Time spike Read online

  One woman-young and pretty, too-trapped inside a prison with more than two thousand convicts on the loose. The only surprising thing was that she wasn't just gibbering. What was her name? He had to think hard; those days seemed so long ago. Then he had it. "Ms. Brown," he whispered. "Elaine Brown, if I remember right. We're not here to hurt you. We didn't come here looking for you in the first place. We're just trying to do what you're doing. Stay alive. Nothing more." He waited. She just stared at him. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Ms. Brown? Please. I'm an experienced emergency medical technician. I need a response." Abruptly, she nodded. Once. Okay, she hadn't gone nuts. That was something. "Now I need to ask you some questions.

  First, where are the other guards?" She stared at him. Belatedly, James realized the question might seem like an interrogator's, hunting the guards. He waved his hand. "Never mind. You don't have to answer that. I just asked because-" "Gone. I'm the last one." Her voice was low, barely above a whisper. Cook didn't know if he should believe her. If there were others, she probably wouldn't say so. She would want to protect them, and maybe save herself by giving them a chance at surprising the escaped prisoners. The woman shook her head. "I'm not telling you where they went, so don't bother asking." Unlike the first two sentences she'd spoken, her voice almost quavering, that came flat and hard and final. Boyne chuckled. "Girl's got guts, for sure." James smiled. That, she did. He squatted next to her, reached out and laid gentle fingers on her forehead. Wanting to touch her more than check her temperature. Just to make sure she was real, maybe. He didn't know what to do, but whatever he did, he wanted to make sure it wasn't something he'd regret for the rest of his life. Touching her seemed to steady him, somehow. That was instinct, probably. She flinched from his fingers, but relaxed when she realized he wasn't doing more than touching her brow. Her temperature seemed fine. He tried to figure out what to do. Not even that, yet. Just figure out the right way to talk to her. This wasn't a gangbanger, or a tough street whore playing the percentages. She was just a young woman, badly hurt and scared, wanting to do the right thing and not knowing what that was. "Lady, the shit jumped off less than an hour back. Luff and his thugs are killing men left and right. You must have heard all the gunfire even way down here." She nodded. He took his fingers away from her brow. "We're just trying to escape. That's why I asked about the other guards. After we get out of this prison, if we want to stay alive, we have to find Captain Blacklock and his people. We have a common enemy, in the here and now, and I figure what's past is past.

  That makes us allies." Elaine Brown chewed her bottom lip. Her eyes moistened a little but her voice remained steady. "Prove it, then.

  Take me with you. There are enough of you. You can carry me out. Take me with you and I'll show you the way to the captain." James hesitated. All of his instincts told him to agree, but he wasn't sure it was even possible. "Please," she said. "If you found me, how long until someone else does? And I don't think I can make it much longer even if they don't. I'll starve. Worse yet, I'll get so weak I can't keep scaring off the rats when they sniff around me. The last time I went upstairs at night to steal a little food was two days ago. I can't make that climb up the stairs again. I could handle the pain but I'm not strong enough any more." James reached out again; and, again, Brown stiffened and pulled back a little. "I'm just checking," he whispered. Gently, he removed the newspapers covering her abdomen, then lifted her blouse. The I.V. he remembered was now gone, but the bandages were still in place. Her breathing was rapid and a little irregular. The basement was too dark for him to see if that reaction was due to fear or infection. He touched the bandage itself. It was dry. That made her proposal… Well, possible anyway, without just killing her. She wasn't a big woman. Never had been, even before a bad injury and a week without much food shrank her weight down even further. If James and his men could escape at all, they could carry her easily enough. And, being completely cold-blooded about it, having Elaine Brown with them when and if they finally found Blacklock would work in their favor. James could make bold statements about "being allies," but the fact remained that Blacklock had well over a hundred well-armed guards and James had a little over twenty convicts armed with nothing more than shanks. He could easily see where Blacklock might decide that locking up his new "allies"-or just shooting them-was the appropriate measure. Harder to do that, though, if those same cons were the ones who brought out alive a female guard whom the other guards had left behind to die. Alive, and unhurt. In any way.

  James pondered that for a moment. The problem was that he didn't really know all of the men in the gang that well. Once again, Boyne showed how good a lieutenant he was. It was a little uncanny, the way such a dull-looking man could seem to read his mind. He squatted next to them and said: "Won't nobody hurt her, boss. Don't think any of them would anyway, but I'll see to it." His grin split the gloom.

