s Glock pointed straight up, in case Don decides to put the books in the trunk. But I doubt he’d want to put those sacred texts next to a corpse.

Just gotta hope this old car doesn’t have a super sensitive trunk ajar light . . .

My face and neck are completely bathed in sweat, and I’m still breathing very hard from the run. Kind of feels like my brain is an overheating computer. Try to pretend that the still-warm form next to me is anything besides what it actually is.

This is it. Nothing is worse than this. This is hell.

After what feels like an eternity, I hear what must be Don returning to the car. I hold my breath. I hear the front door slam, and he starts the ignition. I nearly lose my grip on the trunk door as he smashes the gas.

He left those guys out there.

I place the Glock between my knees and hold onto the trunk door for dear life, fingers already shaking as I alternately prevent it from flying up or clicking into place, locking me in. A little bump in the road sends my elbow into the dead man’s ear.

“Sorry,” I whisper to my companion. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m also having a really bad day.”

 

The car slows and takes a few speed bumps that indicate a return to the prison. Three minutes after the car is parked, I hear a chorus of voices outside. I think the COs are clamoring for a peek at the books. Rising above the din is Sergeant Don’s call for discipline.

I grip the latch as hard as I can, vaguely thinking if someone tries to open the trunk now for some reason I’ll hold it closed . . . not sure what my endgame is there. Hard to think of anything besides the heat in here. Throat parched, and feel like I’m being baked alive.

Finally the voices of the corrections officers retreat. I allow myself a stiff inhale and immediately gag on the musk of fresh death.

I let the trunk open just enough to give me a sliver of light to work with. I wriggle out of my jeans, and pull on the young guard’s pants. Can’t button them—he has a little smaller waist than me. I pull his khaki shirt on over my T-shirt, snatch his sunglasses, belt and holster, then force myself to count up to a hundred. Every additional second of this heat absolute agony. At forty I can’t take it anymore. Crack the trunk up a quarter inch and look around. Empty parking lot. Allow myself another quarter inch, until I can see the closest sentry tower. There’s somebody up there, but he doesn’t seem to be looking in my direction. Would probably be prudent to take another couple minutes of scoping, but the heat is unbearable. I shove up the trunk door halfway, leap out quickly, and then quietly close it. Scamper into the shade of a green industrial dumpster resting at the edge of the lot and collapse.

The relief of fresh air is so pleasant that for a moment I forget the urgency of my mission, and just savor the breeze against my cheeks. Some rancid smell from the dumpster snaps me out of my reverie.

Prison leftovers . . .

I peer around the edge of the dumpster. Behind the admin building, past a couple high chain fences, rises the tower. Thin, rigid, sand-colored layers separated by concentric rings, culminating in a shimmering glass tip. Without the white flaps, the spire is definitely a little phallic.

Maybe Vicks is insecure about more than just his reading level.

Beyond the tower, the bottom of the sun is flirting with the tops of the mountains. I put on the guard’s sunglasses, then tuck the khakis into the waistline and fasten the belt. Hopefully nobody will notice that my pants are unbuttoned.

If that’s the reason I don’t get away with this, someone upstairs has a very sick sense of humor.

I holster my Glock, take a deep breath, and step out of the shade of the dumpster.

Act natural.

Telling yourself this, of course, is the best way of ensuring you act weird and stilted.

I cross the parking lot, forcing a smile to my face, then decide that’s actually particularly weird. I haven’t seen anybody smile in this place besides Sergeant Don, and the guy who turned out to be Oliver Vicks.

I do my best to avoid the front security checkpoint area, although there are only a couple guys left there. I stride down to the dirt path that leads into the side entrance of the admin building.

Just rush to the elevator, take it up. Kill Allen the secretary. Burst in and send Oliver Vicks to kingdom come.

That’s not gonna happen. Dozens of officers and secretaries are streaming out of that side door. A veritable wave of khaki. I quickly whip off my sunglasses once I see that none of them are wearing theirs. And what’s more, these guys are smiling. They’re chatting, and joking with each other. It’s like somebody just rang the dinner bell and all the miners just threw down their picks on the spot. Quitting time.

I get swept up in the horde, have no choice but to go along with everyone else. We’re filing into the yard that contains the tower through an open door in the chain link fence. The officers are greeted convivially by grinning prisoners in jumpsuits. They slap each other on the back like old friends.

Prisoners and COs are streaming into this open space from all directions. Thousands of them milling around, talking a little. Some of them sit cross-legged on the ground like we’re about to have the most surreal picnic in the world.

The offenders’ politeness is astonishing. As is the fact that hundreds of guards are just mingling with them.

The whole yard is filled with the low murmur of friendly chit-chat. If you close your eyes it sounds like a cocktail party; the clink of handcuffs on officer’s belts could be champagne flutes.

I’m so overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all that I don’t immediately notice the new addition to the wooden platform in front of the tower. There are now four short stools on the platform. Mindy and the two other men have been joined by Courtney, who is shrouded in a matching brown sackcloth.

If anybody was paying attention to me, my face probably would have betrayed me in that moment. Courtney, Mindy and the other two have collars around their necks that look very similar to the ones we found in the red house. The four collars are attached by chains to what looks like very heavy metal balls resting in their laps. The stage faces west, straight into the heart of the merciless evening sun. But instead of shielding their eyes, all four prisoners are sitting upright, stiff, glaring in the light, as if they can see their fate on the horizon and are determined to accept it proudly.

Walking slowly enough to not attract attention, I weave my way through the crowd, toward the tower. As I get closer to the base I see that etched into the sandy stone coating of the tower are black murals of faces. Rudimentary ones, almost like charcoal cave drawings—dark eyes, black pits of mouths. As best I can tell, the bottom ten finished floors are windowless. The unfinished fourteen are open air scaffolding. The glass dome on the top reflects the sun, like it’s just one big window.

I pull up short about fifteen yards from the stage, because that’s where the edge of the crowd stops, as if there’s some invisible barrier preventing them from getting any closer.

All four prisoners are positioned right in front of the entrance, a gaping hole in the tower’s side that seems like it’s swallowing and consuming the rays of the dying sun.

From this close I understand why they’re all sitting so upright, chins in the air: Strapped against each prisoner’s neck is a shiny instrument of death, the horrible mechanism that was attached to the collar that Courtney took from the red house.

Heretic’s forks.

Two sharp prongs extend up from the collar to rest against their jugular veins, and two more pointed downwards scrape against their sternums. They all have to keep their heads peeled back. If they let them drop they’ll pierce their own necks.

My legs threaten to collapse on me, and I sit down to try to compose myself. It’s lucky I haven’t eaten anything in a few hours.

It takes me about five minutes to catch Courtney’s eyes. Just staring at him intently until he notices. He rotates his head ever so slightly, and when his eyes lock onto mine from across the stretch of yard, I feel like the blood is standing still in my veins. When he recognizes me, his eyes widen in horror: Why are you here? Get out of here.

I pantomime a gun with my thumb and index finger: I’m going to kill him.

Courtney’s eyes are deep with sorrow. He actually smiles ever so slightly, as much as his neck clamp will allow: No chance.

I wish I could reach over and pat his shoulder. Mindy is sitting on his left. Her eyes are droopy, face eggplant purple, lips scorched and peeling—has she been chained up here all day? He looks back at me, face still rigid, but tears streaming down his cheeks. He’s furious with me. With considerable effort, he mouths: GO!

Then he winces. I see a wet line of blood on his chest. He looks away from me, as if he can’t even bear to see me there.

An expectant murmuring from the crowd diverts my attention from my partner. Something’s happening on the other side of the yard. Those who were sitting rise to their feet, and I hastily join them, take a few steps back from the front row and let myself be absorbed by the anonymity of the mob. I turn and strain on tiptoe to see what’s going on.

And then even the murmuring of the crowd stops. Silence descends, a silence so complete you can hear cars on the highway, and the buzz of the air conditioners from the dormitory buildings, even though they’re on the other side of the yard.

As if prompted, everyone sits down on the ground, wherever they are. I sit down so fast I nearly stumble over. Recover, and look backwards, away from the tower, to where everybody else is gazing expectantly. Still can’t immediately tell what’s going on, because of the sun, but I perceive that there’s a sort of processional happening. Prisoners walking in single file through a gap in the seated crowd, all holding identical pieces of wooden furniture that I initially take for high chairs. They march to the stairs and file up onto the stage, all wearing an expression of solemnity. Each in turn sets down his chair on the stage, then exits down a staircase on the opposite side and sits down in the front row.

