FOUR

 

 

“It’s amazing,” Shea breathed out, looking through the window at the men chained to each other in the central courtyard below.

The man who’d come to her cell to retrieve her was the same hulk who’d visited her before. He’d surprised her by declaring he was taking her on a tour of the building. With her goal being to gather information, Shea wasn’t going to say no and followed when he led her out to guide her around the concrete structure.

Shea found it was magnificent in its efficiency. Explaining how the compound was four connected wings arranged around a central courtyard, he reminded her again of the security measures planted in the land around the inside and outside of the concrete perimeter wall. It was arranged like almost any other prison could be, but this was a city in itself with resources available to support the workforce and prisoners alike.

Guard towers stood in the corners, above both the inner building walls with a view of the courtyard, and the perimeter wall which separated them from the forest and mountains beyond. With automatic weapons and men always on patrol, this place was humming with the possibility that anything might happen at any moment.

Diego, the man who’d kept her at his side since leaving the cell, had walked slowly, showing her where the men worked, the offices and even the security command center.

Each wing consisted of four floors and a two-story basement space, which it turned out was where she’d been kept in isolation. He showed her a deserted cell block and how the inmates were kept in individual cells, each with their own toilet facilities. Though he had explained not every hall of the prison was the same. Some inmates were kept in communal cells, some had to use communal showers and bathrooms too, but he hadn’t explained how the men were separated or what they’d done to find themselves there.

The cellblock he’d taken her through was empty because the men had been moved into the courtyard for her tour. Diego explained that he was second in command; everything she saw was under his purview, which might explain why so many of the workers had averted their eyes when he strode by them.

Though she hadn’t seen many guards, Diego had said there were a hundred employees, and she wondered if other areas of the building had been cleared for her tour too, not just the one prison block.

Standing in this fourth floor office, she watched the inmates amble around in the courtyard and struggled to absorb what she’d stumbled upon.

“How do you get funding for something like this?”

“Finance isn’t my department,” he said.

Turning away from the window, she peered at him. The office they were in was almost empty. There was a desk near the window and an empty bookcase on the side wall. Shea guessed this room had been picked to give her a view of the courtyard, but also because it didn’t appear to be in use, so there was no risk of her catching a glimpse of work product.

“That’s your boss’s purview?” she asked and he nodded once. “Who is he? He must be rich to do something like this… Why would he do something like this?”

“He was born into it,” he said. “And that’s all I’ll say about the Laird.”

Interest took her a step closer to him. “Is that what they call him?”

“Yep,” he said. “All I’ll say except to offer a warning.”

Shea folded her arms having expected the threats to begin at some point. “What’s that?”

“He doesn’t fuck around. If he says something, he means it. Lucky for you, one of the things he said recently is that none of the men are allowed to touch you, which means they won’t.”

Somehow, she didn’t think this Laird had done that out of kindness or concern. “How many women are here?”

“One,” he said. “You’re…”

There were plenty of words he could use to describe her, and it seemed like he was struggling to pick one.

Shea hazarded a guess. “Unwelcome?”

“I was going to say unexpected, but yeah. If you want to put it that way, you are unwelcome. Men were punished for bringing you here. They should have put a bullet in you and in the interest of honesty, if I’d been there when they found you, that’s exactly what they would’ve done.”

She moved toward him. “What you’re really doing is warning me that your boss is unreasonable. I’ve committed no crime. I’ve done him no harm. But, being here was enough to sentence me to death?”

“Being here, without authorization, that’s harm,” Diego said with confidence, not contrition. “This place is the life of every man here, employee and prisoner alike. If we’re exposed, it will be the end of us all.”

“Because you’d be prosecuted,” she said, understanding the gravity of what was going on here without feeling any sympathy for those involved in it. “You’re holding men without due process.”

He almost rolled his eyes. “You don’t understand what we’re doing or why we do it,” Diego said. “We wouldn’t be prosecuted, we’d be dead. The Laird isn’t about to give up his life for a little girl who tripped over the wrong rock.”

He could dismiss her all he liked, but she’d found herself smack bang in the middle of an intrigue. “Seems to me this is exactly the right rock. What you’re doing here is wrong.” Shea had no problem telling anyone what she thought, about anything. “How many prisoners are you holding here?”

“This morning’s count was two hundred and six.”

“This morning’s?”

“Might change by lights out,” he said, casual even in spite of what he was implying. “And not because we’re expecting men to arrive.”

A chill crept across the back of her neck. “Men die here,” she said. “What happens to the men who aren’t released?”

