He stepped into the office and cast a knowing glance my way before settling behind his desk. Neil was a balding ex-athlete who still had a fairly nice physique despite his obvious fondness for libation.
“Have you seen him?” he asked, getting right to the point. He was going to be all business for the time being. That worked. And it made sense that he wanted to know where Reyes was, him being the deputy warden of the prison Reyes essentially escaped from and all.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“You mean, you don’t know where he is?” He sounded agitated.
“No.” I tried to sound agitated right back.
He breathed a weary sigh, dropping his deputy warden persona, and his next statement surprised me more than I wanted to admit. “We have to find him, Charley. We can’t let the U.S. marshals get to him first.”
Alarm spiked within me. “What makes you say that?”
“Because it’s Reyes Farrow,” he said, his tone sardonic. “I’ve seen what he’s capable of. I’ve seen what he can do with pure skill. God only knows what he could do with an actual weapon in his hands.” He scrubbed his face with his fingers, then added, “You know better than I do what he’s capable of.”
He was right. I knew a hell of a lot more than he did. If Neil was anywhere near the town of Clued In, he’d really be freaking.
“They won’t be able to stop him,” he continued, his expression dire. “And when they can’t stop him, they will use any means necessary to bring him down.”
The thought of Reyes being taken down by a group of marshals clamped and glued my teeth together for a long moment, squeezed the chambers in my heart shut. Reyes said it himself. In human form, he was vulnerable. He could be taken down. I wasn’t sure how far Neil would go to help me help Reyes, but I was about to find out. And if I wanted him to trust me, I’d have to trust him. Though the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would be too much and could do more harm than good, Neil had seen enough to know Reyes was a different animal. I would use that knowledge to reel him in while leaving those pesky little facts that incorporated words like grim and reaper and son of Satan for another day.
“I don’t know where he is,” I said, taking a gargantuan leap of faith, “but I do know he’s being hunted and he’s hurt.”
What I said startled him. While his expression remained impassive—a true connoisseur of the ever-popular poker face—his emotions lurched at my statement, and I knew in that moment I’d found a true ally. He wasn’t angry with me for having such knowledge about Reyes or hungry for the hunt that would bring his prisoner down. No visceral lust shimmered in his eyes at the thought of the accolades he would receive for capturing an escaped convict.
No, Neil was afraid. He seemed to genuinely care for Reyes. The realization surprised me. Neil worked with hundreds of convicts on a daily basis. Surely compassion fatigue played a big role in his profession. One would think frustration alone would keep any feelings of true concern at bay. But I could feel it. I could feel the connection he had with Reyes. Maybe he’d formed an attachment after having Reyes as a prisoner for so long, knowing all the while he was something more, something not entirely human. Either way, I could have kissed him on the mouth right then and there if he hadn’t been such a jerk to me in high school. Relief at having Neil on my side through this, on Reyes’s side, eased the tension in my stomach, if only minutely.
“How do you know he’s hurt?” he asked, and I could literally feel the emotions warring within him. Concern. Empathy. Dread. They pushed forward and swirled through me like a suffocating smoke.
I blinked through it and concentrated. “I’m going to tell you something,” I said, hoping that leap of faith wouldn’t come to a crash landing in a cactus patch. ’Cause that shit was painful. “And you know that whole open-minded thing you’ve got going here?”
He hesitated, wondering what I was up to, then offered me a wary nod.
I leaned forward, softened my voice to hopefully lessen the blow. “Reyes is a supernatural entity.” When he didn’t react, didn’t even blink, I continued. Mostly ’cause I really, really needed his help. And a little because I was curious how far I could go. How far he would go to learn the truth. “I mean, I have a little supernatural mojo myself, but I’m nothing like him.”
After a long, thoughtful moment, he covered his face with his palms and looked at me through his splayed fingers. “I’m losing it,” he said. Then, rethinking his verb tense, he added, “No. I take that back. I’ve lost it. It’s a done deal. There’s no hope for me now.”
“Okey dokey,” I said, shifting in my seat. I figured I’d just go along with it. No judging. No jumping to conclusions. No buying him a straitjacket for Christmas.
He pressed a button on his speakerphone.
“Yes, sir?” came the immediate response. She was good.
“Luann, I need you to have me committed ASAP. Yesterday, if possible.”
“Of course, sir. Any particular program?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Anything will do. Just use your best judgment.”
“I’ll get on it immediately, sir.”
“She’s a good egg,” he said when Luann disconnected the call.
“She seems like it. And you’re having yourself committed because?”
He scowled at me like his mental breakdown was my fault. “As much as it pains me to admit this, I believe you.”
I fought to keep a relieved grin from surfacing.
“No, I mean, I believe believe you. As if you’d just told me you had a flat tire or it was cloudy out. Like what you said is just an everyday thing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to get worked up about.”
Man, he had changed a lot since high school. And I didn’t just mean the beer pooch and receding hairline. “And that’s bad?”