They’re arranging the chairs in a circle, like for a professional game of duck, duck goose.

They’re not chairs. They’re lecterns.

The last prisoner puts his lectern in the last slot, completing the circle.

A circle of twenty-four.

The sun is grazing the tips of the mountains, bathing the stage and the faces of the four condemned in red-tinged light. The silence from the prisoners in the audience is absolute. I swear I can hear Mindy’s raspy breathing all the way from here. A warm breeze ruffles through the audience, kissing my cheeks, rustling through Courtney and Mindy’s sackcloths, like a momentary mercy from God. And then the stillness returns. The sun hangs expectantly, like he’s refusing to set until he, too, gets to see where this is all going. Were I wearing a watch, I’m sure the second hand would suddenly cease its relentless march around its cage, stretch and yawn after a long day of ticking, and slow to a meandering stroll around its eternal perimeter.

Maybe it’s the very real specter of imminent death, or the fact that I can’t remember the last time I really watched a sunset, but the moment is suddenly so peaceful . . .

A sound in the distance, at the entrance to the yard. Jingling of metal—like a tambourine—in rhythm of footsteps. A single upright form drifts through the prisoners, almost floating through the dusk. I squint. His gloved hands brush the heads of sitting prisoners as he passes them, each one jerking slightly as if his touch is electrifying. The jingle that comes with every step must be from the gold chest plate he’s wearing, ornately carved and inlaid with bright polished stones.

He’s wearing a white robe and nothing on his feet. A white hood is draped over his head. As he nears I see he’s wearing a wax mask, and has a silk bag slung over his shoulder. My heart screams as he passes within a few meters of me. I put a hand over my cheek and look down. Thank God I’m not sitting on the edge of the aisle.

He slowly ascends the staircase, and his bare feet pad gently toward the circle of lecterns. His wax mask, I think, is fat-cheeked, cherubic. The face of a child.

The faces of the inmates on either side of me are stoic, rapt, as Sophnot unslings the silk bag from his shoulder and puts it down at his feet. I put my forearms on my knees and crouch behind them to hide my lower face.

Sophnot reaches in and removes a single book. Mounts it on one of the lecterns, and opens it to a page somewhere in the middle. The second book takes him a moment to place—like he’s thinking about where to put it in relation to the first. One by one, he removes the books and deliberately places them on their appropriate lectern. Nobody speaks.

Finally, after what feels like silent hours, Sophnot drops the empty sack at his feet, and steps backwards into the middle of the circle. He raises one hand.

“Good Sabbath, my sons,” he says. He’s not yelling, but his voice is incredibly resonant—enough that I have no doubt that even the people in the farthest corner of the yard can hear him.

The sitting congregants reply as one:

“Good Sabbath, Father.”

He steps toward one of the lecterns, flips through a few pages, studies something through the eye slits of his mask.

“I want to start this week on a page from the volume that corresponds to the fifth floor.”

His voice is definitely Nathan Heald’s. Although in his office he was clearly restraining the power of his voice. The projection of his voice, louder even than if he was speaking through a bullhorn, is mesmerizing.

“This is related to the concept of the circular river, which flows in a continuous loop, which I spoke about three Sabbaths prior. And you will recall the thought experiment of a computer program, whose lone function is to provide a platform upon which to replicate the program from scratch. The tricks the one we once called God used to spark the flame of consciousness. That primitive magic has outgrown its use.”

Sophnot clears his throat, bends at the waist and peers into the book through his mask. Reads:

“A boy wanders until he comes to the entrance of a small village. The entrance is guarded by an oracle. ‘May I enter?’ the boy asks. The oracle says, ‘Let me first consult with the heavens, to foresee if you’ll bring good or evil upon the people of the village.’ The oracle consults, and then returns to the boy. ‘You may not enter. If you enter the village you will steal from—’”

Sophnot pauses for a moment. Appears to be thinking. “This approximately means ‘someone who mends shoes’—a cobbler. The oracle says ‘If you enter the village you will steal from the cobbler. Go, and never set foot here.’ The boy leaves, grows old, and dies far far away from that village, never meeting the cobbler. Was what the oracle saw a lie?”

Sophnot steps back from the book, positions himself again in the exact center of the circle of books. He’s silent for a moment. I look again at Courtney, who doesn’t even notice. His eyes, like all those in the crowd, are fixed on the figure in white.

“One of you dreamt this last night,” Sophnot says. “Which of you dreamt this?”

Deep silence. Then a faint voice, behind me, to my left.

“I dreamt this, Father.”

I turn to look at the speaker. A slender man with wild grey hair.

Sophnot nods knowingly.

“In the dream, you were the boy,” he says, not as a question.

“Yes, Father.”

“And who was the oracle?”

The man blinks.

“I don’t know, Father.”

Sophnot nods.

“Then let us learn.”

Sophnot steps to the next lectern. Flips through the pages.

“The volume which corresponds to the sixth floor speaks of a room the color of a grey sea. This is understood to be an allusion to the human brain. When you are born you enter the room through a door. All the days of your life you sit in this room. When you die you leave through the same door.” Sophnot looks up from the book. “Years ago I left the room through the door, yet here I stand. I have seen the oracle on the other side of the wall—the one we used to call ‘God’—who whispers to us through thin paper, lies to us about what will be. But he cannot see us. For to see us would be to tear through the wall, and destroy the very idea of the room. The wall is made of the only substance on earth which insulates its contents from God’s prying eyes.” Sophnot points to his white hooded head. “Skin.”

The sun is half hidden behind the mountains, his colors turning dark and angry. The horizon is a thick line of violet. In the low light you could almost imagine that Oliver’s not wearing a mask—that he’s assumed the face of whatever boy he took that mold from.

“This is the oracle’s folly. He wrapped our minds in skin, castrating himself. He can only listen through the wall—never see. Outside our skin, though, he can see. And all out here—” Sophnot gestures toward the mountains, the congregation. “He sees us. Even now, he intrudes on our Sabbath. But only here,” Sophnot says, pointing backwards at his tower, “here we finally have peace. Here is my domain. And soon we will complete the physical manifestation of our holy writ. My friends!” he shouts. “This week, as I foresaw, I secured for us the funding to finish our project!”

For the first time, noise from the prisoners. They applaud and cheer. Sophnot scans the crowd, basking in their praise. My chest freezes for a minute when I think maybe he’s looking straight at me through his mask—I forget to keep hiding my face—but eventually his gaze moves on.

“The oracle—the one we called ‘God’—lies to us. But I am Sophnot. I see things he doesn’t!”

The prisoners and officers now stand up and whoop. I stand up, but keep my head down. First time in my life I’m thankful I’m not that tall.

“The world is a circular river, my friends,” Sophnot’s voice booms. “To each of you, standing on the banks”—he turns and seems to direct this to his four prisoners—“you think you are moving forward. But I was always both directly behind you, and far in front of you, waiting, waiting for you to bring me exactly what I needed.”

Cheers. One prisoner in the front row breaks into a frenetic dance, the kind you see from hippies tripping on acid at Coachella.

Sophnot raises both robed hands to the west, where the sun has all but disappeared behind the peaks.

“The Sabbath has nearly arrived, my sons. The week is nearly concluded. Shall the Sabbath once again be ushered in by our bride?”

The cheering becomes a chorus of ecstatic affirmations: “Yes! Yes! It shall!”

The prisoners and officers scream and leap around, like they’re so excited they’re trying to jump right out of their skins.

Some random inmate grips my biceps and forces me to join his insane dance. He kicks his bare feet up toward the sky. His eyes are wide in rapture, mouth hanging agape like he’s experiencing a sustained orgasm.

“The queen!” he gasps. “The queen is here!”

He jumps up and down, jerking me along until I manage to shove him off of me. The unfazed leech quickly finds a new host, and the music-less dancing continues for a few minutes, rising in fervor and intensity, until Sophnot again raises his arm and his voice reverberates like thunder:

“She’s here!” The voice of Sophnot immediately puts an end to the jubilation. Every prisoner falls to his knees.

I peek up and see that on the stage, Sophnot is forcing the four collared prisoners on stage to stand up off their stools, despite the leaden balls in their laps, and the spikes pressing up against their necks. When he puts his hands on Courtney’s shoulders and lifts him out of his seat, my vision goes red, and it takes every ounce of restraint in my body not to simply unholster and fire. The four of them stand with their chins raised to the sky, all clearly struggling to cradle the heavy balls in their arms.

