John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

They’d sent a car from Middlesex County to Westmoreland County to make the pickup, and when Jimmy was escorted in, Granville made a point of being right there in his face to let him know that actions had consequences in this part of the world, and that Jimmy had chosen poorly.

The rules in a case like this were clear. Jimmy Henry was processed just as if he were a first-arriving prisoner. His personal effects-none-were catalogued, and then he was escorted to the processing bay, where he was stripped naked and cavity searched. It was a part of the process that Granville didn’t particularly enjoy, but he’d long ago lost his guyshy instincts. It doesn’t take but one incident where someone literally pulls a weapon out of his ass to make you respect the importance of a cavity search.

He’d accordingly been prepared for the humiliation; but he hadn’t been prepared for the bruises. Jimmy Henry’s left leg was bruised beyond purple. It bore a deep black stripe from what must have been a brutal attack. When they called in the jail physician-actually a local doctor who moonlighted for folding money-they also found bruising around the kid’s throat, in addition to the more typical stress wounds inflicted by the unyielding shackles.

“Who did this to you?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Jimmy answered.

“Seems to me it serves your best interests to talk about the people who tortured you,” Agent Meyer said. Sergeant Wilson was in the room, too, but remained silent. If Granville wasn’t mistaken, she was embarrassed by the prisoner’s nakedness.

“Who said anything about torture?” Jimmy asked. “These bruises are from falling down.”

“Must have been a hell of a fall,” Granville said.

But the prisoner had shut down. “I know my rights,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you anything without a lawyer.”

“Who broke you out of here?” Sheriff Willow asked.

Sergeant Wilson put a hand on his shoulder. “He asked for a lawyer,” she said. “We’re done with questions.”

With that, it was over.

Granville stayed with Jimmy as he dressed himself in fresh orange coveralls, and then escorted him back to the cell where his evening had begun only a few hours before. As they walked together down the central hallway, Granville called out to the other inmates, “Take a look, gentlemen. You can try to run, but you’ll never get away.” Faces appeared at the windows in cell doors. “Jimmy Henry is back with us after only five hours on the run. He raised all that ruckus, and what did it buy for everyone? Forty-eight hours in lockdown. When y’all start going stir-crazy in there, I don’t want you getting pissed at me and the other guards. I want you to remember that Jimmy is the one to blame.”

Jimmy shot him a panicked look, and Granville shook it off. This was the kind of announcement that could get an inmate beaten to shit, but Jimmy should have thought of that before.

“You’re a kidnapper,” Granville said to his charge as they arrived at his cell door. “And you’re the guy who cost every inmate a lot of privileges. I’d be careful if I were you.” Jimmy’s eye grew large as the truth sank in. “If I were you, I might think about cooperating a little.”

Something happened behind the kid’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived. Fear, maybe? Perhaps just a grim acceptance of what lay ahead. “Well, I tell you what, Deputy George. If I was you, I’d have killed myself a long time ago. Now, why don’t you just quit worrying about me?”

Granville opened the cell and let Jimmy inside.

As he pushed the door closed, he glanced to his left and saw another prisoner, Antoine Johnson, grinning widely as he strained to see what was happening.

“What are you looking at?” Granville barked.

Antoine gave a little giggle. “I’m just happy to learn that I’m smarter than I thought I was,” he said.

Evan Guinn knew that he was moving.

He couldn’t see or hear anything, and his head hurt like it had been pounded with a hammer, but he knew he wasn’t lying still anymore. He had the sense of floating. Maybe the sense of spinning. It wasn’t a good feeling like the ones you get when you dream about flying on Harry Potter’s broom. This was a sick-making feeling, not unlike the morning after the night when Powell Andersen had treated a bunch of the RezHouse crew to the moonshine that had been sneaked into the dorm via his Uncle Ed. Evan had always thought that Father Dom had suspected something that day, but he’d never called the question.

Even as he was floating, though, he had the sense that he was somehow anchored down. He couldn’t feel any ropes or chains, but as he tried to move, his arms and legs felt as if they weighted a hundred pounds apiece.

He needed to run. But why?

Men in the dark. Men with tape and heavy hands. The foul-smelling rag over his face.

He’d been kidnapped. Kidnapped. Was that possible?

Who would want to kidnap him?

The more he thought about it, the more his head boomed. He wanted to move, to run; but he was paralyzed.

Except his eyelids. If he really struggled against the weight that burdened every part of him, he could get them to open. First his left eye, all by itself, and then his right. It was hard to focus, but when he forced himself, he could make the scenery come together.

He lay on his back, staring up at a low ceiling that had knobs and things he’d not seen before. They cast shadows that cut straight across at a sharp right angle, and from that he knew that the light was coming in at him from the side, instead of from above, as he would have expected. He turned this head to the right-carefully, to keep the hammers inside from beating against each other-and he saw an oval window that looked out on the sky. It was a little thing, nowhere big enough to climb through.

He was on an airplane. He’d never been on one before, but he’d seen enough of them in movies. The fact of being airborne made him feel fear for the first time since awakening. There’s kidnapped, he thought, and then there’s kidnapped. If they flew you to where you were going, you’d be gone forever, right?

Moving his head to the left, he confirmed his suspicion. This was definitely an airplane.

“He’s waking up,” a voice said, and Evan feared he’d done something wrong. If he could have made his vocal cords work, he would have apologized.

“Not for long,” said another voice.

The shadows shifted, and a man appeared in his field of vision. “You must have a hell of a liver, kid,” the man said. He bore the faint scent of garlic.

Unable to do anything-to talk or scream or even roll over-Evan watched as the man lifted a plastic tube and stuck a needle in it.

He had the fleeting thought that the other end of the tube must be stuck in his arm someplace, but then his thoughts and his mind went blank.

A stick cracked.

While it could have been caused by anything, Harvey knew that someone was coming to kill him.

He’d dozed in the camp chair, leaving the sleeping bag and the air mattress for Jeremy. He hadn’t intended to sleep deeply. He hadn’t intended to sleep at all. Hell, he hadn’t intended a single moment of what had happened during the last twenty-four hours.

It didn’t matter, because he was wide awake now, and so was the new day, the sun hanging low and golden in the east. Without moving his body, he opened his eyes and scanned as far to the sides as his eyes could shift. The morning revealed nothing.

Another crack. Rustling.

From the darkness of the tent, Jeremy whispered, “Harvey?”

The words were barely audible, but they registered on Harvey’s ears as a shout. “Shh,” he hissed. “I hear it.”