pairs of shoes continued to drum against the wall.
“Damn!” Knox said. “You weren’t kidding about picking the wrong town to hide out in.” He rubbed at a cut on his face. “I talked to your buddies, by the way.”
“Which buddies?”
“You know which.”
“Are they okay? Tell me the truth. No bullshit.” Stone looked Knox directly in the eye.
“I didn’t do anything to them. And as far as I know, they’re fine.”
“They don’t know anything and did nothing. If we manage to get out of here you put that down in your report. This is about me, not them.”
“Okay.” He leaned close to Stone and whispered in his ear. “But they still managed to follow me up here.”
“You’re sure? You saw them?”
“Not exactly, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. At least the chick is up here. Susan, not that that’s her real name. Pretty sure she spun a story at a local diner that almost got my ass handed to me.”
“If she did, it was only out of friendship to me, Knox. She’s not worth going after. You’ve got me. That’s all Hayes wants anyway.”
“But still, you think they might figure out we ended up in here?”
“I’m not sure because even I can’t believe we’re here.”
Knox slapped his hand against the hard wall. “So how do you think they’re running a drug op from a supermax prison?”
“Haven’t gotten that all figured out yet. But it’s not like they have to worry about witnesses. They sort of have a captive audience.”
“And the prisoners might not even know. But I guess all the guards are in on it.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” said Stone thoughtfully.
“Why?”
“There was one guard who used to work here. He was killed in a deer hunting accident that I don’t think was so accidental. His name was Josh Coombs and I believe he stumbled onto what was going on here and paid the price for it.”
“Coombs? Also the name of the folks who got blown up.”
“Yeah. Willie knew Debby Randolph hadn’t killed herself. His mom’s in on it, I’m pretty sure. They used her to try and kill him with an overdose. When that didn’t work, they went for essentially a homegrown IED.”
“Mother killing her own son?”
“In a town called Divine. Yeah.”
The door to the cell was hit with a massive blow. Both men staggered to their feet and backed away.
“Shut up in there!” a man screamed through the door.
“Okay, we’re shutting up,” Knox said.
“I said shut up, assholes.”
Knox and Stone said nothing, just stared at the door.
“One more word and we’re extracting your asses.”
Silence.
“Okay, you asked for it. Walk over to the cuffing slot, turn around and extend your hands through the opening. Now!”
Stone and Knox looked at each other. Stone went first, extending his hands through the slot with his back facing the door. He was cuffed hard, his bony wrists slammed together and cut by the edge of the slot. Then Knox did the same.
“Now move away from the door,” the same voice barked.
Knox and Stone retreated to the back of the cell.
The door was opened and what happened next was only a blur.
Five body-armored men with face masks poured in carrying two huge inch-thick Plexiglas shields. They hit Knox and Stone hard, slamming them against the stone wall. Pepper spray hit them both in the eyes, even as Taser shots paralyzed them. They went down, wanting to claw at their eyes, but with limbs electrified stiff as a corpse and cuffed hands that wasn’t an option. They were stripped of their clothing, lifted into the air and hustled down the corridor. Thrown in a shower, they were hit with blasts of water, which at least helped ease the agony of the eye spray.
Picked up again, they were carried to a room that had two steel slabs covered in what looked to be urine and feces. They were smashed down on these hard cots and put in five-point restraints. Before the guards left they were Tasered once more.
“What the hell was that for?” Knox managed to scream as the current pounded him.
A guard with one stripe on his sleeve hit him in the mouth with his fist. “Not obeying orders. This ain’t like other prisons, old man. This is Dead Rock. Don’t know what prison you come from but you get no warnings up here, boy. No damn warnings. And just so’s you know, I can Taser your ass just for the hell of it. ’Cause my old lady didn’t blow me, or ’cause my dog shit on the rug.”
“I work for the CIA.”
“Sure you do. Hey, fellows, we got us a spy right here. Bet your friend is KGB.”
He walked to the next slab and smacked Stone in the face. “You KGB, Grandpa?” The guard reached a gloved hand down to Stone’s crotch and squeezed. “I asked you a question, old man.”
