The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(15)

I went back to my cell. I needed what little privacy I could get to come up with a plan of attack. That didn’t last long. The sound of a truncheon rapping against the bars jolted me from my thoughts.

“Faust,” a guard at the cell door said, looking dead-eyed and bored. “You’ve got a visitor.”

He walked me off the hive, down corridors of slab rock painted pea-soup green. I swallowed my excitement, breathed deep to slow my pounding heart, and took mental notes. We paused at two checkpoints along the way, waiting as he flashed his ID and a guard on the other side flipped a switch to make the gate rattle open.

I counted guards and guns. Studied the consoles we passed and whether they needed keys or cards to operate. Checked for mirrors, windows, and blind spots as I built up my mental map of Eisenberg Correctional.

Every iceberg has cracks. And every prison has a weakness. If I stayed sharp and kept my eyes open, I’d find my way out.

All that faded away, though, as we stopped beside a painted stencil reading “VISITOR CENTER” in big block letters. A visitor was a lifeline. A visitor meant my friends had found me.

A visitor was a taste of home.

I held out my arms in a T pose, and the guard patted me down from neck to toe. It was a thorough job, down to making me open my mouth and wriggle my tongue from side to side while he flashed a penlight across my tonsils. At least it wasn’t a strip search, I figured. At that moment, it didn’t matter. Anything to get me through that door.

The visitor center wasn’t much to write home about. Just a stark white-walled lounge with a scattering of round tables and cheap folding chairs and a couple of vending machines humming in a corner alcove. A sign plastered to one wall screamed out the rules in two-inch-high letters.

No physical contact.

No passing of materials between convict and visitors.

Only visitors may operate the vending machines.

No items from the vending machines may be taken back to the hives.

Visitations may be terminated at any time at the supervising officer’s discretion.



A few men sat spread out at the tables with heir visitors, talking in hushed tones. I saw wives, children, a toddler who had to be pulled back before she could clamber into her daddy’s lap. Family. Not my family, though. I glanced around, trying to spot my visitor, hope soaring. Then I saw her, flashing an eager smile my way.

“Well, hello, lover.”

Nadine.





8.




My heart sank like a stone in the ocean, my lifeline cut.

Nadine extended a hand, beckoning me to a table in the back corner. Her blond bob gleamed like spun gold under the harsh fluorescent lights. She’d dressed for the occasion, wearing a stylish sweater with muted black and white stripes. Cute.

“You like?” she asked, following my gaze.

“You’re behind the times,” I said. “Cons mostly wear orange jumpsuits now.”

“How…seventies of them. I think I’ll pass.”

As I came close, she reached for my hand. I barely had time to flinch before one of the officers—spread out along the walls like angry statues—stepped in.

“No physical contact,” he barked.

She frowned and sat down. I pulled out a chair on the far side of the table. Nadine might have been the last person in the world I’d want to speak to under normal circumstances, but these weren’t normal circumstances. And at this moment, any familiar face—even an enemy’s—was a tiny comfort.

“In the 1930s,” she murmured, “Henry Harlow conducted experiments on rhesus monkeys to study the effects of maternal and social deprivation. He subjected them to long-term isolation, denied them affection, even simple touch. The monkeys went quite mad. Primates need to be touched, regularly and with care, to stay healthy. It’s ingrained in your brain chemistry.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m just wondering how long your sanity will last.” She held up a smooth, pale hand. “Can you feel it? That hungry crawling beneath your skin? The pain of knowing you’ll never feel a tender touch upon your body again? Wouldn’t you kill for the comfort of a gentle embrace, even mine? It must be torture.”

I didn’t answer. I turned my chair at an angle, looked at the wall, and fell into a sullen silence. I figured I’d wait until she had something useful to say.

“I came to your trial,” she told me, “every single day.”

“No. You really didn’t.” I paused. “But tell me the truth: do you actually remember a trial? How long has it been since we last saw each other?”

Her ruby lips pursed in a pout. “What kind of a question is that? You know when it was. The airport in Chicago. About four months ago.”

Except it was yesterday, I thought, my hope draining like sand through a sieve. There had to be a way to break this curse, to force someone to see the blatant contradiction.

“Before they took your belongings away,” Nadine said, “did you happen to open the envelope?”

The envelope. The ticking time bomb she’d dropped in my lap at O’Hare. Containing, allegedly, proof that Caitlin was out to stab me in the back. No, I hadn’t opened it. I hadn’t thrown it away either.

“Is that what you came here for?”

“No. I came here as an emissary of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. To show our respect and prove that we want you on our team.”