“No one is released,” he said. “The only sentence here is life.”

That was ominous enough to give her a chill. “And at the end of that sentence? When they’ve given this Laird their life… what happens to them?”

“Want me to show you?”

There was almost a thread of excitement in his tone and it left her uneasy. Maybe it was about being institutionalized, or maybe she was more naïve than she’d thought. But, what was normal around here wasn’t normal anywhere else.

Still, she had a sort of morbid curiosity that he was offering to fulfill. While she wasn’t jumping around in excitement at the prospect of satisfying her interest, she wasn’t going to say no in answer to his question either.

 

 

Shea sort of wished that she’d said no.

Trust or not, it was impossible for her to risk straying from Diego’s side when he took her across the no man’s land between the main building and perimeter wall. He told her that the security defenses had been switched off and she believed him, because he was out here too. Though in her peripheral vision, she had caught sight of some rather vicious looking rifle barrels protruding from the guard towers, and they appeared to be precise enough to take her out without ruffling Diego’s hair.

Keeping an eye on the guard towers for as long as she could, Shea was hyperaware of the building windows behind her that she couldn’t monitor. It was one thing to be full of gumption when she was facing down a man, it was another to have automatic weapons trained on her.

Diego stopped at a steel door built into the concrete outer wall. He typed a code into a panel before pressing his fingerprint to a square above. “State of the art,” he said. “We upgrade every six months and the codes change every day.”

It felt a bit like he was reporting to her for an article. Even though she didn’t have a notepad, autopilot made her memorize as many of the details as she could.

The door slid open. Outside, two men leaped into the space left after the steel moved. Both had their weapons aimed, fingers on the trigger. Shea didn’t scream, thank God, but she did slip behind Diego, just in case anyone felt twitchy.

“Stand down,” Diego said and reached around to grab hold of her to haul her forward.

The men lowered their weapons but blinked at her like Diego had just produced an alien. “Yeah,” she said, trying to shrug off her reaction to the weapons. “As you were.”

“The Laird know you’ve got her out here, D?” one of the guards asked.

“You think if he didn’t, I’d tell you, Kipling?” Diego asked, pulling her through the wall a fraction of a second before the door closed again. “And, if we were making a break for it, this would be a stupid escape route, wouldn’t it?”

All three men turned in the same direction and looked up. Following their line of vision, Shea was astounded by what she saw. Set back from the corner of the perimeter wall, nestled in the trees, and angled to overlook the whole compound was a small building made of concrete and wood, standing on stilts. It was hidden from almost every angle except the front by the forest canopy.

Given that the glass frontage reflected the forest, shadows, and sky, and it was so high, she couldn’t make out what was inside. But, it was a beautiful structure, with a receding roof and huge balcony at the front.

They’d been talking about this Laird person, and she’d established he was the boss and the most senior individual around. So, she could only guess that unique structure was where he lived or worked.

“What’s he compensating for?” she muttered, but when she turned to the three men, it was obvious she’d offended them. “What?”

“The Laird wants you dead,” Diego said. “He doesn’t like variables. Don’t make it easier for him to make the call.”

“You haven’t told her that he doesn’t have a sense of humor?” one of the guards asked.

The second guard, who Diego had called Kipling, was pondering something. “He wants her dead… that means if a gun goes off by accident—”

“You get bonus points for killing her,” Diego said. Both guards looked at her with a more sinister glint in their eyes. Diego grabbed Kipling by his uniform and thrust him against the wall. “Course if your weapon hasn’t been properly maintained and it malfunctions, that means someone hasn’t done their job. Remember what happened to the last guy who discharged his weapon and blamed it on a fault?”

Diego gave Kipling a shove to thrust him away, then grabbed her again to drag her from the compound.

This place was a treasure trove of drama. Every way she turned, there was a new story. “What happened to him?” she whispered, struggling to keep up given her ankle brace.

“Same thing that happens to everyone who breaks the rules or disrupts routine,” Diego grumbled.

“What?”

Just then, he pulled her through the trees and threw her forward. Falling to the grass, she landed on her knees, gritting her teeth against the ache in her leg. But, as she took in what was around her, thoughts of pain faded to black.

In this shadowy clearing, surrounded by overhanging rocks from the mountain above, there was just enough light to make out the plaques on the ground. Dark grey, each was carved into a rock that had been polished just enough to make space for a number to be etched into it.

They were equally spaced, but close together, and stretched into the trees in all directions. “We have other sites like this throughout the forest,” Diego said. “This one is filled with cremations. Some guys we let disappear into the wind, some are interred like this. No one is returned to their family.”