Stone didn’t say anything; he just looked at the guard, remembering every detail of his face through the clear mask. And he suddenly recognized him too. He was one of the men with the baseball bats who’d beaten up Danny and then come after him. This was the third one, the coward who’d run for it, but Stone had still managed to nail him in the back with one of the bats.
“You ever tell your buddies you ran out on them?” he said quietly as the Taser sting wore off.
The guard gave a nervous, hollow laugh under the burn of Stone’s gaze, glanced at the other guards and took his hand away. As he was leaving the room with the other guards, Stone managed, despite the restraints, to turn his head just enough to keep his eyes on the fellow. Then the door closed.
“I guess they’re trying to break us quick,” groaned Knox.
“They’ll have to work harder.”
“You think so, do you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Something in his voice made Knox glance over at him. “Were you ever a POW?”
“Six months. This place is actually pretty nice compared to what the Viet Cong thought was humane. All I had there was a pit with a sheet over it, beatings whenever they felt like it, along with an interrogation technique that would make waterboarding seem like dunking for apples. And the food they threw down once a day would not be considered edible by any stretch of the imagination.”
“But we’re not twenty years old anymore, Carr.”
“Call me Oliver, Carr is dead.”
“Okay, but we’re still not twenty.”
“It’s all in the mind, Knox. It’s all in the mind. If we don’t believe they can break us they never will.”
“Yeah, sure,” Knox said, clearly unconvinced of this.
“You got any family?”
“Son and daughter. My boy’s in the Marines stationed in the Middle East. My daughter’s a lawyer in D.C.”
“I had a daughter. But she died. How about your wife?”
“Dead.”
“So’s mine.”
“Brunswick, Georgia? Claire?”
Stone didn’t say anything.
“Guy named Harry Finn said that Simpson admitted to having her killed. That he ordered a CIA hit on you and your family.”
Stone stared at the ceiling, slowly flexing his limbs against the thick leather bindings. “Harry’s a good guy. Knows how to cover your back.”
“I’m sorry about your family . . . Oliver,” he murmured.
“Get some sleep, Knox. Just get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
Stone closed his eyes.
A few minutes later an exhausted Joe Knox did the same.
CHAPTER 64
“WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME,” Caleb said.
The three of them were sitting around an old picnic table in a small clearing off the main road to Divine. A meal Annabelle had purchased at Rita’s was on the table. Reuben gnawed on a piece of fried chicken while Annabelle glared at Caleb.
“I’m open to suggestions,” she said.
“Maybe Alex can help,” suggested Caleb as h
e carefully picked the skin off his piece of chicken.
“Help what, screw things up?”
“We talked about Alex, Annabelle,” retorted Reuben. “He’s as professional and brave as they make ’em. And I think Caleb’s got something.”
“What do you expect him to do, come running to help us? It’ll mess up his career. You heard him.”
“You can always ask.”
“Why me?”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” said Reuben. “Anything to help Oliver.”
Annabelle stared at each man, sighed and pulled out her phone. “No, I’ll do it.”
A minute later she said, “Alex?”
“Annabelle? You okay?”
“I—” She stopped. “We need a favor.”
Five minutes later she clicked off.
“Well?” Reuben and Caleb asked together.
“He’s going to help us. He’s coming up here, in fact.”
Reuben slapped Caleb on the back, almost sending him headfirst into a tub of potato salad.
“I knew it. Friendship is thicker than official duty.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see, won’t we?” she murmured. “But in the meantime we can’t just sit on our butts. We need to keep digging away.”
Reuben tossed the bones of his chicken breast into the woods, wiped his mouth and balled up his napkin. “I’m ready to roll. I’ll do a recon of the area, see if anything hits me.”
“And me and Caleb?”
“Talk to some more people in town. And Caleb stays with you. Remember there’s a killer on the loose. We’ll meet back here later.”
“I’m worried about that reporter,” said Annabelle. “Even if we find Oliver, that guy could screw it all up. I didn’t like his look. It was like he’d just suddenly figured something out.”