Sophnot raises his hands and points west, back to the entrance of the yard where he came in what feels like hours ago.

“Kneel for your queen!” he bellows, and everyone falls into a groveling position.

I have no choice but to lower my own forehead to the dusty cement, just like everyone else.

For a long time, I don’t hear anything. The sun has all but set now, the thousands of us prostrating beneath a veil of darkness.

Delicate, padding footsteps, proceeding down the same aisle Sophnot did. I’m dying to look up, but don’t dare—in my peripheral vision I can see the prone figures beside me are unflinching. Hollow echoes as the source of the footsteps reaches the stairs to the stage.

Oh man. Oh no . . .

Before I even look up, I know who’s standing onstage with Oliver Vicks.

“The Sabbath Queen has arrived!” Everyone gradually unfolds themselves. Gets to their knees first, then their feet. I expected this, but it doesn’t make it less sickening: Standing beside Sophnot in the center of the circle is Becky Carlson. His arm is curved around her waist, gripping a handful of her emaciated hip. The dead expression she wears betrays nothing. She’s holding a big bouquet of white and yellow flowers.

I can hardly bring myself to look at her withered form, swimming inside a long-sleeved white gown, as Sophnot greedily runs his hand up and down her side, squeezing handfuls of flesh wherever he can find them. The sentry towers have trained their floodlights on the stage, making the whole thing resemble a sort of macabre theatre.

Then he drops his arm, turns, and makes a motion with his right hand.

My hand moves to my Glock.

If he’s going to execute them now, I have no choice.

“Go to your Sabbath meal, my sons,” Sophnot cries. “You will find delicate meats, fresh breads, rich wines. I bought these for you from this week’s bounty—serve me by enjoying them! Meditate on my teachings. And after we eat, we will spill the blood of these heretics. Make an Afikomen—the dessert sacrifice—and show the one we used to call ‘God’ the weakness of his creations. Good Sabbath!”

“Good Sabbath, Father Sophnot!”

Sophnot stands still on stage for a moment, arm around Becky’s waist, as the giddy men file out of the yard, toward the dormitories. Then he starts gathering the books himself and placing them back in his silk sack. In the dark, he looks like a rotund ghost, slipping lithely between his lecterns, closing and handling each book as delicately as one might an infant. Becky stands still, gripping her bouquet tightly, face blank.

I walk as slowly as I dare—don’t want to stick out—worried that I’ll have no choice but to follow the men into the dining hall. But then Sophnot finishes gathering his books, slings the bag over his shoulder, and leads Becky into the black hole in the front of the tower, leaving four shapes sitting stilly outside the tower entrance.

The sentries move the floodlights away from the platform, and I have my chance. I fall out of line, and stride toward the stage with great purpose, praying nobody questions my intentions. Knees quivering, I reach the edge of the stairs, and find a small gap between them and the exterior of the tower. Drop to my stomach and look around. Nobody has followed me. They’re all too eager to get to their meal.

In minutes the yard is completely empty; guards and prisoners alike retreating into the low white buildings on the perimeter of the yard. And then the sentry lights shut off . . . suppose even the guards up there are going to the meal. The only sound is the shuffling of the four prisoners on their stools.

I wait a few more moments to be safe. A faint whirr from well over my head, like a helicopter.

Did the cops decide to check into my call??

No. It’s an elevator rising up through the core of the unfinished floors over the tower, like passing through some enormous urethra. The elevator appears to stop just beneath the glowing top floor.

I take a few deep breaths and shove up, slink up the stairs to the wooden platform. The four forms are on their stools, deadly still. I cringe as my footsteps make the wood creak, but I can’t help myself from rushing to Courtney and Mindy.

She looks to be in worse shape. Even in the darkness I can see her face is discolored from the sun, a few more hours of that and she might have started charring. Her breaths are shallow, neck straining to stay erect. Her arms are wrapped around the heavy lead ball in her lap, clinging to it like a life preserver.

I lean in close to her collar, study the tanned leather and intricate metallurgy to see how to unlock it.

“Don’t . . . touch,” Courtney gasps, to my left.

His watery green eyes come into focus. The collar isn’t quite choking him, but every syllable is a horrible strain.

“Sensiti-ive,” he whispers, and shows me his palm, where the collar cut his hand in the car a few nights ago.

“I’m not touching it,” I say.

I inspect the heavy cuff around his neck. Two round holes on either side for the keys. And as Courtney discovered, if you enter the wrong keys, there are those two dormant interior blades ready to awaken.

“I can get you out of this maybe,” I whisper. “Sophnot must have the keys.”

“No.” He closes his eyes and then slowly opens them. “Just go.”

“Did you fire your dart?” I ask.

Courtney takes a deep, careful breath through his nose.

He wheezes, “Aimed for chest. Hit metal.”

He must have been wearing that breastplate under his shirt.

I rub the top of his head. His scalp is cold under my trembling hands.

“Where does he keep the keys? In his robe?”

Courtney smiles mirthlessly. The sadness in his eyes makes my heart feel like ice. “Don’t know . . . Didn’t see them . . . Should be tubular. Two of them, almost identical, but not quite.”

I close my eyes for a moment. I can feel Courtney’s slow pulse in my fingertips, the hot night air on the back of my neck. Taste blood in my mouth, from biting my own gums. I’m terribly thirsty.

I help first Mindy, then Courtney off their stools, lowering the heavy balls gently to the ground, so they can at least lie down on the deck instead of having to support the weight of the ball in their lap. I do the same for the two chained up officers—both of whom look bewildered by my presence, but don’t speak. Then I approach the gaping black entrance. Can’t see anything on the other side, and a cool breeze is blowing out, as if the whole place is air conditioned.

“Easy job, eh?” I smile sadly at Courtney. “You know where there are surprisingly few death cults this time of year? Budapest.”

I unholster my Glock and clench it tightly as I step in through the arched doorway.

 

The first thing I notice is the change in the air density. The atmosphere in here is thick and heavy, like a muggy Florida evening. Except it’s actually slightly chilly.

My eyes slowly adjust to the dim light. I’m standing in a space so large I can’t quite perceive where it stops in any direction. Just inches over my head, as if the tower was built for someone just my height, runs a network of red and blue pipes—I can’t actually tell whether they are painted red and blue, or if they’re transparent, and carrying red and blue fluid. To both my left and right are staircases that cling to the curved walls, rise along it, spiraling up.

But I think I’d rather take the elevator.

I take a step forward and stumble, catch my fall with my palms and just barely avoid smacking my chin on the dark wood floor. My head is pounding, and I’m getting that familiar pain in my skull that signals the beginning of a migraine. I slowly pick myself back up, squint at the dark floor, trying to figure out what I tripped over. Take another step forward, and nearly trip again, just barely catching myself.

The floor is at some kind of angle. It’s like trying to walk on a ship deck during a storm. I rub sweat out of my eyes.

What the hell is this place?

I stoop to my knees and crawl forward slowly, constantly scanning for Sophnot. I hear nothing except my own breathing, the knees of my pants rubbing against the floor. The floor is some kind of wood, strangely warm to the touch, like from geothermal activity.

I stick my pistol back in my pants since I need both hands to crawl effectively. The light is dim and faintly purple, but I have no idea where it’s coming from—I don’t see any lamps or windows. There’s a breeze, but the cool air carries neither the recycled scent of air conditioning nor the dryness of the Colorado night—it’s like the air is blowing in from some other world.

The proportions of space in here are as absurd and arbitrary as a fever dream. The slant of the floor is making me so disoriented that I pull my wallet out, find a particularly flaccid business card, and start ripping off little pieces and dropping them on the floor as I proceed, forming a little bread crumb trail.

As I crawl further ahead, the maze of pipes over my head becomes denser, until it’s a kind of ceiling, like a forest canopy. Up through the cracks in the web I see only darkness. I reach up to brush the pipes and recoil. They’re wet and warm. I sniff my wet fingers and the smell reminds me of the fetal pig dissection we had to do in middle school.

Formaldehyde?

I crawl forward, still dropping business card pieces with trembling hands. A sharp breeze on my cheek draws my gaze upward. A few meters ahead there’s a break in the web of pipes, and the glint of a solid metal shaft.

