Approaching the service entrance of the prison, the guard took a cursory look at Travis’s ID and opened the gate without bothering to search him. As far as Travis was concerned, he could have smuggled an AR-15 under his coveralls, and they wouldn’t have cared. Once inside, Travis followed a stream of other workers who were entering, nodding mutely at a few who were making their way out. Walking behind a man with a pronounced limp and a shock of gray hair that made Travis think the man had worked at the prison for his whole life, he made his way through a loading dock, up a set of five chipped concrete steps, and then in through a small back door into the prison. Travis saw cleaning carts lined up next to the door, a guard standing with a clipboard in his hands. That kind of surprised Travis. They weren’t using technology to track the workers? That might work to his advantage.

  Travis grabbed a cart and started pushing it forward, the wheels rattling against the cracked concrete floors. He stopped briefly for the guard to check his ID badge. The guard did nothing more than write his name down and put a check in pencil next to it. “So much for security,” Travis mumbled under his breath as he wandered away.

  The guard hadn’t bothered to give Travis any information about what he should be doing or where he should or shouldn’t go. He was on his own. Travis’s mood brightened, even if only slightly. Maybe Eli’s description of the prison as self-run could work to his advantage after all.

  The bottles of cleaner lined up on the cart rattled as Travis pushed it down the hallway. He passed through an open gate where another bored-looking corrections officer stood playing with his phone. He didn’t even bother to look up as Travis walked through. Ahead of him, Travis saw a darkened section of the hallway that looked like it spanned the length of a football field. It was eerie. He pulled a broom off the cart and began sweeping the edges of the dirty floor, looking up every few seconds, trying to get his bearings. From what he could tell, he was on the long side of the rectangle. Though Travis had made it inside, Eli, unfortunately, had absolutely no idea where Jace had been placed within the prison. With its enormous size, long, wide hallways, and sprawling communal areas, Jace could be anywhere. It would take a miracle to find him.

  Which was exactly what he’d need if he hoped to get the two of them out.

  Twenty minutes later, Travis had managed to sweep his way down the hallway, stopping every few seconds to pick up debris and dump it into a flimsy trash bag he’d found on the cart. He’d moved out of the way respectfully as prisoners walked by, not making eye contact, only watching them out of his peripheral vision. He wasn’t there to tangle with them. The first few people that passed ignored him as if he didn’t exist. A couple of the men that came later gave him the side eye in warning as if Travis was about to start something.

  He wasn’t, at least not with them.

  After spending time in the darkened hallway, Travis realized he wasn’t making any progress. Although spending time inside Calvet prison was an interesting experience, it wasn’t that interesting. He was ready to go. The stench was overwhelming, and no amount of sweeping the hallway was going to remedy the conditions in the prison. In his mind, they needed to tear down the entire building and start all over again. But prison reform wasn’t his job. He was there for one reason and one reason alone—to get Jace McKee and the secrets he held out from behind the barbed wire, preferably alive and in one piece. Maybe then Travis could go back to his own life.

  Maybe.

  Abandoning the cart on the side of the hallway, Travis carried his broom and dustpan with him like props in a play, stopping every few feet to sweep up something, like invisible dirt on the side of the hallway, whenever anyone passed. He scanned their faces carefully but avoided eye contact. He knew what he was looking for—a man moving in the shadows, likely alone, hopefully not injured. With his training, Travis expected Jace’s eyes would be down but always scanning what was around him. Most people wouldn’t recognize what a CIA operative would do in this situation, but Travis did.

  After all, he used to be one of them.

  Travis made his way to the far end of the building when he heard a scuffle erupt. Voices were raised, the low, pained bellow of a man yelling something about something being stolen from him. Travis lifted his eyes in time to see a man with wild gray hair running into the common area, howling and grabbing people as he went. For a second, Travis thought that the rest of the inmates would ignore the crazed inmate and his antics, but a brawl broke out, people punching and kicking each other, bodies rolling on the ground. Travis lifted his eyes, looking up for the guards to intercede, some sort of alarm system to sound, something.

  There was nothing.

