I slap my hand over her mouth, picking her up bodily and tucking her under my arm like an unruly toddler.
We hustle over to the empty prisoner transport truck pulled up to the dock.
The driver looks at us with a horrified expression. “We agreed on one person,” he sputters. “Not two. And not a fuckin’ hostage!”
I thrust Clare into Erik’s arms, stripping off my prison scrubs, revealing the stolen guard’s uniform beneath.
“Double the fee, then,” I say. “You’re taking us out either way—take the carrot before I have to use the stick.”
Nikita passes me a guard’s cap.
Erik is gagging Clare, tying her hands in front of her.
When she’s trussed up like a turkey, the driver reluctantly pulls up the false panel to the cabinet in the floor of the truck the guards use to smuggle drugs and other contraband inside the prison. The space was too small for my bulk, but Clare fits inside just fine.
Meanwhile, I take my seat on the passenger side.
2:24
“Hurry,” the driver says, nervously. “If we’re not at the gates by 2:25…”
“See you in a couple months, boss,” Erik grins.
He’s inside on a petty larceny charge. He’ll be out again soon enough.
Nikita has another year. He looks at the truck, his sullen face transformed by child-like longing.
“Couldn’t have put me on the manifest too?” he grumbles.
“Don’t worry, brother,” I tell him. “You might both be out sooner than you think.”
The overhead lights snap on behind us, full power restoring in just under five minutes.
Anything under five minutes isn’t reported.
It doesn’t trigger a full lockdown.
I pull the heavy truck door shut. The driver starts the engine, heading toward the gates where the sentries are resuming normal protocol after the brief glitch.
In one to two minutes, the guards in D block will check on Dr. Nightingale. They’ll see that the psych office is empty. They’ll discover that we’re both missing.
With the doors unlocked, the nurse in the infirmary will raise an alarm.
D Block will be thrown into full shutdown, fully armed guards searching room by room.
But right here and now, I’m already passing through the three sets of gates, the driver waving to his friends, my head down beneath the stolen cap, the tattoos on my neck covered by the high collar of the uniform.
Below my feet, I can just make out the muffled thumping of Clare knocking her bound knees against the walls of the false compartment.
I give a sharp rap with my heel to tell her to shut the hell up.
She’s got a lot worse coming if she doesn’t start telling me the truth.
Chapter 6
Clare
I scream as loudly as I can, on the off chance we’re in a place where someone might hear me. That proves fruitless. First, I’m gagged so my screams are muffled. Second, there’s definitely no one here to help me.
Instead, I’m shoved into this tiny, dirty, dank little compartment where I imagine they bring in contraband or something. It’s definitely not big enough for a person, but lucky me, I’m a small person, so it worked for his purposes just fine.
I hate small places. I hate them. When I was five years old, I got stuck in an elevator with my mother. We were there three hours before firefighters were able to rescue us. I can still smell the cloying scent of her perfume, still feel the humid air that made it feel like I was in a coffin. I’ve been claustrophobic ever since.
Tears wet my cheeks, tickling my nose. I’m sweating bullets and trembling. My body temperature vacillates between hot flashes and chills. I try to draw in a breath and can’t. My lungs feel constricted, like someone’s squeezing them, as hard as he squeezed my neck. If my hands weren’t bound, I’d check to see what was choking me, but in my mind, I know.
It’s only fear.
Fear. Something I can control.
I close my eyes and whisper to myself. The sound of my raspy voice makes my racing heart slow a little.
“You’re safe,” I whisper around the gag. “You’re not suffocating.”
I can still feel his hands on my throat, still feel the burning sensation. My cheeks are too hot and my skin is all prickly.
My chest feels too tight, not helped by the fact that I can’t draw in a deep breath.
I have to will myself to be calm.
“You’re safe. You’re not suffocating,” I whisper again. Slowly, my pulse begins to slow.
I give up kicking after a few minutes. When my voice begins to grow hoarse, I remember what he said to me.
You’ve never had your legs spread and your pussy licked until you screamed yourself hoarse.
I will not scream myself hoarse and give him any ideas.
Not that he needs any assistance there.
I didn’t give him enough credit. I’d thought that I knew what he was capable of… I’d read the files. I know how he killed his fiancée. But I put way too much faith in DesMax and way too little in Constantine.