I crawl slowly to the elevator, starting to adjust somewhat to the weird slant of the floor. I use the holes in the birdcage shaft to pull myself up to my feet. Peering up through the grating I can see only darkness. It doesn’t take me long to locate the call button. I smack it a couple times, thinking I’ll take it up to the twenty-third floor, so I can surprise the bastard, but it doesn’t seem to register. With a sinking heart, I then notice the keyhole beneath the button.

So it’s either the stairs, or just wait down here for them to return.

But when they return, the yard will be filled again with prisoners. I have to get at him while he’s alone with Becky.

I’m going to turn and follow my bread crumb trail back to the entrance when I hear something creak on the other side of the empty elevator shaft.

I instinctually go for my weapon, and nearly trip over my own feet. Catch myself and go still.

Could it be Oliver? I saw the elevator go up . . . maybe he sent Becky up by herself?

I stand still, focus on keeping my breaths quiet. The sound doesn’t startle me the second time; it’s too deep and heavy to be a person. It sounds more like the building is settling into its foundation, and groaning with relief.

Keeping one hand outstretched for balance, one still gripping the butt of my pistol, I slowly turn the corner of the elevator shaft and grope forward in the direction of the sound. It grows louder as I step away from the elevator. I drop a few pieces of torn business card and keep moving ahead, until reaching what seems to be a sort of stone archway, wide enough for two to enter side by side.

The air blowing out of this tunnel is warmer, and I see the web of red and blue pipes over my head appear to be bulging, like high-pressured hoses. I keep walking ahead, keeping one hand on the wall of the path. It’s not stone, feels more like lichen or moss, warm and damp to the touch.

The walkway opens into a circular room. The ceiling is violently pulsing red and blue tubes. Periodically I hear the groaning sound again . . . seems to be coming from the mossy walls of this room.

In the center of the room is a knee-height circle of polished stone. I grit my teeth. On the lip closest to me is the bouquet Becky was holding outside.

They stopped here before taking the elevator.

As I approach the flowers, I see the circle is a pool, filled with still black water. I lean over the pool and peer in, and am so horrified by what I see that I stumble backwards. On the surface of the pool is reflected a picture-perfect image of Becky’s little brother, with his eyes closed.

Jesus Christ.

Pulse pounding in my temples. I force myself back to the pool, and look again. A still, peaceful child’s face. For a few seconds it remains unmoving, and then the eyes and mouth open, and the groan reverberates inside my chest.

I feel faint. I step back from the pool and lean against a wall.

It’s just some kind of illusion. He probably has a projector under the water. Or coming from above.

Turn up over my shoulder. No projector. Just the web of pipes.

I tear myself away from the disgusting ceiling. This isn’t why I’m here.

Where is this bastard?

I turn and, keeping my arms out for balance, like I’m walking on a diving board, follow the white specks of paper back past the elevator shaft, to the entrance and the two staircases. I choose the one on the right and start climbing, grip my pistol tight in my shooting hand in case someone jumps out of the shadows.

The steps are very narrow. I hug the wall for fear of falling off. Keep one eye on the steps rising in front of me, the other scanning above me for signs of Sophnot and Becky. Etched into the rising walls are smiling, childlike faces, all crying what appears to be blood. I climb above the ceiling of pipes from the first floor. From the edge, the second floor looks much like the first, with an apparently identical ceiling of red and blue pipes.

I think I see the outline of another mossy entranceway, which I assume holds another pool.

Keep climbing. The air is so thick with moisture that it feels like it’s resisting me at every step. Feels like I’m pushing through a swimming pool.

Pass three or four more floors. All the same. My legs are exhausted. I still haven’t seen the source of the violet light that—mercifully—is saving me from doing this climb in complete darkness.

The staircase I’m on periodically intersects with its counterclockwise counterpart, which is snaking up in reverse. When it does, the stairs meet in a shared ledge. Then each starts again, with a foot of vertical space between it and the platform.

I stick with my clockwise stairs, and keep climbing, ignoring the mounting ache in my lower back, the fire in my chest.

Maybe if Sophnot took the stairs every day he wouldn’t be so chunky.

After what I guess is ten floors, the wall on one side of me falls away. The rest of the floors are unfinished. The staircases continue spiraling upwards, but now without support on either side.

I stare up at fourteen floors of this winding tightrope walk. The stairs can’t be more than two feet wide, and up this high the breeze is much stronger than on the ground . . . One strong gust and we could be looking at some Pollock-inspired splatter art.

Lamb: Study in red.

I wipe some cool sweat off my forehead with my already saturated khaki shirt. Clench my jaw, and keep climbing, praying the elevator overhead doesn’t come to life and carry Oliver back downstairs to kill Courtney and Mindy.

There are no pipes or anything on these floors. Just unfinished wood flooring. No archways, no reflecting pools. I actually find this switch somewhat comforting. The spell of the bottom ten floors is broken. If I strain my neck, I can see the illuminated glass top up above, and what I think is the resting elevator. I have little doubt this is where Oliver and Becky are.

I wind around and around the periphery of the tower, now far above the dormant sentry towers. The only light is that of the just rising moon, a few stars. Good thing we’re in Colorado. In NYC the haze would block most of this.

I stop thinking about the stairs. My body is pretty well used to the motion by now. Can climb pretty much on automatic. If one of them is misshapen, that’s going to be a problem. My legs aren’t in much pain anymore—or rather, they are but I can’t feel it. The fresh air seems to have helped my head.

The key to the stairs is kind of tricking myself into being indifferent between falling and climbing. If I fall I’ll cruise peacefully down through the night, dying instantly upon impact. If I make it to the top, I’ll try to kill Oliver, likely fail, and then be strung up and butchered.

Floors nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. . . I think I hear a sound drifting from the top floor. Some kind of music I think, that I can’t quite identify. In the middle of floor twenty-two the staircases meet for the last time, and I slip as I climb from the shared platform back onto my staircase. I grope frantically for something to hold onto and nearly lose my grip on the pistol.

I kneel on the platform, panting.

Reholster my pistol and resume my trek. As I ascend the final floors, the music grows louder and more distinct.

At the top of the final floor, the staircase winds into a cement enclosure. A narrow stairway that reminds me of those underground storage spaces every restaurant in NYC has. I sit down on a step and catch my breath for a moment. Or rather, try to catch my breath, but I’m exhausted. Totally spent. Light-headed from exertion.

I’ll bet I’m the first person to ever take the stairs all the way up here.

I unbutton my khaki shirt and toss it off into the night. Watch it flutter in the breeze then disappear from sight.

I close my eyes. Breathe through my nose. I know the song seeping from the floor overhead. It’s from the early nineties I think. Don’t remember the name or artist, but recognize the overplayed chorus: Where were they going without ever knowing the way?

I can’t wait any longer.

I follow the stairs up as they wind into a room.

I frown, confused. This is not what I expected.

I’m in a sort of cramped, cheap-looking space, filled with metal cabinets holding trays and dishes. Linoleum floor. Pans hang everywhere. An eight-burner stove, industrial-style compact oven. A huge grill.

A kitchen?

What the fuck?

The music is coming from the adjacent room. I wind past a second grill, a row of deep fryers, until I spot two swinging, saloon-style doors. Bright light leaks through the slats. I approach the doors slowly, then kneel and peer into the next room.

The scene before me takes the wind out of my body.

I’m looking at an exact replica of the Rocky Mountain Bar and Grill, where we interviewed Elaine. Where Becky Carlson used to work. The floor is checkered black and white tile, a bit shinier than I remembered. The upholstered bar stools are the same dark green. The glare from the lights the kind that will sober you up at any time of night. The music is coming from a CD deck resting on the bar. There’s the cubby with all the board games, framed dollar bill behind the bar, same tall glasses for making old-school soda drinks. The only notable additions I can spot are a bunch of shiny instruments of torture, collars and whips, hanging on the coat rack near the entrance.

Oliver Vicks is seated in one of the booths next to the window. The front of his white cloak is open–the most lethal man in the state is wearing a purple paisley shirt while munching on greasy French fries. Standing over him is Becky Carlson, wearing a horrible, pleated green waitress uniform, with a name tag on the lapel. She’s holding a yellow notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. Resting on the bar, I note, are a wax mask, white robe and the silk bag holding the books. In front of him on the table are writing implements and what must be some new literary undertaking. They’re unaware of me watching. Over the next song that’s come on—something by Christina Aguilera, Oliver is ordering:

“And I’d like sour cream on the side. As usual.”