  Travis stayed at the edge of the room where he could watch but not get caught up in the scuffle. As he scanned the area, he saw a lone figure on the other side of the room slip away into the darkness. The man had dark hair and was wearing a pair of jeans and a jacket. Travis could have sworn he saw the hint of a tattoo on his neck. His heart skipped a beat. Was that Jace? Travis lifted his head and looked. There was no way he’d be able to make his way across the common room to catch up with him without getting himself immersed in the melee. The space was too wide, and the fight too dangerous for him to get caught in.

  He’d have to find another way.

  Travis spun on his heel and started walking quickly in the opposite direction, carrying the broom and dustpan with him, maintaining his cover as a janitor. He hoped that to anyone who was watching him, it would just seem like he was trying to escape the fight.

  But now he was on the hunt for a spy.

  12

  As the darkness started to cover the windows at Calvet prison, Jace felt in his pockets for the things that he had managed to collect since he’d arrived there the night before. He’d become a scavenger. For a prison where resources were supposedly scarce — part of the inevitable punishment of the men that were living there — he’d been surprised how many things had been lying around that he thought might come in handy. He’d found a half-used matchbook under a table, a toothbrush with a sharpened end left in one of the bathrooms, and he’d even managed to hide a plastic knife that had been given to him with his dinner, although with a dinner of soup and dry bread, why he was given a knife, he didn’t know. He blinked, looking around him. Jace just needed an opportunity, something that would draw the guards away from the doors long enough for him to slip outside and get away. How that would even be possible, he had no idea.

  His answer came a few hours later. After dinner, the wild-eyed man with the wiry hair that had challenged him earlier that day came screaming into the common area at the far end of the building, yelling something completely unintelligible as if he was speaking a language he’d made up. Jace looked up from his position against the wall. He’d stayed there the majority of the day. The men that were hanging out in that area were seemingly the least intimidating of the prisoners being held that he’d spotted so far. For the most part, they’d just ignored him, as if he was invisible. That was fine with Jace. They seemed to be Boy Scouts in comparison to the men who inhabited the dark cells in the sleeping wings. Just thinking about them made Jace’s skin crawl.

  “You thief! You stole it!” the man finally yelled in French, running into the common room and charging at a shaved-headed man who was standing with two other people.

  The accusation didn’t go well.

  Within seconds, a brawl had begun. Jace slid up the wall from where he’d been resting his sore ribs and took two steps back, seeing a janitor with a broom and a dustpan enter the area on the other side of the room. It surprised him, but not enough that he gave it much thought. It had been the first time he’d seen a janitor who had made his way this far into the prison. But then again, he was new. What did he know?

  Jace moved to the edge of the room, taking up a position by a trash can that was filled with paper napkins from dinner. No one had come to empty it yet. As the brawl continued, Jace pulled the pack of matches from his pocket, lit one, and held it to the edge of one of the napkins, not wanting to risk dropping the flimsy paper match into the basket of trash before the entire thing ignited, worried it would extinguish before the paper caught on fire.

  He didn’t have to wait long for the paper to react, adding another layer of chaos to the fight that was already raging in the prison.

  Seconds later, the thin paper napkins balled up by the inmates after their last meal lit into a bright bonfire, black smoke pouring out from inside of the trash can. A few of the inmates looked his way, acknowledging his addition to the destruction, though no one said anything. Jace guessed that, as far as they were concerned, it was their version of entertainment for that evening, a story they could talk about for the next few weeks.

  In this case, he was happy to oblige.

  Jace slipped away, walking as quickly as he could without attracting attention, waiting for the inevitable screech of the smoke detectors to go off in the building. Thirty seconds later, as he made his way through one of the sleeping areas, the men standing protectively in the doorways of their spaces eyeballing him, they did. The scream of the fire alarms going off was ear-piercing and impossible to ignore.

  Jace smiled. Distraction was his friend.

