The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(14)

Then he’d laid out his terms. If I remained a free man, I owed him cash, and a lot of it. If I went behind bars, and I could help his buddy out, we’d be square. I had completely put the offer out of my mind. After all, no way I would end up in prison, right?

Right.

“Lucky for you,” I said, “it looks like I might be stuck here for a few days. What’s going on?”

“I’m Jake,” the biker with the eagle tat said, then nodded at the Irishman, “and this is Westie.”

We shook hands like gentlemen.

“I got transferred over from Ely with three other guys,” Westie said. “Overcrowding, they said. That was three months ago. Today? I’m the only one left. We’re getting whittled down, one by one.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Jake added. “Two of my brothers got it, too. Two of the biggest badasses in the whole MC, gone just like that.”

“When you say ‘gone’…”

Westie took a deep breath. “It started with T-Bolt. My cellmate. One night, I wake up to hear the door rattling open. Then suddenly there’s a big-ass flashlight in my face. Damn CRT bum-rushed us.”

“Cell Reclamation Team,” Jake explained. “Guards trained to go in if a con barricades himself in a cell. Riot shields, padded armor, and pepper spray. They work in teams of four.”

Westie looked to the fence, his gaze distant.

“Yeah, but we sure as hell weren’t starting a riot. We were sleeping. They keep the light in my eyes, tell me not to move a muscle if I don’t want to eat a Taser, and they grab T-Bolt. And that was the last time I saw him. Have you met Zap? He’s a trustee, got his fingers in all the warden’s records. He checks it out, and get this: it was written up as a standard ‘housing change order.’ Says T-Bolt got moved to Hive B, with no reason given.”

“Same deal with my brother Sledge,” Jake said. “Got cut up in a scuffle with the Mexicans. Three measly stitches. Two nights later, guards grab him and hustle him out of the cell. Same paperwork, Zap said. Transfer to Hive B. I was awake, man. I saw them drag Sledge out. He had a bag on his head, like it’s goddamn Guantanamo Bay in here.”

I wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me, but they had my attention. “So what’s the word from Hive B?”

“There isn’t one,” Jake said. “Hive B’s been in lockdown for a little over a year. The whole damn thing. No word in or out. Guards get rotated between hives, but they won’t help.”

“Did I hear you right?” I asked. “They’ve been keeping an entire wing of prisoners in their cells for over a year? Is that even legal?”

Westie spat into the dust. “Said it was because of a riot. Wasn’t any damn riot. One day they just sealed it up like a tomb and that was that.”

“It gets weirder,” Jake said. “This has been happening like clockwork for a couple of months now. Once a week or so, middle of the night, CRT rolls in and one of us gets dragged off. I just spent a couple of days in Ad Seg after a fight. Down in the hole, my next-door neighbor came from Hive A. According to him, the exact same thing happened in his hive for about three months before it suddenly stopped.”

“And started in up Hive C,” I guessed. “Like they didn’t want to snatch too many people from one place. Better to keep the panic down.”

“That’s right,” Jake said.

“So what do you think this is all about?”

“You got me,” he replied, “but…Winslow says you can do things. I mean, we all heard stories about that thing with his sister…”

Jake shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. I noticed Brisco had his eye on the three of us. He still held court at his picnic table, surrounded by his entourage, but he couldn’t help glancing our way.

“What does Brisco say about all this?”

“Nothing,” Westie said, “and we’re not supposed to talk about it either. He thinks if we make waves, it’ll just make things worse.”

Jake snorted. “Brisco’s scared as shit. This isn’t something he can deal with, and he knows it. And that makes him look weak. So he’s playing ostrich, hoping the whole mess will just go away if he ignores it long enough.”

Great, I thought. So if I swoop in and start playing detective, it’ll look like I’m trying to show him up. That doesn’t bode well for my health.

On the other hand, what choice did I have? Bad enough I was trapped in here, but now I could wake up with a bag over my head and a one-way transfer to a hive in permanent lockdown. Brisco might have felt safe sticking his head in the sand, but I was a little more proactive when it came to staying alive.

“All right,” I said, “here’s the deal. I’ll check it out and see what I can learn about your missing friends. But as far as anybody knows, I turned you down flat. In fact, we never had this conversation. When Brisco or one of his guys asks—and they are gonna ask—you came over to talk about the debt I owe Winslow.”

“A lot of these guys would sleep easier knowing you’re on the job,” Jake said.

“And I wouldn’t sleep easier if Brisco thought I was making him look like a chump. I need to be discreet about this.”

Easier said than done in a prison where guards were watching my every move. Guards who, according to Jake and Westie, were neck-deep in this whole mess. There were a hundred ways to die behind bars, and I kept discovering brand-new ones.