The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(18)

The way I saw it, the cafeteria was a hair’s breadth from going nuclear. One wrong move, one jostle or a second of eye contact with the wrong person, and blood would spill.

I wasn’t sure what worried me more: standing at ground zero in the heart of a riot, or the idea of being locked in a cell for a month afterward.

“Okay,” Paul told me, wagging his spoon at his mashed-potato map. “It’s like this: we’re in the middle of a desert.”

“You don’t say,” Jake muttered.

“Nearest town is Aberdeen, thirty miles south. This two-lane road was built at the same time the prison was. Most of the guards, support staff, even the warden lives in Aberdeen. Interstate 80 brushes the edge of town, heading east and west. Those are pretty much your only travel options.”

“So you need wheels to get out of here,” I said, thinking it through. “You’ll die on foot in the heat. And by the time you reach Aberdeen—”

Paul tapped the mashed-potato road with his spoon. “You got it. Total lockdown. All they have to do is put two roadblocks on I-80 and you aren’t going anywhere. Most escapees either get caught at the roadblock or on the way there. Nobody’s ever gotten farther than that.”

“Why take the road at all?” Jake asked. “It’s a desert. Just pick a direction and ride.”

Paul shook his head. “It’s not a flat desert. Sand dunes, drifts, rocks…yeah, you could do it in an ATV, easy—but only if you can see where you’re going. Do it during the day, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Helicopters’ll spot you in seconds. Do it at night, without headlights, you’ll end up in a wreck before you make it five miles.”

“Why do you wanna know anyway?” Westie asked me.

I shrugged.

“I’ve got restaurant reservations. Don’t want to be late.”

*

After lights out, I rested on my back on the slab of concrete that passed for a bunk and tried to ignore the cold. The Iceberg earned its name after sunset. I imagined arctic wind whistling over a frozen tombstone. And there, under the snow and the permafrost, entombed I lay.

Thinking.

I’d already spent all the time I wanted behind bars. And the amount of time I wanted was zero. I was leaving, and I didn’t care if I had to climb a mountain of corpses to do it.

Couldn’t be reckless, though. While my reptile brain thrashed its tail against the back of my skull, kicking me into fight or flight, I clamped down hard and forced myself to think it through. Going off half-cocked would just get me shot or worse. I needed a plan.

So nobody had ever successfully escaped from Eisenberg Correctional. I was willing to bet they’d never had a prisoner like me, but then again, that was probably what every other would-be escapee thought before he ate a bullet. The prison, the town, the highway…I played around with my mental map for a while, floating possibility after possibility like helium balloons and shooting each one down.

That was fine, for now. A solo escape act was my last resort. If I could crack the curse around my imaginary “trial” and get somebody in authority to see I’d gone from arrest to prison in the blink of an eye, that would solve everything. The confusion would at least be enough to gum up the legal works. All I needed was a hearing, and then I’d be on my way to a country with no extradition treaty faster than you could say “bail money.” If nothing else, worst-case scenario, they’d have to move me to a county jail until everything was sorted out.

It’d be a hell of a lot easier to break out of county.

Speaking of hell, Caitlin would be back to Vegas in a few days, and she wouldn’t waste any time trying to track me down. Did I have that long, though? If Nadine was telling the truth—and I couldn’t find a good reason to doubt her, much as I tried—I could expect a hired killer or two to come hunting for me. Soon. It was in my best interest to be long gone before that happened.

No, waiting for Caitlin to find me was too risky. I needed to take this bull by the horns and find a way to get word to the outside. I had a few thoughts in that direction, but my head kept coming around to Fleiss. I couldn’t figure out why she wanted me dead—she and I were going to have a chat about that as soon as I got loose. For now, though, I was a sitting duck in here. I needed a weapon. Not a sharpened broom handle or a razor blade either. My kind of weapon.

No grimoires, no ritual tools, no herbs or oils, no privacy. Trying to do magic behind bars was like trying to build a nuke with a nine-volt battery and some chewing gum. Still, I knew one spell that would get me exactly what I needed.

A spell I’d only cast once in my entire life, for a damn good reason.





10.




Her name was Jenna Rearden, and she kept her hands clasped tight before her, like a penitent nun, to keep them from shaking. It wasn’t me she was afraid of.

Not entirely me, anyway. This wasn’t long after I’d broken company with Nicky Agnelli. A heist went bad, shook my confidence, threw me off my game. Instead of getting back on Nicky’s payroll, I shifted gears and tried something new. I hung out my metaphorical shingle, offering vengeance for hire. Dirty deeds done at premium prices.

It was mostly curse work, though I passed myself off to my clients as a mundane “fixer” who could arrange convenient accidents for anyone who had done them wrong. Cheating spouse? Sexually harassing boss? Cross my palm with silver, and I could make your problems go away.