The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(32)

“You’re reading my mind,” I told him. “I’ve got some interested parties who might want to join in on the fun. What I’m going to need, on your end, is logistical support. Specifically a few books in your back-room collection.”

Corman shook his head. “We can mail you a care package, but I gotta think everything gets searched and double-searched. They gonna let that through?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Antique books of black magic probably weren’t on the approved-items list. I could make do with just a few relevant pages once I knew exactly what I needed for the plan, but my gaze drifted to the big block-letter rules on the wall. No passing of materials between convict and visitors.

“But legal paperwork,” I said, thinking out loud. “I have a right to that, don’t I?”

Corman arched an eyebrow. “What’s the angle, kiddo?”

“Still figuring that out. You’re sure Perkins ran for the hills?”

“If he was subject to the same illusion we were,” Bentley said, “then he fully believes he lost the case. Remembers it happening, even. I don’t expect he’ll show his face anytime soon.”

A red-tinted light on the wall flashed and emitted a short, sharp electric buzz. Visiting hours were over.

“I’ll call you,” I said quickly, “and Emma Loomis—you remember her, from that whole Redemption Choir mess? She’s going to get in touch with you first thing in the morning. Tell her everything I told you. She’s trying to get a message to Caitlin.”

We all rose together, plastic chairs squeaking on the tile floor.

“Watch your ass, kiddo,” Corman told me, “and let us know once you’ve got a game plan.”

“You’ll know the second I do. Do me a favor: hit the books and see if you can find anything that resembles what Cassandra told me. It all sounded…archetypical. Like some weird-ass take on a tarot deck.” I thought back, rattling off the names I could remember. “The Prophet, the Enemy, the Paladin…the Thief, the Witch and her Knight. I think she said it all originated in some kind of story. Maybe a fairy tale, I don’t know. It’s worth following up on.”

Bentley held up a finger. “I’ll see what I can dig up. Just one question: how did you break the curse?”

“Easy,” I said. “C’mon, sentenced to life in prison? That’s how I knew something was fishy. You would have moved heaven and earth to get me out of here.”

Bentley smiled thinly, with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“You make the plan, son,” he said, “and we’ll warm up the bulldozers.”

*

We hid in plain sight. Down on the open floor, in clear view of the central guard tower and surrounded by milling convicts, I commandeered a folding table and Westie bummed a deck of cards. Jake and Paul joined us, a perfect foursome for bridge. That was what we pretended to play, anyway—ignoring our hands and idly flipping cards to look busy—while we talked it out in low, furtive voices.

“Seems to me,” I said, “the main road’s a no-go. No guarantee we can get out without setting off an alarm, and if we do, we’re sunk. The highway patrol will have roadblocks up on I-80 twenty minutes before we get there.”

Westie shot a glance over his shoulder. “The desert, then? We’ll stick out like a devil in church. Choppers’ll run us down before we make it five miles.”

“Not if we play it right. Paul, you said it could be done on an all-terrain vehicle. On my way to the visitor center, I saw a sign pointing toward the prison motor pool. Do the guards actually have an ATV?”

“I said it could be done,” he murmured into his cards, “and I also said you’d be seen by day and crash by night. There is no ‘right way.’”

“They got ’em, though,” Jake said. “I work the garage detail. They’ve got dune buggies, two of ’em. Supposedly for rescue and retrieval, in case some prisoner’s dumb enough to try to escape across the desert on foot, but mostly the guards just take ’em out to tear around and have fun after hours.”

“And they can go the distance?” I asked.

“Hell yeah they can. They’re Wildcat Sport XTs. Four-stroke engines, double A-arm suspension, front differential locks. Those babies can haul ass.”

“Which isn’t going to mean a thing,” Paul said, “when you ram straight into a boulder in the dark. Or run off a ridge and flip over. And forget daytime—I don’t care how fast they are, they’re not faster than a helicopter.”

“You work garage detail,” I said. “So you have access to those buggies?”

Jake snorted and slapped a couple of cards on the table. “Yeah, to wash and wax. All the keys are in a lockbox up in a guard booth, and there’s always at least one guy on duty, usually two. Might as well be sealed up in Fort Knox, for all the chance I’d have to snatch ’em. Garage detail mostly means cleaning the guards’ personal vehicles. That and scrubbing sand off the transfer buses.”

“So what’re you thinking about?” Westie asked me.

I laid my cards down, spreading them out on the table.

“Our exit strategy,” I said. “Here’s how we’re going to do it.”