“Of course it’s bad. I work in a prison, for God’s sake. Things like this just don’t happen in my world. And yet, every bone in my body is accepting the fact that Reyes is a supernatural entity. I’d sooner doubt the weatherman, at this point.”
“Everybody doubts the weatherman, and you’re in my world now,” I said with a grin. “My world is supercool. But I told you that for a reason.”
He refocused on me and raised his brows in question.
“I need your help. I need to know who’s been visiting Reyes.”
“And you need that information because?”
“Because I need to find his body.”
“He’s dead?” Neil shouted in alarm. He jumped up and walked around to me.
“No, Neil, calm down.” I held up my palms in surrender. “He’s not dead. Or, well, I don’t think he’s dead. But he will be soon. I have to find his body. Like I said, he’s hurt. Bad.”
“And you’re thinking someone might be harboring him? Someone who’s come to visit.”
“Exactly.”
He turned and punched a button on his speakerphone again. “Luann, can you get me the names of everyone who’s visited Reyes Farrow in the last year? And I need to know who he’s requested be put on his visitation list, whether they were approved by the state or not.”
“Would you like that information before or after I have you committed, sir?”
He pursed his mouth in thought. Making a decision, he said, “Before. Definitely before.”
“I’ll get them immediately.”
“I just love her use of the word immediately,” I said, vowing to introduce the concept to Cookie. “So, visitors have to be approved?”
“Yes.” He sat back down behind his desk. “The inmate has to turn in anyone’s name he wants to receive visitations from; then that person has to fill out an application, which is submitted to the state for approval before he or she can visit. So let’s get back to this supernatural thing,” he said, a tinge of mystery in his eyes.
“Okay.”
“Are you psychic? Is that how you know Farrow is hurt?”
Always with th
e PS-word. “No. Not especially. Not in the way that you mean. I can’t predict the future or tell you about the past.” When he eyed me doubtfully, I said, “Seriously, I can barely remember last week. The past is a blur, like fog only blurrier.”
“Okay, then what do you mean by supernatural?”
I thought again about telling him the truth, but just as quickly decided against it. I didn’t want to lose him, but I didn’t want to lie to him either. This was a guy who’d worked with convicted felons for over a decade. Deceivers one and all.
I studied the speckled pattern of his carpet, trying to figure out what to say. I hated the uncertainty of how much to tell someone, how much to hold back. The problem with telling people the truth was that by my doing so, their lives were forever altered. Their perspective forever skewed. Since most people would never believe a word of it anyway, I was rarely put in such a precarious position. But Neil had seen things. He knew Reyes was more powerful than any man he’d ever met. He knew I could see things others couldn’t. But there was a line, a limit to what the human mind could accept as reality. If I crossed it, I would lose his cooperation and his friendship. Not that I really gave a crap about his friendship, but still.
“Neil, I don’t want to lie to you.”
“And I don’t want to be lied to, so this whole thing should be pretty cut and dry.”
With a deep sigh, I said, “If I tell you the truth … let’s just say you won’t sleep well at night. Ever again.”
He tapped a pen on his desk in thought. “I have to be honest, Charley, I haven’t slept all that well since your last visit a couple of weeks ago.”
Damn. I knew it. I’d already screwed up his world.
“I could be wrong,” he continued, “but I’m certain I would sleep better if I knew the whole story. It’s the bits and pieces that are kicking my ass. Nothing is solid anymore. Nothing fits. I feel like the foundation of everything I’ve ever believed in is crumbling beneath my feet and I am losing my grip on what’s real and what’s not.”
“Neil, if I tell you more, the last thing that knowledge will do is help you get a stronger grip on reality.”
“Can we agree to disagree?”
“No.”
“So we are disagreeing?”
“No.”
“So we’re in agreement?”
“No.”
“Then let me put it this way.” He leaned forward with an evil, evil grin. “If you want a gander at those visitation records, I want to know everything.”
Did he just use the word gander? “I don’t think I can do that to you,” I said with regret.
“Yeah? Well, maybe I didn’t tell you everything either.”
My brows snapped together. “What do you mean?”
“Do you honestly think that one little story I told you about Reyes was everything?”
The first time I’d visited, Neil told me the most amazing story. He had just started working at the prison when he witnessed Reyes, a twenty-year-old kid at the time, take down three of the most deadly men in the state without breaking a sweat. It was over before Neil could even call for backup. That’s when he knew Reyes was different.
“Do you think that was all there was to tell?” he asked. I half expected an evil laugh. “I have dozens of stories. Things that … things that are impossible to explain.” He shook his head as he contemplated what I could tell was a plethora of unexplainable phenomena. I tried not to drool. “And quite honestly, Charley, I need an explanation. Call it the scientist in me,” he added with a shrug of his brows.
“You sucked at science.”
“It’s grown on me.”
He wasn’t giving up. I could see the determination in his eyes. That same determination that took our high school football team to state three years in a row. Damn it.