I turn away from the swinging doors and try to think. Without even realizing, I’ve un-holstered my gun and am gripping it like I’m hanging over an abyss.

Think, Frank. Think, you fucking dumbass.

I can’t kill Oliver until I know how to unlock the collars on Mindy and Courtney.

So, what . . . burst in with the gun and demand he tell me?

Will never work. He knows the same thing I know—I have no bargaining power. I need to create leverage.

Slowly turn back to the scene on the other side of the wood slats.

Becky is finishing up the order, voice almost indiscernible in the shadow of Christina’s powerful vocals: “Anything to drink?”

Oliver smiles.

“Just ice water.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks so much. I love you.”

I think she hesitates ever so slightly.

“I love you too,” she replies softly, tucks her notepad into her pocket and walks toward me. I scramble to hide, but there’s no time. She gently pushes through the swinging doors, into the kitchen.

I quickly put a finger to my lips. But she doesn’t even seem surprised to see me. Her eyes register only confusion. I don’t think she recognizes me. I peek through the swinging doors, see that Oliver is preoccupied with writing.

“Hi,” I whisper. “I’m Frank. Lamb. I was at your apartment . . . we brought you croissants and muffins.”

This last bit seems to register with her. She nods slowly. She seems neither pleased or upset to see me, just totally disoriented by what’s going on. Her breath is awful, like catnip and stale licorice.

Heroin smoke.

She’s only half here.

“I can help you,” I whisper. “I can get you out of this.”

The skin on her face seems to tighten. She says nothing.

“Do you know where he keeps his keys?”

I take a step toward her and she flinches, like a dog that’s used to getting kicked.

“Becky,” I say, and spread my arms. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Then I take another step toward her and again she recoils. Her body is silently quivering, like she’s being lightly electrocuted.

“Becky, do you know where his keys are?”

“I’ve never . . .” she whispers. “I’ve never seen any keys.”

I dash back to peek through the wooden slats on the swinging doors, see if Oliver has noticed anything awry. He still appears absorbed in his work.

I try to slow my breathing. A weak plan starts forming in my head.

“Do you have any papers in here?” I ask her. “Not the notepad. Like full-sized pages.”

She blinks slowly at me, and shakes her head.

I scan the kitchen. Freezer, double sink for dishwashing, prep surfaces with storage space underneath, grill, deep fryer. Higher up on shelves are grilling utensils, oils . . .

The sink. Maybe.

I drop to the grimy tile floor and open the cabinet beneath the sink, part of the unit. It’s totally empty, nobody bothered to replicate the contents of the actual Bar and Grill. Except . . . yes. Still taped to the top of the cabinet space, wrapped in plastic, is the user manual and warranty information. I tear it out and rip off the plastic.

The sink is made by something called Lincoln Manufacturing, and will have to do. At least the pages are clean and crisp.

“One more thing,” I tell her. “Can I see that pad and pen for a second?”

She slowly hands them to me.

“I’m going to write you a note. If he kills me, bring this to Elaine, at the grill in Colorado Springs as soon as you leave here for the week. Alright?”

Her blue eyes tremble. She dutifully nods.

Elaine,

This is from Frank. PI who visited a few days ago. Call the police and tell them that Nathan Heald, the warden at SCF, is Oliver Vicks’s fake name. He killed Rico Suarez, Courtney Lavagnino, Mindy Craxton, and me, Frank Lamb.

Please call my daughter, Sadie: (777) 418-2902 and explain what happened to me.

F

I tear the note off the pad, fold it and give it to Becky.

Tuck my Glock into the back of my pants, take a deep breath, and walk into the ersatz Rocky Mountain Bar and Grill, carrying the user manual in my right hand.

Oliver Vicks looks up from his writing immediately.

“Son, why aren’t you at the communal meal! You know you aren’t permitted in here—” He doesn’t immediately recognize me. But then he pushes his thick bifocals up onto his forehead to reveal the horrible whites of his eyes. Even from across the length of the restaurant they’re jarringly pure, like polished ivory. “Frank!” he cries with something like delight. “Frankie Lamb. Wait, don’t tell me you walked all those stairs . . . ?”

“I did,” I say, voice cracking. “Every last fucking one of them.”

He winces. “Don’t use that language here, Frank. This is a sacred space.” He gestures to the booth across from him. “Come on in. Sit down and we’ll talk like civilized people.”

I take two steps closer. A thin stream of bile rises in my throat. My hands are shaking as I ease myself into the booth across from Oliver Vicks.

Sophnot.

“Well.” He smiles. “It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out why you’re here.”

I say nothing. Try to stare at his forehead. Bite my lip too hard and taste warm blood in my mouth. He keeps talking.

“Frank Lamb . . . Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb. You had to know I wasn’t likely to just agree to let you and the two prisoners downstairs walk out of here. You had to know that the second you walked in here I was likely to slice your throat.”

He flicks the middle finger of his right hand, and a gleaming blade the length of a steak knife shoots out from the wrist of his white cloak. He has some contraption attached to his forearm, much like the ones on his collars.

“Do you have a dart in your cheek? Like Courtney?”

I blink. I nod my head slowly, then open my mouth, pull back my lips and peel the dart from my gum. Put it on the table between us.

He cocks his head at me and smiles. His eyes seem to whiten. They’re the color of stars.

“Gun?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious.

“Yes,” I say, pulling the Glock out and showing it to him. “But I’m not here to kill you.”

He fixes his white eyes on me. They seem to be scanning me on a wavelength I can’t perceive, like an MRI probing me for deceit.

“Of course you’re not here to kill me. You’re smart enough to see that’s a waste of everyone’s time. Becky!” he shouts to the kitchen. “I’m starving!”

He looks back at me.

“The service here is terrible,” he says. Then he takes the blade protruding from his sleeve, clenches his bicep, and appears to stab himself in the heart. His paisley shirt tears, and I see the steel disappear into his flesh. He grimaces in mild discomfort, then swiftly pulls the knife back out and slams his hand back on the table. His shirt is torn where he stabbed, but no wound.

I can’t feel my legs. Try to appear unimpressed, try to process the visual trickery I just witnessed, but my face must betray my shock.

“I have seen the day of my death, Frank.” A toothy grin. He picks up one of his French fries and waggles it at me. “I’ve seen it. These little guys here, they’ll be the end of me. Not a knife, not a gun . . . saturated fat.” He tosses the fry in his mouth and gnashes it. “But until that day, I have nothing to fear. You on the other hand”—he spreads his palms helplessly—“I’m afraid this will be your last Sabbath here on earth. But you must have known that when you walked in here. Unless you really are as boneheaded as old James says. And, well, when James says someone is boneheaded I mean . . . you wouldn’t believe how little he argued when I told him to cut off his balls. Would you believe—I didn’t say anything about the pecker! He just took the initiative.” Oliver shakes his head, chuckling, getting a little lost in thought.

I take a deep breath. I can feel my pulse in my neck. I set the pistol on the table, beside my dart. A gesture of good faith.

“I came up here to make a deal with you,” I say.

He purses his lips.

“A deal? Okay. I like deals. What were you thinking?”

I glance outside the window to my left. Can see the dark outline of one of the prison dormitories and the admin building. Beyond, headlights of lone cars on the highway. Feels a bit like we’re in the space needle, but Seattle has disappeared.

“Sampson gave you four million in fake unregistered stock certificates,” I say. “I’m guessing you needed all forty-eight million for construction costs on this tower. So I suspect you’d be interested to know where the four million of actual certificates are. The ones he kept to himself.”

I squeeze my thigh under the table to confirm it’s still there. I’m sure that forty-eight number he asked for was no accident—he figured out that that was the maximum Sampson would be able to get for him. So it’s certainly plausible that Sampson has another four lying around.

The black pupils of Oliver’s eyes go still, trained on me. I toss the user manual onto the table.

“I have the other four million in certificates. I took them from Sampson. Here’s one of the investor materials included when he bought them. Explains the legal limits of unregistered stocks, rights and so on, including how illegal it is to transfer or sell them. And there’s a place where Sampson had to sign for reading all this info on page twenty. Clearly shows that he purchased the full eight million.”

His eyes narrow. I slide the manual toward him: Take a look.

“Obviously I didn’t bring the four million with me,” I say, trying to stop my voice from wavering. “I’m not that much of a bonehead.”

Becky interrupts, bursting through the swinging doors, bearing a heavy tray that I can’t believe her wispy frame can support.