  Jace slipped into an empty cell, avoiding a trickle of a few guards as they started to run toward the fire. He looked around the cell he’d entered. He lifted a single eyebrow. If one distraction was good, two would be even better. From his pocket, he pulled the matches out again. He had two left. Dumping the trash onto the bed, Jace realized he’d gotten lucky. There were balled-up papers in the trash, as well as a few books on the floor. Jace struck another match, the smell of sulfur filling the air. He used the paper as kindling, pulling apart a few of the pages from the books to work as tinder, the smoke filling his nostrils. He was sure that whoever saw what he was doing would be furious at the destruction, but Jace wasn’t planning on staying there long enough to find out how anyone felt about it.

  The second blaze started, Jace slipped out of the cell, feigning ignorance. He made his way toward the opposite end of the building, trying to ignore the ache in his ribs. As he did, he was nearly toppled by a phalanx of officers going the opposite direction. Where they’d all come from, he had no idea. He huddled against the wall getting yelled at by a small throng of French corrections officers wearing blue shirts, black pants, helmets on their heads with plexiglass visors over their faces, gloves covering their hands, and clubs carried at their sides.

  As Jace moved closer to the far end of the building, he saw what he was looking for: the door to the exterior where he’d come in. From what he’d seen earlier, it led out to the loading dock. He squinted. The fumes from the delivery truck had dissipated, though he thought he could hear the rumble of a truck running somewhere, but it was hard to tell with the fire alarms shrieking in the background.

  With a disturbance at the other end of the building, a metal gate had been pulled across the hallway, blocking the exit that had been open earlier. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of Jace’s face. He was just a few feet from making his escape, and the gate was in the way. He grabbed ahold of it with his hands and shook it to try to see if he could move it. It only rattled under his grip. He stared at the top of it. It was probably seven feet tall in an eight-foot ceilinged area. There was only a slim gap of about a foot at the top, barely enough room for him to clear. And with his broken ribs, he didn’t have the strength to pull at the gate and try to dislodge the anchors from the wall. Glancing over his shoulder, he grabbed at the lock, pulling the sharpened toothbrush out of his pocket, trying to use it as a pick, but the plastic end broke off. ”Come on!” he groaned.

  He was just about to retreat when he looked up. He saw a man dressed in coveralls with a baseball hat on eyeing him up, making his way to the gate on the other side. “You Jace?” the man whispered, close enough Jace could feel his breath.

  An American accent. Jace blinked. “Yeah.”

  “I’m Travis. The Agency sent me. We gotta get you outta here.”

  Relief washed over Jace. The Agency had acted faster than he expected them to. Who exactly Travis was, he had no idea, but at this point, the guy could have been masquerading as Santa Claus and it wouldn’t have mattered. He just needed to get out of that prison and fast.

  Jace watched as Travis grabbed hold of the gate and pulled at it, trying to dislodge the metal flange that had been bolted into the wall. A couple of pieces of drywall flaked off, but the bolts held. Jace looked at him, his mouth hanging open. “How are we going to get this thing open?”

  Travis stood back, looking at the top of it. “We’re not. You’re going to have to climb it.”

  Jace instinctively put a hand on his side where his ribs had been broken. “I don’t know if I can, man. I think my ribs are busted.”

  Travis raised his eyebrows. “You’d rather stay here? You’d better suck it up and get over this gate right now before the guards come back.”

  Jace didn’t need any more encouragement. As he put a foot in a gap, he grabbed with his arms above him. The pain in his side was excruciating. He gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down the side of his face, his hands weak from the surge of pain within him.

  A few seconds later, after wedging his boots into the diamond-shaped holes of the green metal divider, he got to the top. His side was aching, the pain stretching across his abdomen. Jace grunted, his hands shaking. There was no real place for him to swing a leg over. He knew he’d have to lay his torso on top of the metal and then jump down on the other side. His body fought him, knowing that the effort would be excruciating. With a grunt, he swung his leg over, laying his sternum on the top of the metal divider. Holding his breath, he swung the other leg over and jumped down, stopping in a half-stooped-over position, temporarily stunned from the surge of agony in his body. He felt a hand on his back. “Come on, Jace. We can’t stay here. We gotta go.”

