The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(34)

Paul looked down at the cards in his hands, like he was searching for some meaning there, or just a little good advice. His shoulders slumped.

“This is reckless, stupid, and probably going to get us all killed,” he said with a sigh, “but maybe that’s better than another forty years in this hellhole. Sure. What the hell. I’m in. What about the Prof? Are we sure he’s up for it?”

“He’ll be up for it,” I said. “I think we’re all in agreement that we go sooner rather than later, yes? It’s going to take me a couple of days to get everything I need, so I say we do it the night after tomorrow. Two days between us and freedom. All in?”

Jake and Westie bumped fists. All in. I looked to Paul.

“I know this prison is run on a shoestring, but do they have any kind of a library?”

He shrugged. “If you can call it that.”

“Do they have atlases? Maps?”

“They have some middle-school American history books,” he told me. “Close enough?”

“It’ll have to be. You’re on navigation duty. ‘Drive south until we hit the Mexican border’ is a good idea in theory, but a lousy plan. I want you to figure out the best course to take. What roads we’ll eventually cross over and which cities and towns we might pass close to on our way out of Nevada. Ideally, we’ll want to find a remote spot close to the edge of civilization, dump the buggies, and steal fresh transportation to cover our tracks. Can you handle that?”

“I’m on it,” Paul said.

“Good. Westie, we’ve got one checkpoint—and one metal detector—to pass through on our way out of the hive. Now, I know people manage to get shanks through there; I saw somebody get stabbed my first hour on the yard. How do they do it?”

“Easy as peaches,” he said. “Lots of ways. Routine makes the guards sloppy. Case in point, I’m on cleaning detail most weeks. They give me an old wheeled rust bucket to slop water around in, and it sets off the detector every single time. They pat me down, but they don’t give the bucket a second glance.”

“So if you stash something in there,” I said, “and rest your mop on top of it—”

“Like I said, easy.”

“I need you to find a secure spot, right about here,” I said, sliding my finger along the playing-card ‘map,’ “and arrange to be mopping the floor when the rest of us pass by with the guard. I’ll give you the knife beforehand to smuggle through the metal detector. Is that doable?”

Westie pursed his lips, staring down at the cards. He tossed down his hand and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Aye. Got some ideas already.”

“Jake,” I said, “your part’s obvious: the motor pool. Scope it out from end to end. I want guard numbers, rotation timing, layout, anything that’ll give us an edge. And figure out a good distraction for when we make our play. We’ll need to take control fast to keep anybody from radioing for help. We’ve got zero margin for error here.”

“Can do,” he said.

“And while you’re all doing that, I’ll work out the gate and the goggles.” I gathered up the ‘map,’ shuffling the cards back into the deck. “When we get to Mexico, first round’s on me.”

We played cards for real after that, with nothing to wager but bragging rights. Anything to kill a little time. My head wasn’t in the game; I was attacking the problem, trying to figure out what I could pull from my bag of tricks. My gaze kept drifting upward, to the tower and the maze of metal walkways that filled the hive like the strands of a steel spiderweb.

Emerson—the guard who’d brought me in from processing, the one Paul said hadn’t been here long enough to pick up bad habits—strolled the upper walkways. It didn’t take long to realize what was off about him, and another few minutes of casual observation confirmed it.

He wasn’t watching the prisoners. He was watching the other guards.

I filed it away in the back of my mind, something to ponder—or not—once the real work was done. I’d taken the two biggest parts of this escape plan onto my shoulders, and it wasn’t just my ass in the fire if I couldn’t pull it off. While I played cards on autopilot, doing back-brain math and moves I’d learned by rote, my thoughts drifted back to older, happier times.





18.




I stared down at the card in my hand, the three of clubs with my signature scrawled across the face in black Sharpie. The exact same card I’d shuffled into the half deck in Bentley’s hands not one minute earlier.

I was nineteen years old, and I was learning the basics.

“It’s impossible,” I said.

He shook his head with a smile, leaning back against the counter, and fanned the cards in his hands.

“It clearly just happened, so it can’t be impossible,” he said. “The magical arts require a certain shift in vocabulary. The question isn’t, ‘Is this possible?’ The question is, ‘What means can be undertaken to make it possible?’”

“I had half of the deck,” I said slowly, puzzling it out, “and you had half of the deck. I saw you shuffle my card into your half. You never touched my half. I’ve had it in my hand the entire time. So…wait, was that real sorcery? Some kind of, I don’t know, illusion spell?”