Caleb said, “Well, maybe we have to convince him it would not be in his best interests to follow any of that up.”
Annabelle considered this suggestion. “I think you might be right.”
Reuben drove off on his Indian while Caleb and Annabelle headed back into Divine. When they reached the main street Annabelle had Caleb park near the courthouse.
“The sheriff told me that Willie Coombs’ mom works at the courthouse as the clerk. I want to see if I can get a word with her.”
Caleb looked around and his eyes brightened as his gaze fell on the library.
“I think I see something I can do,” he said. “But if you need a bodyguard, I can hang with you. Like Reuben said, there is a murderer on the loose.”
She gave him a gracious smile. “I appreciate the offer, killer, but I think I’ll be fine. The sheriff’s office is just right next door.”
Caleb headed off and Annabelle went inside the courthouse.
Shirley Coombs looked up from her desk when the door opened. Annabelle introduced herself and said why she was there. Though Annabelle couldn’t know it, Shirley Coombs looked as though she’d aged several decades.
“I’m really sorry about your son.”
Shirley eyed her suspiciously. “Did you know Willie?”
“No, but Sheriff Tyree told me what happened.”
“Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children,” she said in a hushed tone and then lit up a cigarette; her fingers shook so badly she was barely able to work the Zippo.
“No, ma’am, they’re not.”
“Lost my husband too. In an accident,” she said quickly. “And my daddy in a mine cave-in.”
“God, that’s awful.”
“Yeah, life is just awful, ain’t it?” she said sarcastically. “What can I do for you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me something about my dad.”
“I never met him,” she said immediately.
Annabelle studied the woman closely without appearing to do so.
Okay, that was a lie.
She looked over at the stack of boxes.
Shirley said, “Got a lot of work to do.”
“I’m sure. I’m really worried about my father.”
“Somebody told me he was heading out of town.”
“Who was that?”
“Don’t recall. Probably heard it over at Rita’s.”
“You’re friends with Abby Riker?”
At that moment an interior door opened and Judge Mosley ambled out. He wore a suit and held his driving cap in one hand.
“Shirley, I’m—” He broke off when he saw Annabelle. His smile was instant.
“Well, who is this?”
Annabelle shook his hand and felt his fingers linger just a beat too long on hers. She explained who she was and why she was here.
“Ben seemed to be a very interesting man,” said Mosley. “I wish I’d gotten to know him better. I hope you find him. Well, I have to be off.”
“Up to the prison, Judge?” said Shirley.
“That’s right.” He turned to Annabelle. “I go up there once a week and resolve disputes between the prisoners and the guards. And there are many, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sure.”
“Rehabilitation is the key,” he said. “Although not many of the folks at Blue Spruce will ever see the light of day as free men, they still deserve some respect and dignity.”
“That’s what Josh thought,” blurted out Shirley.
They turned to look at her.
She reddened. “My husband. He was a guard up there.” She glanced at Annabelle. “He’s the one who died in the . . . accident. He thought you should treat folks with respect regardless of what they’ve done, prisoner or not.”
“Exactly,” said Mosley. “I would be the first to admit that Howard Tyree is not exactly sold on that concept, but that’s why it bears repeating. And my weekly presence I hope lets everyone see that common ground in fact can be reached.”
“Howard Tyree?” said Annabelle sharply.
“He’s the sheriff’s brother,” answered Shirley. “The warden up at Dead Rock.”
Mosley smiled at Annabelle. “Its official name is Blue Spruce, but folks ’round here call it Dead Rock.”
Shirley snapped, “They call it Dead Rock because a bunch of miners got trapped in a cave-in. Never could get to them. Sealed up in there and they built a damn prison on top of them. And one of ’em was my daddy.”
Tears smeared Shirley’s mascara while Annabelle and Mosley looked politely away. The judge finally said, “Mining is a very dangerous business.”
“I can see that,” replied Annabelle.
“Well, good day, ladies.”
After he’d gone, Annabelle rose. “I guess I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Sorry I couldn’t help you,” Shirley said gruffly.