  Travis tugged at Jace’s sleeve, and they took off at a run, Jace’s movements more lumbering than smooth, his body fighting through the pain. Over his shoulder, he heard shouts.

  Jace turned in time to see three guards charging up the hallway, shaking their batons at him and yelling at him something unintelligible. The whoosh of blood in his head made it almost impossible to hear.

  He and Travis burst through the door that led to the outside, the fresh air covering them. The guards were just seconds behind them. Jace stopped, confused. He looked at Travis and threw his hands up. “What now?”

  “Follow me.”

  13

  Travis couldn’t believe his luck. It could have taken him an extraordinary amount of time to find Jace McKee and get him out of the prison. But apparently the wayward CIA agent was as eager to get out of the prison as Travis was.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was what Gracie was afraid of had happened. Jace was clearly injured. Though they hadn’t had time to talk about it, by the way Jace was moving, Travis guessed it was either a back injury or his ribs, or both. He knew that when people were in pain, they often didn’t know what was exactly wrong with them. Either way, Jace’s injuries could hamper their ability to escape, not to mention that it could end up trapping both of them and exposing Travis to more danger. Travis had his own narrow escapes with injuries slowing him down. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Not today, not when he had a life to get back to.

  Travis stood just outside the doorway of the prison looking over his shoulder. They weren’t even exactly outside yet. “We gotta get out of here. I have a car parked on the other side of the fence in the employee lot.”

  Jace shook his head. “We’ll never make it. Those guards, they’re right on our heels. I don’t think I can run that fast, and the main gate is still locked.”

  The breath caught in Travis’s throat. He stared ahead of him. There was a box truck parked right in front of them, the engine running. Travis ran for the back of it, trying to lift up the back gate. It was locked. He stared around the corner, spotting a single man wearing a flat cap and smoking a cigarette. If he had to guess, that was the driver. He could hear the shouts of the guards inside the prison. They were probably wrestling with the lock on the gate. If he and Jace didn’t disappear within the next few seconds, they’d both be dragged back into the prison. And he knew from what Gracie had told him there was no help coming. This was their only opportunity to escape.

  Travis grabbed Jace’s sleeve. “You’re not going to like this, but follow me.”

  “Geez, we just met. You already know what I like, huh?” Jace grinned.

  Travis glanced over his shoulder as he ran down the steps to where the truck was parked in the loading dock. He threw himself on the ground and rolled underneath the truck, eyeing up the chassis underneath. Reaching upward, he found a couple of handholds and footholds on the truck’s frame, avoiding the drive shaft, which he knew would be turning as soon as the truck was in gear. Pulling himself up, he wedged his body underneath the truck where he couldn’t be seen.

  Jace followed, his eyes wide. “I don’t think I can—”

  Just then, Travis heard the driver coming, his footsteps heavy on the concrete. He sounded like he was talking into his cell phone. “Yeah, another brawl just blew up at the prison. I’m going to get out of here before they lock the whole thing down, and I can’t get out. Yeah. Remember the last time? I was stuck here for like two days. Not doing that again.”

  Travis saw the man’s boots disappear up into the cab, heard the engine rev and the truck being put into gear. His eyes got wide as he stared at Jace. “Now!”

  Jace hauled his way up underneath the truck, his face reddening, the veins in the side of his neck popping out as he struggled to retain his grip.

  And they weren’t even out of the prison yard yet.

  Travis stared straight up at the moving parts of the truck as it lumbered forward. It took everything he had to hold on as the truck bumped on the rough driveway. Ahead of him, he heard the creak of a gate open and then close, the truck picking up speed as it got to the end of the driveway, the lower legs of the men manning the gate disappearing behind them. The darkness covered the two of them as they held on, only a few passing headlights cutting underneath the truck. Travis looked over at Jace. His face had paled. Travis knew Jace wasn’t going to be able to hold on for much longer. Travis also knew they couldn’t exactly drop off of the truck while it was moving without risking even more serious injuries. He looked over at Jace and shouted, “The next time the truck stops, drop to the ground and roll to the side.”

 

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