The Unwilling(80)

“All I need is a place to start.”

“I don’t want you to start! That’s the point! I don’t want you near me or this prison, not near the Pagans, either, and definitely not the Angels.”

“If they convict you, they’ll execute you.”

“Yeah, well. Prosecutors.”

I leaned away, cold on the inside. “What kind of fatalistic, inmate bullshit is that?”

“Go home, kid. Go to school. Kiss the girl.”

“I won’t give up only to watch you die.”

“That sounds like something Robert would say.”

“Sara’s gone.” It was my last bullet, so I fired it point-blank. “Burklow thinks she was abducted, possibly by the same person who killed Tyra. That means it’s not just about you anymore.”

“Listen to me, kid. You’re out of your depth. You don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“Explain it to me.”

“If I did, you wouldn’t believe me; and if you believed me, you wouldn’t accept it. What I will tell you is this.” His restraints clattered as he leaned closer. “You watch your back out there. I mean it. Walking. Driving. Be aware of the people around you, of everyone around you. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t open the door to strangers. Stay inside. Stay with friends. If you find yourself outside and alone, be especially careful of middle-aged men who look older than they should, doubly so if they’re small and narrow, and not at all dangerous-looking. You see someone like that, you run, and I mean for your life.”

“Why run? What man?”

“Let’s just say that a prison like this does not forget, and there are people who want to control me, bad people who will hurt you to do it.”

“People on the inside or the outside?”

Jason smiled, then, but with little warmth. “I understand you, little brother. I truly do. You want to help because we’re family, and it feels like a noble cause. But we’ve not been family for a long time. You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I don’t see it like that.”

“The brother you remember is gone, kid, killed as dead by Vietnam as Robert ever was.” Jason stood, his eyes a wasteland. “The sooner you accept that fact, the better off you’ll be.”



* * *



The guard who returned Jason to his cell was not on X’s detail, so Jason had to wait, and it wasn’t easy. He paced the cell; pounded on the door. “I want to talk to X! Now! I want to see him now!”

Gibby wouldn’t back down.

That was the problem.

“Guard! Guard, goddamn it!”

When Jason finally made it to the subbasement, he found X with a paintbrush in one hand. “What kind of deranged game are you playing this time?”

“Game?” X didn’t turn.

“The girl. The missing girl.”

X dabbed a bit of paint onto the canvas. “I’d like your opinion on this painting.”

“Answer the question.”

“The painting first.”

Driving down the impatience, Jason looked at the painting. It was only a start, but the gist of it was clear: one fighter down, the second standing above him. “That’s you on the floor.”

“Unconscious on the floor.” X dabbed more paint. “The first time it’s happened since I was a student.”

He made the word sound casual, but there was nothing casual about X as a student of the martial arts. As a boy in Switzerland, he’d mastered Wing Chun and hapkido before getting away with the murder of his fam ily, inheriting his parents’ fortune, and devoting himself entirely to the study of Shotokan Karate-Do. He’d spent a small fortune to train with an Okinawan master named Gichin Funakoshi, who’d first brought the discipline from China to Japan in 1922. X had described the training, once, as something akin to divine suffering. At the moment, Jason didn’t care. “Are you targeting my brother or not?”

The paintbrush stopped an inch off the canvas.

“He’s a tough kid, but just a kid. He won’t survive inside this place, so if that’s the endgame—”

“There is no endgame with regard to your brother.” X turned, at last. “My concern is with you, alone. I’ve made that very plain.”

“Then why take the roommate?”

“Roommate?”

“Tyra’s roommate has been abducted. With me here, the cops will look at my brother. He knew the girls. He knew both of them.”

X put down the brush. “This roommate? She is blond?”

“You know her?”

“I know only of her.”

“It’s Reece, then.”

“Or not Reece at all.”

But that was bullshit, and Jason knew it. “My brother is out there right now looking for the roommate. What will Reece do if he finds her?”

“Reece would not hurt your brother without my permission.”

“I need more than that. Blow the whistle. Call off your dog.”

“I will handle Reece.”

“How?” Jason demanded.

“Like the dog that he is.” X allowed his lips to twist. “Shotokan may be a Japanese discipline, but it began in China.”