Chapter Sixty

 

RYAN

 

I'm starting to really feel like Agent Ball and I have something going. He gets me. After all, I don't want to be talked to while I'm in the bathroom, and he doesn't talk to me. Not really outside the bathroom, either.

It's really a perfect setup. I think we could be friends. The past few days, we've grown very close. Specifically, I learned his first name from the time that Davis called him by it, and not a whole hell of a lot else, which is exactly as close as I was to a lot of the guys in the club.

Hell of a lot of the guys back in Ohio, let me tell you. Knowing a guy's first name, might as well be best friends now. So it's not that surprising to me when I don't really want to kill the guy.

But if I have to, to get out of here, well, I guess that's how it's going to be.

Someone must be thinking the same thing as I am. I thought Logan was already making a break for the Mexican border when he left, frankly. It wouldn't surprise me if he's thinking about how to get me out of here.

Of course, Davis is more resistant to my charms than I might have expected under normal circumstances. But even still, I have a sneaking suspicion that under that delicious hard shell she's got, there's a little soft spot in there.

Which means she might be thinking it, too. Or, she might be thinking about any number of other things. I mean, it's a whole new era for women in the workforce. They can do and say just about whatever they like, and far be it from me to assume.

But she's been thinking about something awful damn hard the past couple of days, as I start recovering more and more. She looks a lot better, now. More put-together. With me sleeping through the night, I don't know for sure, but I think she's been going home after I fall asleep.

It's good for her. Good for me, too, in a sense. She smells like her again. The way I'm used to her smelling. Her hair looks nice. It looked great before, but now, when it's clean and she's had a chance to run a brush through it… it looks like hers.

I don't know how to open up the conversation, though. They tell me Brian's out of the hospital, up in Tucson. Don't know how long he'll be in getting here, but I think he's supposed to be coming to visit.

That'll be a good time to get me the hell out of here, probably. With four of us—excuse me, three of us, since there's no reason to be sure that Jada would join me—it can't be that hard, can it?

Then again, it's just going to be putting my brothers in more danger, and I'm not going to do that. Not again. Not after what happened. Not after how bad Brian got messed up. I can't see that happening again, no matter what. It's off the table.

I lay my head back. I'll think of something, I'm sure. It's just a matter of time until something comes along and shows me a solution to my problem, but until then…

Brian comes in. He's lost weight. The guy was already thin, and now he's downright skeletal. I don't know what they've been feeding him over there, except that it's sure as hell not enough.

Still, he smiles. I know a lot of guys get out of shit like that, and they can't get over it. It sticks with them, the rest of their natural lives. I don't want that for Brian. Don't want it for Logan, either. I swallow hard.

I don't have long to get the hell out of here. Not long at all. Soon, very soon now, they're going to tell me to get the hell out of this hospital, and I'm going up the river.

Straight up the river to D.C. where they'll charge me, try me, and sentence me to life in a hole in the ground. Especially killing some big A.T.F. guy, they're going to put me in a hole so deep I forget what the sun is. But I did what I had to do.

I hope nobody sees my face as I try to get used to the idea of my new home, what I'm going to have to get used to over the next few years. The next several years, in fact. Probably the rest of my life, but I never figured on living that long in the first place.

I never had anything to live for, except my brothers, and if I could launch them off like a damn rocket then that would be good enough for me. Fizzle out after that.

I just can't shake the hurting feeling that it all gives me. I don't like it one damn bit, and I want it to stop. But it's not going to, not ever.

So instead, I sleep. I go to sleep early that night. I like to stay up late, because at least then there's something on the one channel I get on the flat-screen. But I'm feeling pretty down, and with feeling pretty down is feeling pretty damn tired, and I just want to sleep.

I wake in the night, though. Something moves in the bed. Shakes me awake. A hand. The hand's attached to a woman. Davis leans in and whispers into my ear.

"You want to get out of here?"

I nod my head.

"Come on."

She sticks a key into my cuffs and undoes them. Easy as that. I'd imagined it would be harder, but I guess she's a cop, and that's how it goes sometimes.

My wrists hurt. They always hurt more, somehow, after the cuffs come off. As if now that I've got a little freedom, my wrists are going to make me suffer for putting them through that kind of hassle.

Some clothes are folded at the foot of the bed. They look like mine, more or less. I fit them on quickly and quietly. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not going to ask questions.

She beckons me over to the door. I follow. Not loud, but I could be quieter. Every step makes me wince. I should be damn quieter, but I just… can't. The boots keep making noise on the floor, no matter what I do.

Danny Ball's asleep in a chair outside. He doesn't move as we walk by. I try to keep my steps extra quiet, and I don't wake him up. Thankfully for me, at least. I don't know how it's going to affect his career, if we get out of here.

But I know how it's going to affect mine.

When we've turned the corner, Davis stops sneaking so much. We straighten up. I don't have a mirror, but I'd say we almost look like two perfectly normal people walking through a hospital. Sure, it's late, but I have to hope we can get out of here.

Nobody stops us. I expected someone to. I've been stopped just visiting hospitals before by over-zealous nurses who think it's their damn job to play security. But this time, when I'm breaking out of a prison bed…

Now's the time that they've decided that it's my business whether or not I walk out of the place.

It shouldn't feel this easy. Shouldn't feel this calm. But it does, somehow, as we're walking out. I don't know what the hell is causing any of it, but I'm pretty satisfied either way.

Because as we walk out casually, we get out the door, and Davis pulls me in for a kiss, and that makes the past couple of days pretty damn worth it. Now we just have to get real gone.