I welcome the distraction, but Oliver doesn’t look away from me as she unloads a charred steak, an extremely healthy side of sour cream, and a refill of greasy fries.

Oliver doesn’t touch the papers. Instead unrolls his green cloth napkin and tucks it into the collar of his paisley shirt, and smiles at Becky.

“It looks delicious, thank you,” he says. “I love you.”

Becky smiles and then bends over and pecks his cheek.

“I love you too,” she whispers.

My stomach roils as he reaches up and strokes her wispy white hair.

“Did you forget something?” he asks.

“The ice water,” she says softly. “Sorry.”

“No problem, but hurry. It was hot out there. Especially when you’re wearing as many layers as I was,” he laughs.

Becky gives a cursory smile, then trudges back to the kitchen.

“Well, Frank,” he says, as he takes a dollop of sour cream and swabs it over the top of his French fries. “Guilty as charged. I’d love nothing more than another four million dollars.” He takes a nibble of steak, then a few more fries. “So?” he asks, as he repeatedly dunks a single french fry, until it’s little more than a delivery mechanism for a huge glop of sour cream. “How am I going to get this money?”

“You let the three of us go. I’ll go get the money and bring it back to you.”

He rolls his eyes.

“That sounds a little dubious.”

I force myself to stay silent. Wait for him to make a counteroffer.

Oliver focuses on his steak for a moment, cutting off a blackened bite, stabbing it with his fork, and rubbing it in gravy.

“Is it true?” he asks. I nearly lose control of my bladder. “Do you really play backgammon?”’

“I’m sorry?”

“When you were in my office on Wednesday, you said you were a backgammon player. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I say. “I play.”

“Me too,” he says. “What I like so much about the game, unlike other gambling games like poker, is that there are no secrets. There are no hole cards. No informational disparity. Both players can see precisely what’s happening. The skill is in how you perceive what’s right in front of you.” He cocks his head at me. “I’m a very good backgammon player,” he says, and smiles. “And I’m not entirely sure I believe you.”

My stomach goes cold.

“It wasn’t hard to get them,” I say, heart screaming. “I was staying in his house. He had them in his office.”

“Mmmhmm . . .” He crams a handful of fries into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “Yeah, I just can’t shake the feeling that you’re wasting my time here, Frank. I think we might be done here.”

“I’m telling the truth,” I say. And point over his shoulder to the homemade collars hanging on the coat rack. “Put one of those collars on me and send me out to get the money. I’ll have to come back here for you to unlock me.”

He raises a bushy eyebrow in surprise.

“Interesting,” he says. Mulls this for a second. I hope he’s thinking that he has nothing to lose. That I’m even dumber than he thought.

Maybe I am.

“Alright,” he says.

He stands up from the booth and turns his back to me. He’s wearing jean cutoffs under his unbuttoned robe. I search for the outline of a set of keys in his back pockets as he walks to the coat rack near the diner “entrance”–in this recreation the glass door leads only to the warm evening. Don’t see any bulge in his pants. Off the rack, he picks up one of his homemade collars.

Returns to the table and plunks it down. It’s a variant without the heretic’s fork, but the lock mechanism appears to be the same as the ones Courtney and Mindy are wearing: those two holes on either side of the collar.

“There’s no prongs,” he explains. “Wouldn’t want you to accidentally kill yourself before you get the money.”

“And if somehow I don’t get the money, Courtney and Mindy will end up like Rico?”

Oliver pauses for a moment, then shakes his head slowly.

“No, no, no . . .” he says. “They should be so lucky. What I did for Rico, that was an honor for him. He did more or less what I wanted. I immortalized Rico. He’ll live on forever, on the twenty-second floor of this tower. Those people downstairs . . . their deaths will be strictly sacrificial. To show the one we once called God how delicate his creations are. To show that, without my great kindness—” He’s starting to sound upset. “Without my love for you, death is a finality that the one we once called God cannot prevent.” He licks some grease off his lips. “Put the collar on and go. You should hurry. It’s only a matter of time before they simply won’t be able to stop themselves from falling asleep, or their neck muscles spasm and give way. I’d give the girl another three or four hours.”

I take a deep breath, maybe the last one for a while.

“Alright.”

“Mmm . . .” he says. He does something with his mouth. Makes a weird kind of tic that attracts my eyes, and I realize the collar has been opened, and I missed how he did it. But he’s holding the open collar in his delicate hands, and there are no keys in sight. Did he somehow put them back in his cloak already? Some sleight of hand?

“Here Frank,” he says, offering the collar to me like a gift. “Put it on yourself.”

The way he’s holding it, in those tender little drawing hands of his, I see it. The pinky on his left hand is a little crooked. There are no keys. Those two holes are for his uniquely shaped, particularly small fifth fingers.

I take the collar, and hold it up to the harsh fluorescent light. Pretend to be deliberating.

I need his fingers. I don’t need the rest of him.

“Frank?” he says gently. “Go ahead and put it on. It’s alright.”

I drop the collar and snatch up my Glock. Fire three times, straight at his forehead. All three miss to the left, shatter the window at the far end of the dining room. His face is untouched. Warm air gushes in through the hole in the glass.

He smiles strangely at me, like he feels a little sorry for me.

Blood pounding in my ears.

What I just saw is impossible. It must be some kind of illusion. He’s using mirrors . . .

Hand trembling, I empty the chamber. Two more shots aimed straight at his chest. Both open up holes in the green upholstery of the faux-leather booth. Little puffs of insulation. He stares at me. The whites of his eyes are like so pure, so shiny. Like an untouched snow.

“So there’s no money?” he says.

I drop the empty gun.

“How . . . ?” I say, struggling to find my voice.

“I did nothing,” he says. “Maybe the gun is miscalibrated. Or, more likely, you subconsciously don’t actually want to kill me. All I know is that I’ve seen the prophecy. And that’s not how I die, no matter how hard you try.”

He’s messing with my head, somehow. Provoke him. Make him careless.

“My money is on a pill overdose,” I say. “After misreading the instructions.” I gesture to the papers on the table. “This is the user manual for the sink in the kitchen. I recommend Hooked on Phonics.”

His face goes beet red, and in a snap second he’s out of the booth. I swipe at him with the metal collar, but his speed is astounding for his roly-poly build. Before I can raise the collar for another parry he has both hands curled around my neck. He hurls me out of my seat and the shiny white tile rises to meet my cheek, jarring a tooth loose. I instinctively roll over onto my back so I can protect myself with my legs. He removes a dagger from the inside pocket of his cloak and holds it blade-down. I shove backwards just as he swipes at my groin. He misses the goods, but connects with my right thigh, tearing a strip out of the khaki pants and leaving a bright red gash. I don’t feel the cut. Too much adrenaline. He stabs downward again. I catch his wrist with my right hand, and he kicks me in the head.

My vision goes black for a half second, but I keep my grip on his wrist. He kicks again, connecting with my temple, and then he abandons the knife, throws off his cloak—like it’s time to get serious—and flips me over onto my stomach.

The white tile under my head smells of bleach. I hear a snap somewhere above me. Vicks has ripped his leather belt out of his jean shorts and fastened it around my neck. My face is pressed into the floor. I try to flip over and he kicks me in the back of the head while he tightens, choking the life out of me. I hear him grunting, both with exertion and satisfaction.

My vision goes bright, and then entirely white. I feel my limbs spasming of their own volition, flapping helplessly against the floor. Feels like my chest is being crushed by a piano, then like I’m at the bottom of the ocean.

The whole world is shrinking. Black creeping into the edges. A very nasty gurgling sound that I’m vaguely aware is coming from my own mouth. Can’t feel anything past my elbows—

A sharp clank and the belt around my neck goes slack.

I flop over onto my back, wheezing, trying to gulp down air, can’t get it down fast enough.

Oliver Vicks is on his knees beside me, stunned, Becky standing over both of us clutching an empty cast-iron pot.

The air I manage to suck in is so sweet that I gasp for more—breathe in too quickly—and start to retch. Oliver recovers, shoots to his feet, and throws Becky to the floor.

“You whore!” he screams. “You goddamn whore!”

He kicks her in the gut and she whines.

“After all I’ve done for you!”

Knives in the kitchen.

I roll toward the kitchen on my belly like a writhing maggot, leaving a trail of blood from my thigh, laboring for breath. I’m just inside the swinging doors when he catches up with me. Grabs me from behind by my hair and throws me forward into a metal cabinet. Some sharp corner catches me in the side.

