Upside down. Words were upside down.
With a curse, he swung the book around and was just focusing on a line of dialogue when two guards appeared in front of his cell.
Peering over the top of Macbeth, he cocked a casual brow. “You rang?”
The guards were related to each other, going by their identical dark-colored eyes, their similar heights, and the fact that both of them had a strange cowlick in the front of their hairlines. But they were not twins, and he did not recall having seen them before. Then again, going by their hesitancy, they had to be new hires.
“I’m here. You can reassure the Command.” When they didn’t move on, he inquired, “Would you like to come in and watch me read?”
Their eyes narrowed at the same time and in the same way. But as vocal as they had been with the others, they did not take his verbal bait, nor did they chastise or punish him. They just turned and continued on.
The Jackal waited, keeping his position even as one of his bare feet tapped the other, the kinetic energy flowing through all of his muscles impossible to contain for long.
The guards came back shortly thereafter. Whether it was a test to see if he’d moved or just a natural course of their duties, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. And this time, they kept going all the way down the lineup of cells, their footfalls growing fainter and then disappearing altogether.
The Jackal tossed the book off the bed and sat up. Over at his clothes stash, he got a fresh set of slacks and jerked them up his thighs. As he tied the waistband, the wolven appeared in his doorway.
For once, Lucan was not smiling. “Everything’s locked. All the peripheral tunnels. And they canceled the work shifts.”
The Jackal looked up sharply. “They’ve never done that before.”
“How many guards did you kill in the private sector?”
“Is that a rhetorical?” When the wolven just stared at him, he shrugged. “Four for sure. Then there were another four that were handcuffed together on the floor. Apex was on cleanup.”
“Were the quartet still alive when he came to them?”
“He may not have been the one who found them.”
“If he did, they’re dead, too—”
The Jackal stiffened. Breathed deep. Dropping his voice, he whispered, “Go back to your cell. Now.”
“Look, if your little girlfriend with the knife skills is loose in this place, she’s in deep trouble—”
The Jackal punched his comrade’s shoulder. “Go! You don’t want to be here.”
The wolven opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but then his head wrenched to the side as he clearly caught the scent as well.
“Fuck. Be careful.”
Lucan disappeared as the Jackal lunged for his bedding platform. He was pulling the blanket over himself again when a tall figure, draped from head to toe in black, drifted into the archway of his cell.
But it wasn’t Kane.
It smelled of sandalwood oil.
The Jackal’s stomach turned so violently, he had to swallow the bile that rose into his throat. Not from the scent, specifically. From what the scent represented.
He looked over at the figure, pegging the dense mesh that covered the face with hard eyes. “Yes?”
The Command’s voice was low and deep. “I understand that you were in the restricted area and you had a gun to your head. That an inmate threatened you. Is this true?”
Prison tunic. He’d made Nyx put that tunic on.
The guards didn’t know she was from the outside. Except why the lockdown if they thought she was one of them?
“It was,” he answered. “But it is over.”
“Who was it. Where do I find her and that gun.”
“I don’t know.”
There was a pause, and he knew damn well the Command was testing the air for scents other than his own. “Did you enjoy your bath just now?”
“Don’t be jealous. It doesn’t look good on you.”
“Watch yourself, Jackal. I’m short-tempered tonight.”
“Things not going to your liking? Such a pity—”
A guard rushed up to the Command. “There’s a female in prison gear cornered by the western checkpoint. She is armed, but she is about to be subdued.”
The Command’s head swiveled back to the Jackal. “Well. It looks as if this little problem has solved itself. Any explanations you’d like to offer before I enjoy interrogating her?”
The Jackal reclined back against the wall, putting his hand down on his stack of books again. As Macbeth resumed its position front and center on his chest, he shrugged.
“I don’t know her or where she came from.” All true. “She had a gun. I did what she told me to do. Then she made me face the wall and count to ten before I turned back around. I went to fifteen, just to be sure, and I found that she was gone. She’s your problem, not mine. You run this place, after all.”