  "Just to make sure, I'll have Kidd watch over her. Be her personal bodyguard. Goofy bastard'll get a kick out of that." James chuckled.

  Elaine's brow wrinkled. "What's so funny?" "Geoffrey Kidd's as queer as they come, lady. He's also six feet tall, weighs well over two hundred pounds, and hospitalized the last man who tried to make him his bitch. That was… what, John? Before my time." "Four years ago." Boyne stood up and looked down at Brown. "Just relax, girl.

  Won't nothing bad happen to you. Not from us, anyway." The moist gleam in her eyes turned into a sudden flood. Her body was wracked with sobs. Quiet ones, though, very quiet. Even now, she was trying to maintain her control and self-discipline. Hoping it wouldn't be misconstrued, James slid right next to her. Half-sitting and half-lying down, he put his arm around her shoulders. This time, instead of drawing back, she leaned into him. Started to clutch him, in fact, before the pain brought by the motion made her pull the arm back. "I've been so scared," she whispered. "Never thought a person could get so scared. Or stay so scared for so long." He felt a lump in his throat. Ancient instincts were getting stirred up, no doubt about it. For the first time, her good looks registered on him. Big time. He needed to bring that under control, for damn good and sure. The effort to do so made his mind veer off to something that made him laugh. Not chuckle, laugh outright. "What's so funny?" she asked again. His initial reaction was that an honest answer wouldcertainly be misconstrued. But something in the way she looked up at him, her head resting on his shoulder, made him think otherwise. There was something very steady about this woman, as young as she was. He didn't think she rattled easy. "It's just that, when I was a kid, I used to have this daydream. Like in the comic books or the movies. Someday I'd rescue a beautiful princess from dire peril." He laughed again, more softly.

  "You're good-looking enough, that's for sure. But I'd been figuring I'd find the princess in a fancy castle somewhere. Not…" He waved his hand at their surroundings. Brown laughed softly herself. And then, to his complete surprise, nestled into him. "I was born in a bungalow, not a castle. And the closest I ever came to being a princess was being runner-up-second runner-up, mind you-in a stupid beauty contest my mother made me enter when I was sixteen. Junior Miss Alexander County, I would've been, if I'd won. Oh, whoop-de-do." She looked up at him again. Her dark eyes seemed bigger than any eyes he'd ever seen. That was a trick of the dim lighting, of course. "What's your name? I remember seeing you now, once or twice, in the infirmary.

  But I never knew your name." "Cook. James Cook." He smiled. "Not the sort of fancy name any knight in shining armor would have, is it?"

  "No," she said calmly. "But it's the same name as that famous captain.

  The great explorer. The one who sailed all around the world and discovered almost everything, way back when. More'n two hundred years ago, I think." James knew who she was talking about, of course. His crazy damn father had named him after that captain. He chuckled, harshly. "Yeah, I know. And wound up, in the end, being killed by cannibals." "I like the name." Oh, Lord. The lump was back in his throat and James had a feeling it wasn't going to get dislodge
d any too easily. A little noise made him look up. He was a little embarrassed to discover that the whole gang had quietly gathered around, peering into the cubbyhole. He cleared his throat. "Uh, boys, this is Elaine Brown. Ms. Brown, these are… ah…" What to call them? They'd always just been "Boomer's boys." Boyne cleared his throat. "Boss, I been thinking we should probably have a name. I mean, now that Boomer's gone." He was right, and the name came to James immediately. "We do have a name. We're the Boomers." The men murmured among themselves for a little while. It didn't take more than a few seconds before Morelli said: "Hey, I like it," and everybody else nodded their agreement. Geoffrey Kidd pushed forward and knelt on one knee in front of Brown. As big as he was, he seemed to dwarf the little woman. That wasn't just his height and his weight. Kidd had figured out right from the start that the best way for a gay man serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison to survive on his own terms was to outdo the cons at their own dominance games. Being almost as black as the proverbial ace of spades helped, but he'd gone the whole nine yards. He lifted weights until he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, shaved his head bald, and had tattoos all over. The four knuckles on his left hand spelled out F-U-C-K. The ones on his right spelled out Y-O-U-2. "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Brown," he said.