“Tell you what,” I said, slipping into negotiation mode. “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
“So I have to go first, is that what you’re saying?”
I smiled in affirmation.
“Damn it. I always have to go first, then half the time, you girls chicken out and run away before showing me yours.”
He’d clearly had too much experience in that area. “You don’t trust me?” I asked, trying really hard to be appalled.
His mouth thinned. “Not even a little.”
I indicated our surroundings with turned-up palms. “Dude, we’re in a prison. If I don’t hold up my part of the bargain, you can put me in solitary until I do.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
I wanted more, needed more as much as I needed air. My appetite to learn as much as possible about Reyes was insatiable. “You can get it in blood.”
After a long, thoughtful sigh, he said, “I guess blood won’t be necessary. I’ll give you one of the highlights.” He worked his lower lip a moment before choosing. “Okay, there was this one time when I was still a guard, we’d received word that a fight was going to break out. A bad one between South Side and the Aryans. The tension was so thick that by the third day we knew something was going to happen. The men gathered in the yard, eyed each other, inched closer and closer until the shot caller of each gang was nose to nose. And right in the middle of it stood Farrow. We were surprised.”
“Why were you surprised?” I asked, certain my eyes were wide with wonder.
“Because he had no affiliation. It’s rare, but every once in a while, an inmate will go it alone. And he did. Quite successfully.”
“So, he’s in the middle of this fight?” Even though I knew Reyes was okay, my heart still stumbled at the thought.
“Smack dab. We couldn’t believe it. Then men started dropping. As Farrow wound his way through the inmates, man after man fell to the ground. They just passed out.” He paused, lost in thought.
“What happened next?” I asked, my voice full of awe.
“When Farrow got to the shot callers, he spoke to them. By that time, most of the others were backing off, a look of astonishment on some of their faces, fear on others. The shots glanced around, realized what was happening, then the one from South Side showed his palms and backed off. But the Aryan grew furious. I think he felt Farrow was betraying his race or something.”
“They’re so testy about that sort of thing.”
Neil nodded. “The Aryan got in Farrow’s face and started yelling. Then, before anyone knew what’d happened, he just crumbled to the ground.”
I flew to my feet and laid my palms on Neil’s desk. “What did Reyes do?”
He looked up at me. “We didn’t know at first, but he touched them, Charley. Surveillance showed him walking through the crowd and touching them on the shoulder. And they dropped like flies.”
I stood with my mouth agape probably much longer than was appropriate.
“The guards rushed in, found their weapons, searched everyone else, and put the whole place on lockdown.” Neil shook his head as he thought back. “There’s no telling how many lives were saved that day. Including mine.”
That surprised me. “Why yours?”
He studied his hands a moment before answering. “I’m not as brave as I pretend to be, Charley. The Aryans had made a promise to come after me. I’d pissed one of them off when I put him in lockdown after he threw a tray at another inmate.” Neil stared hard. “I would never have made it out of there alive. I know that. And I was scared shitless.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of, Neil.” I chastised him with a glare then stated the obvious. “So, he saved your life, too.”
“And I’m eager to return the favor.”
“Let me ask you something,” I said, a suspicion niggling the back of my mind. Reyes’s best friend from high school had also been his cellmate. “His cellmate Amador Sanchez didn’t happen to be affiliated with South Side, did he?”
He thought back. “Yes, actually, I think he was.”
Interesting. I wondered had that not been the case would Reyes have done anything.
“I think Farrow would have stopped the fight nonetheless,” Neil said, as if reading my mind.
“Why do you say that?”
“When we stormed onto the yard, I went straight for him. I wanted to make sure nobody else went after him. Partly because I didn’t want him hurt and partly because I knew a little of what he was capable of. I didn’t want any of my coworkers hurt either. I ordered him down and kneeled beside him as the tactical team launched tear gas into the yard. I had a gas mask on, but I leaned down to him.… I just had to know.”
“Know what?”
“I asked him why he stopped the fight.”
“What did he say?”
“At first he denied it. Said he didn’t know what I was talking about, then refused to say anything else, but that could have been the tear gas.”
“Then later?”
“When we were marching the men inside for lockdown, he leaned into me as he waited his turn to be searched and told me he’d seen enough war to last a thousand lifetimes.”
Knowing exactly what Reyes had been talking about, I swallowed hard.
Neil fixed a curious gaze on me. “What did he mean? He’s certainly never been in an actual war, and I figured you might be able to answer that one.” He laced his fingers together. “I believe it’s your turn.”
Okay, I had to be honest with him, but I couldn’t tell him everything. That wouldn’t be fair to Reyes. I would tell him only what I had to. “I’m not sure how to say this,” I offered hesitantly, “but Reyes has definitely seen war, tons of it.” I watched Neil, studied him to gauge his reactions. “He was a general in an army for centuries, just not an army from this world.”
“He’s an alien?” Neil almost shouted.
“No,” I said, trying not to laugh. “He’s not. I can’t tell you everything.… He’s just a supernatural entity.”