I fall forward onto my stomach, face-to-face with a drain in the middle of the kitchen floor.

He grabs my hair again, this time pulling me up, and then slamming me onto one of the prep tables, pushing my cheek into steel. A cutting board. In my peripheral I see him select a Chinese chef knife. See the glint of its edge. He pushes my skull in harder, to expose the back of my neck more. I’m a turkey on the log.

I flail, and kick backwards, catching something soft. His grip on my head loosens enough for me to flip around. For a moment we’re eye to eye, his blade high over his shoulder, coming down, poised to embed itself in my sternum. I push off the table, move in closer to him to avoid the blade, and wrap my foot around his ankle to trip him backwards. The only move I remember from elementary school Judo. As his balance shifts away from me, I move into a half embrace, flip him around, and shove him forward, submerging his face in the oil in the deep fryer.

A massive sizzle, and flecks fly up and slap against my face. The hand holding down the back of his head is burning just from proximity to the grease.

There’s a horrible smell, burning hair mixed with falafel. His body convulses. My hand is burning so badly from the heat that I can’t keep it there, and I have to release.

I stumble backwards as Oliver’s hunched form rises from the fryer.

I behold him from behind as he emits a gurgle that’s worse than any scream. He flails blindly and turns to face me. His shirt is quickly eroding, and his face and chest look like they’re covered in purple boils the size of plump cherries. I see that burning flesh has congealed over his eyes. His words are stifled by a mouth nearly sealed shut.

“I can’t see,” he says.

I take another step back, out of the range of his groping hands. His face is slick with the oil that’s still consuming his flesh. His lips are swollen and look like slabs of pink rubber.

He whines a sound that I think is “Becky.”

She’s here, at the swinging doors, watching. She emits a gasp of horror.

At the sound of her voice, Oliver Vicks goes into a frenzy, swinging his hands like he’s swatting away a horde of invisible flies. He staggers toward Becky, navigating with something like sonar.

“My queen,” he groans, through a mouth half-sealed by melted flesh. And then he reaches her and locks her in an embrace. Pushes her into the wall and grabs at her breast. “My queen . . .” I think he’s sobbing.

I’ve lost a lot of blood from my thigh. I can hardly feel my hands, and my first attempt to push myself off the freezer, toward him, fails badly.

“Becky, my queen,” he cries—his voice warbled and tremulous. He’s pushing into her, like he’s trying to absorb her into him. “Bind me! Bind me!”

I find my footing. I make the mistake of glancing down at my thigh wound. It’s much worse than I initially thought.

“The last two books . . . They’re for us Becky.” His head is between her breasts, he’s screaming into her chest. She’s paralyzed by shock, as he grips varying parts of her with increasingly fervent desperation, like he knows it’s the last time. “Bound together, forever on the top floors.”

I cross the length of the kitchen, more tripping than running, propelling myself just by leaning forward, only pure rage keeping me on my feet.

I fall on Oliver from behind, grab his half-burned scalp and take him to the floor with me. I have him in a headlock with one arm. His face, deformed and shiny with oil, is like a nest of pink larvae, or sludge that will someday congeal into lunch meat. He doesn’t resist as I tighten the chokehold, and he gradually, quietly, stops moving.

I drop his head and shove his body off of me. Staring up at the ceiling, trying to breathe. My hands are soaked in stuff I don’t even want to think about.

Becky crouches next to his body, as if in disbelief. I’m so light-headed.

Can’t go to sleep.

I need to unlock Courtney and Mindy, and get myself to a hospital.

“Becky,” I groan. “Help me.”

She wraps her tiny hands around my chest and tries to pull me up.

I take the help, gripping her boney shoulder to stand up. I glance down at what used to be Oliver Vicks and wish I hadn’t. There’s messes and there’s messes. Someone is gonna conduct the post-mortem from hell tonight.

“I need the sharpest knife in the kitchen,” I tell her. “A cheese knife maybe. And ice.” She hands me a cleaver. Even better. I kneel at the mess and—pretty damn near desensitized to gore at this point—chop off both his pinkies. Fold them into a bag of ice and push myself back to my feet.

The wound on my leg is deep and increasingly worrisome. I’m losing a lot of blood and am way past woozy. I pull off my shirt, and wrap it around the wound tightly to stop the blood loss and maybe help it start to clot.

“The stairs,” I groan. “I can’t make it down those stairs.”

She shakes her head.

“There’s an elevator.” She takes my hand, and leads me through a door in the back of the kitchen, what in the original layout would have probably have led outside. This one, however, opens into a birdcage elevator. Twenty-four unmarked buttons. I hit the one on the bottom and nothing happens. Becky points to two circular holes beneath the panel of numbers.

I put the icepack on the elevator floor, unfold it and remove the fingers. She takes them from me—I guess she’s seen how these work—straightens them out and plugs them into the two holes simultaneously. She’s about to hit button for the ground floor—

“Wait,” I say. Stumble back through the kitchen, past what’s left of Sophnot, through the swinging doors into the dining room. Snatch the silk bag with the books off the bar, sling it over my shoulder, and return to the elevator.

“We might all be able to retire off of these babies,” I say. “Let’s go.”

She hits the bottom button and we begin our grinding descent.

My throat is bruised, and my thigh is throbbing as the adrenaline reserves bottom out. The dry night air as we pass through the unfinished floors feels good. I blink down at my lower body and hardly recognize it beneath the biblical quantities of blood. I think at least the bleeding has slowed under the pressure of the makeshift bandage. Becky folds the fingers back into the icepack. Everything smells like grease.

There’s a thud, which takes me a moment to realize is the elevator coming to a halt. I’m lying on the floor of the cage. I just want to sleep.

“Come on.” Becky’s ghostly face glows in the purple light. She’s holding Oliver’s white hooded robe and wax mask. She took them down with her. “Put these on. Come on.”

She tries, feebly, to lift me to my feet. The blind leading the blind.

I crawl up the grated wall of the cage and let Becky slip the white robe on over my bare chest.

She opens the elevator door and takes my hand, leading me under the canopy of red and blue pipes. She has no trouble traversing the disorienting terrain, pulling me along like a sled dog. The space seems so much more ordinary than it did before. I wonder idly if I’d imagined the groaning, the stone pool . . .

At the exit, Becky slips something cold and stiff onto my face and secures it with an elastic band. The mask. She slings my arm around her shoulder to support me—a knobby walking stick—and then guides me out onto the platform.

The yard is still empty.

“Hurry,” she says. “They’re at their meal.”

I limp over to one of the two officers. High stakes practice.

His eyes go wide as he sees me approach, clad in mask.

“Father,” he gasps. “Please.”

I ignore him. Unfold the ice bag to reveal the two pink fingers. It’s only been about fifteen minutes since I severed them—they still look pretty vital. If they’ve withered too much, I suspect they won’t work. But surely Sophnot had to leave himself some margin of error.

Oliver opened the collar with the neck facing me. Which means his right pinky goes in the hole to the left of the center.

But which is which?

Fuck.

One looks slightly crooked. Which was his right hand. Right?

I take the two pinkies between my index and thumbs and gently insert them on either side of the guard’s collar. It springs open easily and the collar drops at my feet.

He gasps, big disbelieving breaths. The relief that rushes over his face is profound as he lets the weighted ball roll off his lap.

I can hear the faint hiss of breath through Mindy’s nostrils. I spring open her collar and she pitches forward onto her knees.

“Ohhh,” she cries, drawing in deep gulps of air. “Ohhh.”

Courtney’s eyes regard my masked face with something between confusion and fear. Thinks I’m Oliver Vicks unlocking them.

“Should just be a day or two,” I say, displaying the severed pinkies. “Make a simple swap and collect our check, right? Easy peasy.”

I stick the fingers into his collar. It springs open harmlessly. The relief on my friend’s features makes me forget my stinging thigh for a moment. He rubs his hands over his neck and throat, like to confirm they’re still there.

He looks at the severed fingers I’m holding, tries to ask something, but lets it go.

I let Mindy and Courtney collect themselves while I unlock the second officer.

Becky is gazing at all of us, as if she still doesn’t quite believe what’s happening.

Courtney crawls over to Mindy and puts his arm over her shaking shoulders.

I limp over to them. “Hey,” I say through the hole in the mask, “we have to leave right now.” I point across the yard. A few inmates are milling around outside the cafeteria. I lift the robe to show them my gash. “They’ll be back any minute. And I don’t think I can pass as Oliver for long.”