  "I've been assigned the task of watching over you, it seems." Kidd had a good sense of humor, and was obviously amused by the situation.

  "Pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Kidd." Her little hand came out from under the newspaper and magazines to shake his great big tattooed one.

  "Well, isn't this touching?" said a hard voice from somewhere in the rear. "Move aside, girls. Move, I said." Startled, the gang members at the rear skittered away, letting a man come through. No, not one man.

  There were four others standing behind him. Each and every one of whom was holding a rifle or a shotgun and had a pistol holstered to his hip. A couple of pistols, in the case of the one in front. One holstered on his hip and one shoved into his waistband. Too late for it to do any good, James realized that the interest sparked by finding Elaine Brown had drawn everyone away from watching the door. His fault, his fault. He'd been too damn sure that no con searching the building would have a key to the door leading down to the basement.

  He'd been right, actually, as far as it went. The man in charge of this squad was no minor underling. It was Danny Bostic, one of Luff's three top lieutenants. Specifically, the one Luff had put in charge of handling the daily executions. And who'd done it very efficiently, day after day after day.

  Chapter 31 "Hold this for me, Fritz," Bostic said, handing his shotgun to one of the men behind him. That was Arthur Fritz, another con who went back with Luff a long ways. He then shrugged off the heavy backpack he was carrying, as all of them were, and set it on the floor. His hands now free, Bostic pulled out the pistol in his waistband with his right hand and, from his back pocket, a flashlight in the other. The beam of the flashlight played across the cubbyhole, settling quickly on Brown. Her eyes shut against the light. After this many days in near darkness, the flashlight must have seemed blinding.

  "And will you look at this? One mystery solved, anyway. Boys, we've discovered the whereabouts of the missing Elaine Brown. You remember her, I'm sure. That little black honey made such a stir when she started working in the joint." Elaine's lips tightened, along with her eyes. "You'd better stay away from me. I've got AIDS. Was diagnosed right after I started. They were planning to fire me." Bostic smiled.

  "Nice try, girl. Relax. We didn't come down here looking for pussy."

  One of the men behind him said: "Yeah, sure. But now that we found her, why not bring her along? A day into the woods, and pussy sounds real good to me. Especially that one." By now, James was standing up.

  Since the flashlight was aimed at Elaine instead of him, he could see Bostic. A little wash of expressions went over the man's face at that suggestion. There was maybe a trace of lust there, but most of it seemed calculation. James didn't really know Bostic. But he knew he had a reputation for being a cold-blooded bastard, even by the standards of a maximum security prison. He didn't think Bostic himself had the inclinations of a rapist. But if Bostic decided it was a good idea to haul Elaine along to provide his men some entertainment, he'd do it without thinking twice. There was only one way to handle this.

  Straight ahead. "You don't take the girl, Bostic. Just forget it."

  Bostic's lip curled. "And what exactly are you going to do to stop me, Cook? What you got? A shiv? A sock full of batteries?" He hefted the pistol. "Meet Mr.. 40 caliber. Full clip. Not to mention our good Dukes Twelve Gauge standing right behind me." "Fuck you, Bostic. We're at close quarters and there are twenty of us. Stop flapping your mouth if you want to start killing and do it. But we'll take down at least two or three of you. We all got shivs and they work just fine at six-inch range." He jerked his head, indicating the floor above. "You aren't here on Luff's business, are you? No, you're looking to do the same thing we are. Get the hell out before the lunatic takes everybody down. Am I right?" Bostic made no reply, but something in his face made the answer obvious. "Thought so. Well, figure it out, then. It oughta be easy, unless you got the brains of a carrot. Even if you kill all of us and don't get a scratch yourselves, how many rounds will you have to fire? Twenty, rock bottom minimum. Be more like fifty or sixty. You think that won't draw attention?" He waited, just long enough for that to sink in. "And then what? You gonna hold off Luff and his men with a few pistols and shotguns? Just having used up half your ammunition?" He could sense their hesitation. The same shithead who'd proposed taking Elaine spoke up again. "He's bluffing, Danny.

