The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(57)

“You’re gonna help me break out of prison?”

“Not exactly,” Emerson said. “I’m going to take you straight to the DOC, where you’ll present your footage and eyewitness testimony.”

“And what do I get out of the deal?”

“I can’t get time taken off your sentence, but I can have you transferred to the facility of your choice. You can do your time in a minimum-security country club.”

“One of those places for white-collar criminals, where they’ve got tennis courts and cable TV?” I asked. “And you’re pretty much on the honor system not to run away?”

“Exactly.”

I liked the sound of that. I’d have to come up with a brand-new escape plan, but this time it’d stick.

“So you’ll slip the camera in with my clothes,” I mused. “Can you smuggle me anything else?”

“You’ll go through a metal detector on your way in, so no weapons. Don’t worry, the camera’s smaller than your palm and it’s ninety-nine percent plastic. I’ve already walked it through a few of the detectors myself, just to make sure it won’t set any alarms off.”

I thought fast. Time was running out, and I’d only have one shot to bring in something I could use.

“I’m going to give you a phone number,” I told him, “for a man named Bentley. Call him and tell him everything.”

“This is a confidential operati—”

“Tell him everything, or no deal.” I recited Bentley’s number, waiting for Emerson to scribble it down. “And tell him I need some alchemist’s clay, pronto. He’ll give you a location to meet up with him.”

“Alchemist’s…clay? What is that?”

“It’s a special kind of clay,” I said.

“And it won’t set off the metal detectors?”

I stared at him through the slot.

“No,” I said. “Because it’s clay.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” His eyes darted left. “Shit, incoming. I have to go. We have a deal?”

I didn’t have much of a choice. At least with Emerson’s help I had something I didn’t have ten minutes ago: a fighting chance.

“Deal,” I said and passed the photocopy back to him. I’d etched it all down on my mental map.

Then he ratcheted the slot door shut and left me in the darkness.

I didn’t sink into a stupor this time. The wet and the cold just woke me up. I welcomed the pain and the bruises. And when Jablonski returned a few hours later, giggling as he unleashed the hose and plunged me into another freezing hell, I silently thanked him. He’d given me a gift. The gift of hatred.

Because whatever was waiting for me in Hive B, now I had to survive long enough to see Jablonski dead.

*

When they came for me, I was ready.

The door swung open, flooding the tiny cell with piercing light. I squinted, eyes tearing up. Three guards stood outside: two I didn’t recognize, and Emerson, holding a bundle of clothes in his arm. A fresh prison uniform.

“Get dressed,” the guard on the left barked. “You’re being transferred.”

Emerson handed me the clothes, carefully passing the bundle so that I could feel something small and hard against my palm. I turned to one side as I pulled on the tan trousers, subtly glancing to make sure I wasn’t showing any suspicious bulges in my pocket. If I got searched now, Emerson and I were both screwed.

“We’ll take it from here,” the other guard told Emerson once I’d finished buttoning up my shirt. I left it untucked, the tails drooping over my pockets for a little extra camouflage. As I smoothed my shirt my fingers dipped into my right pants pocket, just long enough to brush against a square of smooth plastic and a tiny, grainy lump of clay the size of a gumball.

Perfect.

As they shackled my wrists to a padlocked waist-belt, I felt like Houdini getting ready for an escape act. It must have shown on my face. One of the guards gave me the side-eye. “What are you smiling about?”

“Just happy to be stretching my legs a little.”

“Don’t get used to it,” he said and gave my shoulder a shove.

As we marched through the labyrinthine corridors, I watched the walls and made notes. The arrows pointing the way to “Central Security” caught my interest. If I judged right, the name was literal—it was right at the center of the underground passages, between the three hives.

When we came to the spot marked on Emerson’s blueprint, I recognized it at once. A short stretch of hallway festooned with exposed piping and water valves rising up from the floor and running along the brick at chest level. My shoes clanged over a corrugated metal hatch, a trapdoor on new-looking hinges. That was my exit, then; wherever they took me, whatever happened next, all I needed to do was escape to this spot and slip through the trapdoor without anyone spotting me.

Easy enough. I hoped.

It didn’t take long for my hopes to hit the rocks, as the guards led me past a metal detector, another gate checkpoint, and into Hive B.

Instead of the raucous noise and milling bodies of the other hive, I was greeted by an empty gallery floor leading up to a central guard tower. Instead of tier after tier of bars, I looked up at stark iron doors. Hundreds of them.