Courtney stands up and helps Mindy to her feet. Her face is badly sunburned, and there’s a deep red stripe around her neck.

“Water,” she says.

“Just hang on a little longer,” I say. “Come on. Act like you’re my prisoners.”

I leave the two officers groaning on the ground. Guide Courtney, Mindy and Becky down the stairs on the edge of the wooden platform. We’re a pathetic procession. Mindy is so weak she can hardly walk, Becky is still in a daze, and I’m limping badly. All three of them are barefoot.

“Hurry,” I whisper.

Within ten minutes they’ll turn the floodlights back on, and this place will be packed.

We make it to the gate in the chain link fence without being spotted.

“Parking lot,” I say. “Hopefully they left the keys in our Hummer like last time.”

We follow the dirt path that winds around the admin building toward the parking lot. There are lights on at the front entrance, and at least a few officers there on duty, missing out on the meal. We pass the row of Dumpsters, and spot the Hummer pretty quickly; not many visitors at this hour.

Courtney helps Mindy and Becky into the backseat.

I crawl into the driver’s seat and am relieved to see the keys in the ignition. Courtney climbs in and closes the passenger door.

“Can you drive?” he asks. “Aren’t you woozy?”

I pull the wax mask down over my face.

“I’ll be fine.”

Mindy coughs in the backseat.

I turn the car on, take a deep breath, and pull out of the parking lot, following the path toward the front gate.

“Nobody talk,” I say, as I roll up at the inside of the closed gate. An officer strides over from the tollbooth, deeply confused by this development. I roll down the window, and when he sees my hood and mask, his face freezes.

“Father,” he wheezes, and looks away, as he’s terrified of even looking directly into my masked face.

The other officers on the scene approach us, to see what’s going on.

“Get back!” bellows a voice I recognize. Sergeant Don pushes his way past the other officers, storms over to the car and pushes the stunned officer aside. But when he sees the mask his own wrinkled features contort into something between fear and disbelief.

“Father,” he says, and hangs his head in deference, puts his hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry. We’ll open the gate. We just weren’t expecting you. I thought there would be another . . .” Slowly he looks back up and removes his hand, as he realizes who else is in the car with me. He still doesn’t look at me, but his dark eyebrows arch in confusion as his gaze shifts from Courtney, to Becky, to Mindy. “Father,” he says slowly. “These were meant to be sacrifices. I don’t understand.”

I take a deep breath, ignore the pulsing pain in my leg, and stick my hooded head halfway out the window.

“Don, my son,” I growl, as low as I can manage. “I always planned to put you on the twenty-third floor. But if you keep me waiting one second longer, you’ll be sacrificed along with these sinners.”

My heart stops as Sergeant Don’s face runs a gamut of emotions.

“Of course.” He smiles and turns. “Open!” he yells.

The first and second security gates spread apart. We’re ten meters from freedom.

“Good Sabbath,” I say.

“Good Sabbath, Father,” Don answers.

I let my foot fall onto the gas and burn metal through those two gates. Don’t exhale until we’re half a mile from the prison. I pull over to the shoulder, rip off the mask and throw it out the window. I’m hyperventilating.

“Oh god. Oh god,” I cry.

“Change with me,” Courtney says. “I’ll drive. You’re losing a lot of blood.”

I open the driver’s seat and tumble to the pavement. Courtney’s pale face appears over me, a full, poorly shaved moon.

“Come on,” he says, helping me up. I put my hand around his shoulders as he guides me to the passenger side door. He sniffs.

“Why do you smell like cooking oil?” he says.

“I was just in hell,” I say, collapsing into the passenger seat. “You’ll be surprised to know, hell looks a lot like a family restaurant.”

I close my eyes as Courtney starts to drive. Mindy makes a horrible sound behind me.

“We’re going straight to get you water,” Courtney says, and his voice sounds far away. “And I can get you hooked up to an IV.”

If Mindy responds, I don’t catch it. My head is swimming.

I roll down the window and dry wind from the open window blasts my cheeks. The dark hills in the distance rise and fall like the earth beneath them is breathing. I hear a high voice, whether it’s coming from Becky in the backseat, or the wind in my ears I can’t tell.

“My father, my king.”

 

I open my eyes and am looking at something I don’t quite understand. Swirls of white and brown. For a few seconds I think I’m staring at some kind of amazing coffee cake. And then as my vision focuses I realize it’s a water-stained ceiling. I turn my head to the left and suddenly everything hurts: jaws, neck, ribs, back, thigh. Feels like I got hit by a truck last night.

Courtney is sleeping in a bed beside me, snoring gently. Light streams in at the edges of the heavy curtains.

“Hey,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Hey!”

Courtney sighs and rolls over. Blinks at me.

“Morning,” he says. “How’s your thigh?”

With great effort, I turn my gaze down to my lower body. I’m wearing a pair of bright white underwear that I don’t recognize. My right thigh is swathed in a heavy bandage. I reach down, touch the cut and recoil.

“Hurts,” I say.

“Yeah. It’s pretty deep. But I cleaned it out really well last night. It’s probably gonna hurt to put weight on it for at least two weeks.”

“Where are we?” I say. “I don’t remember coming here.”

“Some motel on the way back to Denver,” he says.

“Why didn’t we go to the hospital?”

“They would have asked a lot of questions,” he says. “And we don’t know what the fallout of this is going to be. Besides, they couldn’t have done more than I did, short of give you a blood transfusion. But you didn’t need that. Mindy is next door on an IV. You can buy the fluid over the counter, you know.”

“Becky?” My voice sounds weird in my ears.

“I left her in bed,” Courtney says. “But this morning we’ll either need to get her to a clinic, or find her some heroin.”

I grimace. There aren’t many worse things to watch than someone withdrawing from heroin.

I try to sit up in bed, and Courtney throws off his covers and rushes over to me. He’s wearing a fresh white undershirt, straight out of the package.

“Whoa, whoa,” he says. “Just rest today. You probably shouldn’t walk.”

I settle back into the lumpy mattress.

“Did you walk into a Walgreens last night wearing a sackcloth?” I ask.

“Walmart Supercenter,” he says. “And you’d be surprised how well the cashier took it.”

“Can you get me some coffee? And something to eat?”

He yawns and stretches to the ceiling, pulling his T-shirt up to display his convex midriff.

“Okay. I’ll check on the girls and be back with coffee in a sec.”

He pulls on a new pair of jeans, and sneakers and leaves me alone in the room. I inspect my torso. There’s a nasty bruise that extends from my right hip all the way up my side. I poke it and groan in agony.

I rub my eyes and think about what happened last night. The face in the pool, the stairs, the diner . . .

Shooting him five times, point blank, and missing.

I wonder if Courtney tried calling the authorities last night, telling them about what’s going on in SCF, maybe omitting some of the wilder details. Doubt anyone’s going to believe that an inmate has been running that place for over a decade.

Still not sure I can believe it.

Courtney returns, way too quickly to have gone across the street.

“Where’s my coffee?” I ask.

The door slams shut. It’s not Courtney, it’s Mindy. She looks awful. Face raw and peeling from the sunburn. I see the dried blood on her wrist from where she must have pulled out her IV herself.

“Mindy?” I try to sit up and regret it. “What are you doing. You should rest.”

She ignores me, just starts tearing apart the room like a maniac. Flings the dresser drawers open, storms into the bathroom, then back out, and stares at me.

“Where are they?” she asks, voice so hoarse she sounds like the voice-changer Oliver used on the phone.

“Whoa, whoa. Sit down,” I say, nodding to Courtney’s bed. “You probably shouldn’t be walking around. Courtney’s bringing us some stuff from across the street.”

She drops to her knees and gropes under Courtney’s bed. I hear her grunt, and she pulls out the silk bag containing the books, and stands up. When she snatches the keys to the Hummer off the nightstand I grab her wrist.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.

“Let go of me,” she rasps.

“Give me the bag. I can’t let you—”

With her other hand she picks up the bedside lamp, and brings the heavy base down on my left shoulder. I hear an awful crack, and I go light-headed for a second.

“Jesus!” I scream. My entire arm goes numb and I lose my grip on her. She drops the lamp and heads for the door. I try to roll out of bed, and the movement on my shoulder takes my breath away. It’s broken.

“Mindy!” I yell. “Don’t be stupid! You think we can’t find you?”

She rushes out, slamming the door shut behind her.