Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

He didn’t make any noise this time. He just took the pain.

Z finally released the trigger. Justin’s body sagged, would’ve collapsed, except the other guy held him up.

“You will speak when I say you can speak,” Z repeated. He stared at Justin’s heaving form. “When will you speak?”

My husband raised his head. His eyes were bright with rage. I could see a muscle clenched in his jaw. Such a competitive man. One of the things I had admired about him in the beginning. Down but never out. Battered but not broken. Now I silently willed him to give up. Keep his mouth shut. Not say another word…

“Daddy,” Ashlyn pleaded softly.

Justin’s look changed. From fury to panic and in the next instant, I understood, as Z wheeled about, headed for our daughter.

“No.” I gasped the word out loud, trying to roll forward, do something. I could hear Justin growling, knew he had to be struggling, desperately trying to break free.

Too late, my daughter realized her mistake. She watched Z’s rapid approach, her sobs reaching hysterical pitch as she raised her bound arms in front of her face…

The kid stepped forward. Straight into Z’s path.

“Hey,” the kid said, “isn’t that a patrol car?”

He pointed his finger, and just like that, everyone was on the move.

“Inside, now,” Z snapped. “You get the women. You get Denbe.”

Checkerboard Hair was already slicing through Justin’s leg restraints, with a single stroke of a huge knife, then dragging my husband’s stumbling form toward the front doors.

Radar fumbled for a moment with my daughter’s restraints, then made it to my side long enough to free my ankles and help me stagger to my feet. I tried to shoot him a grateful look, to let him know I knew what he’d done for Ashlyn, but he wouldn’t make eye contact. Instead, with one hand on my daughter’s elbow and another on mine, he hustled us both toward the doors.

Behind us, I could hear the engine as the van started up. Hiding it, I supposed. The van would be tucked somewhere outside, we would be tucked somewhere inside, and then no one would be the wiser.

Doors, closing behind us. First one set, then another.

The kid and the second commando dragged us deeper inside a vast, empty space. If this was a prison, then this must be the receiving area. I could make out stark white cinder-block walls, a dingy yellow linoleum floor, some kind of command post straight ahead with thick windows all around it.

The room was dimly lit, only a fraction of the overhead lights in use. I had a feeling that was to our advantage, that when every light was flipped on, the starkness would be nearly blinding, miles of bone-white walls to bounce the light and hurt the eyes.

I tried to sneak a glance at my daughter again. She stood on the other side of Radar, her head still bowed, hair down, shoulders trembling. Z was not around, but I still didn’t dare to speak. I noticed for the first time she wasn’t wearing her usual gold hoops in her ears, or the small diamond pendant Justin had given her on her thirteenth birthday.

Belatedly, I glanced down only to discover my engagement diamond and wedding band were also missing. Damn thieves, I thought irrationally, considering everything else they’d done. Robbing us of our own jewelry while we were heavily sedated.

I stole a glance at my husband’s wrist, confirming that his Rolex was also gone. Then my gaze drifted up, and I found my husband’s eyes. He was watching both me and Ashlyn, his features etched with sorrow.

If I could’ve, I would’ve reached out my hand then.

For the first time in six months, I would’ve touched my husband and meant it.

Instead, the three of us just stood there, not speaking, waiting to see what terrible thing would happen next.

Z REAPPEARED SHORTLY, his footsteps ringing down the hall as he approached from a different direction. His minions hadn’t spoken in his absence, and I had a feeling that’s the way things worked. Z called the shots, the other two did the shooting.

The kid, in his jeans and tennis shoes, didn’t bother me. He had a tendency to duck his head and hunch his shoulders self-consciously, almost as if embarrassed to be there.

The other one, with the checkerboard hair, worried me. His eyes were too bright, some shade of neon blue I associated with drug addicts or lunatics. He held Justin’s arm in a white-knuckled grip, his face openly daring Justin to do something about it. The bully, looking forward to the fight.

I noticed the kid, with one hand upon each of our elbows, kept Ashlyn and me a good distance from his partner. And I noticed Justin made no attempt to close that gap.

When Z appeared, both the kid and the checkerboard commando stood a little straighter, ready for the next set of instructions. I wanted to brace myself, call upon some kind of internal reserve. I had nothing.

My stomach hurt. My head pounded.

I needed my purse.

For the love of God, I needed my pills.

“Would you like a tour?” Z’s voice sounded taunting. Because he had not said we could speak, none of us answered.

“It’s a twelve-hundred-bed medium-security facility,” Z continued crisply. “State-of-the-art, completed just last year and, conveniently for us, currently mothballed.”

I glanced up. My confusion must’ve showed on my face, for he expanded: “Welcome to your tax dollars at work, where one hand builds the prison, but a different hand funds the opening and operating of said facility. Basically, capital expenditures fall under appropriations bills, whereas operational costs fall under the government’s annual budget. Except the state’s budget has been facing the usual shortfalls, so this prison has never been opened. It simply sits here, a very expensive shell wasting away in the mountains of New Hampshire. It’s perfect for us.”

He turned on his heel, walking down the hallway toward the direction he’d come, and his commandos dragged us into place behind him.

“Did you know,” he continued over his shoulder, “that eighty percent of prison escapes occur when an inmate is already out of his cell, maybe tending to his prison job, or in the infirmary? That’s because no one, absolutely no one can escape from a modern jail cell. Walls are five-thousand-pounds-per-square-inch concrete poured twelve inches thick. The windows feature one-inch-thick bars formed from saw-resistant steel and positioned every five inches in front of fifteen-minute ballistic-rated glass. That means”—he gave me a glance—“you can fire a small-caliber pistol at point-blank range and the glass might spiderweb, but still won’t break.

“Doors are twelve-gauge steel with a solid one-inch-thick dead bolt. All locks are triggered electronically, meaning there is no way to manually override the dead bolt system. Not to mention there are at least seven locks between you and the outside world. First lock is on your cell door. Get by that, you’re in a locked dayroom. Which leads to a double-locked sally port, where the system only allows one locked door to be opened at one time. After that is a locked corridor leading to a main wing entrance where there is yet another sally port. Two more doors, two more locks.

“Should you finally exit the prison, you must now confront the perimeter fencing. The fences are completely electrified and built in two layers, each sixteen feet high and separated by a twenty-eight-foot-wide no-man’s-land filled with seven rolls of razor wire. Even if you somehow disabled the electric fencing, and/or survived scaling the first sixteen-foot fence, you must still drop down into the no-man’s-land and navigate seven rolls of razor wire in order to make your way over the second sixteen-foot-high fence. After which, you will find yourself plopped in the middle of six hundred acres of some of the most rugged wilderness the North Country has to offer. Nighttime temperatures are currently forecast to be below freezing. Oh, and this area is known for bears and bobcats.”