  They ain't got the guts." That was the wrong thing to say. Really, really, really, the wrong thing to say. The truth was, James wasn't sure if he was bluffing or not. He had no idea what the other Boomers would do, if the shit hit the fan here. But the one thing you didn't ever do with cons-sure as hell not anyone who made it into Boomer's good graces-was suggest he didn't have balls. The flaming gay one, especially. Kidd came to his feet, with a grin on his face that was really a snarl. "You're a dead man, Williams." A steel shank came into his hand from somewhere. "I guarantee I'll get to you." All of the Boomers were shifting their stances, now. And Kidd's wasn't the only hand holding a blade. At least a dozen were. "Hold it!"Bostic half-shouted. "Everybody. Just hold it." He turned his head slightly, not taking his eyes from James. "Williams, if you say one more word, I'll kill you myself." "Won't have to," muttered Fritz. He had his shotgun pointed more at Williams than at any of the Boomers, now.

  "Shut the fuck up, you stupid bastard. Shut. The. Fuck. Up." Williams seemed to deflate like a balloon. James and Bostic stared at each other. "It's your call, Bostic," he said. "I'll give you ten seconds to make it." Danny knew he wasn't kidding. The Indian might well be bluffing, as far as what his men would do. Probably was, at least until Williams opened his fat mouth. But he wasn't bluffing about what he'd do. Cook hadn't bluffed since the day he walked through the gates. Danny made a quick note to himself to get rid of Williams. He hadn't been sure about him to begin with. He was only along because he was the one who'd had access to the armory. Concentrate, you idiot.

  Three things made up his mind. The first was that James Cook was just plain scary. It was that goddam wood Indian face of his. You never knewwhat the fucker was thinking. He'd be hell on wheels at a poker table, if he could keep track of the cards and knew the odds. The second was that, on balance, he didn't think taking the girl was a good idea anyway. At first it would please his guys. But then what?

  He'd sneered at Luff enough times, privately, because of the man's inability to think in the long run. So Danny had better not make the same mistake himself. What happens to a group of five men-four, soon-with one hot-looking woman among them? Nothing good, for sure.

  And there were plenty of other women out there. Indian women, from primitive tribes. Maybe they were scraggly looking and stank, but that could be fixed. A little soap and combs went a lo
ng way. Most things could be fixed, if you were running the show and weren't stupid.

  Finally, and simplest, rape didn't appeal to him. Not at all. And that it would have to be rape, with Elaine Brown, was obvious. Even when he got his hands on a native woman, he wasn't planning to force her. In the long run, that was stupid, and he wouldn't enjoy it in the short run. He wanted his women willing. Better yet, eager. And, unlike Williams, he hadn't been in prison for so long that he'd forgotten how to manage that. "Ease up, Cook," he said. "I'm not looking for a fight." He put the gun back into his waistband. "As you figured, we just want to get away from Luff." He turned his head; again, keeping his eyes on Cook. "Boys, we're all just going to stay calm and peaceful while we wait it out here for nightfall. Keep your guns ready, but that's it. You understand?" "Yeah," said Fritz. "We do.

  Don't we, guys?" All of them murmured agreement. Including Williams.

  "Okay, then," Danny said. He gave Brown a smile and a little salute with the flashlight. "Nice to see you again, lady. By the way-I'm just curious, that's all-whodid kill Terry Collins?" She cleared her throat. "Marie Keehn. She stayed behind, but her boyfr-ah, Lieutenant Hulbert-had her name crossed off the list so she wouldn't have any set post." Danny laughed softly. That really was pretty funny. That asshole Terry Collins, Mr. Swagger and Strut-plugged by a woman who didn't stand more than five feet, two inches tall. "Wish I'd seen it."

  "It was pretty horrible," the girl said, wincing. "She shot him right in the head. At close range. One of his eyes came out." She was telling the truth, then. Danny had heard about the popped-out eyeball, from one of the men who'd seen the body. He grinned. "Still wish I'd seen it. I despised that prick." While he and Elaine had that little exchange, James had been thinking quickly. An idea had come to him.

  Risky, though. Not because it might not work. That was a given. But it was still a lot better chance than their existing plan of just rushing the gate after nightfall. The real problem was what would happen if the ideadid work. Afterward, they'd be at Bostic's mercy. There'd be no tight, confined space that partially neutralized the mismatch between guns and shanks. "How smart are you, Bostic?" he asked abruptly. "Smart enough to make a deal and stick with it?" Bostic looked at him. "Depends on whether I think it's a deal worth making.