Shea didn’t realize he’d helped her up until she started walking. She came to a stop in the middle of the site. “You kill people? What state are we in? Capital punishment—”

“The only sentence here is life,” he said. “Sometimes that runs out and when it does, we end up here.”

“We?”

“There are some comrades buried in the hills too,” he said and looked up like he was thinking of his fallen friends. But, he got it together and focused on her again. “This is your chance to make a choice, maybe the last one you’ll ever make.”

“Live or die?”

“Inmate… or comrade.”

It took her a second to figure out what he was saying. When she did, she couldn’t have been more stunned. “You want me to… to work here?”

“The Laird has ensured your safety for now. But, that won’t last unless you show loyalty. If you work with us, you will be expected to earn his trust and to take the pledge.”

“The pledge?”

“Your life to the cause,” he said. “It seems like a lot, but if you don’t… it’s back to that cell and you won’t be getting out.”

“He wants me dead,” she whispered, recalling what Diego had said to the guards just a few minutes ago. “I’m some kind of inconvenience.”

Putting the pieces together was difficult enough without trying to figure out this enigmatic, invisible character who commanded all of their lives… and deaths apparently.

“Some kind, yeah,” he said, coming to her. “Look, I’m not going to lie, he wasn’t wild about the idea. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s expecting you to fail.” That provoked her competitive hackles. “Working gives you more freedom than you’d ever have in gen pop. The Laird can’t guarantee your safety in the yard; no one would lose any sleep if you were ripped apart by the inmates.”

She wondered if Diego was jaded or just impervious to the horror of what he was suggesting. But, she was less affected by the possibility of Diego’s scenario than she was by the arrogance of the Laird who picked and chose when to worry about her welfare.

“He can’t be that powerful if my safety can’t be assured with the prisoners,” she said.

The corner of his mouth rose. “Some of those men haven’t seen a woman for decades. Plenty of them would be happy to take the punishment after if they had their way with you first,” he said. “Besides that, the Laird just doesn’t care enough about you to waste the respect or personnel capital it would take to have our comrades step in for you.”

“About me or about any woman? Is he married?”

He shook his head, but the action wasn’t an answer to her question. “I told you I won’t talk about him.”

Born into it, she wondered about the man who ran this place. Her gaze drifted to the peak of the roof she could just make out through the web of tree branches around their location. “I want to meet him,” she said.

“No.”

Her attention snapped to Diego. “If you want me to pledge my life to his cause, I should be allowed to meet him.”

“You will,” he said. “If you pledge your life to the cause, you will see him… eventually. All the men do.”

Laying eyes on him would be a start, but it wasn’t what she meant when she said she wanted to meet him. Shea wanted to make a connection with the man who made every call. “See him? That isn’t an introduction.”

“I can’t guarantee one of those. If you work here long enough, you’ll see him around, and might even get a word from him. But, there’s a strict hierarchy.”

It was so unbelievable that she was incredulous. “You ask men to pledge themselves to a man they’ve never met?”

Like he was anticipating her complaint, Diego licked his lips. “Think of it like the mafia,” he said, a glimmer of a smile on his face. “Each man pledges allegiance to his own superior. One vouches for another. Loyalty is fostered at each level. If one person within that unit defects, his unit suffers.”

“I’m surprised this place has stood for so long.”

“You don’t know how long it’s stood for,” he said. “I’ll tell you that the Laird wasn’t the only one born into it.”

That was another surprise. It made her wonder how many generations this legacy went back. “Were you?” He shook his head. “Then why would you…”

“That’s a long story, but suffice to say, the Laird treats us well, very well. He’s made sacrifices for each of us. He’s proved his loyalty to us. Men who pledge their allegiance to him have an ally for life and their families are cared for even beyond these walls.”

Shea couldn’t figure out the devotion. “But, you all have to live here.”

“And give up all outside connections, yes.”

This place was so isolated. It was impossible to imagine how civilized people could exist as an island like this. “You never leave here? Never?”

He smiled. “I leave here all the time; sometimes as often as once a month in the summer. Some winters the weather closes in around us and we can be stuck here for three or four months. But, when we’re working at full throttle, we can be completing missions all around the country, sometimes the world, every month.”

People left here. There were missions away from these walls. A glimmer of hope touched her, though she tried not to show it. Sitting in a cell, she’d never get out of here, and she didn’t have the strength to overpower the guards. But, if she could make these men trust her, maybe they’d let her go with them on a mission away from this illegal prison. Then she could slip away…

She could expose this place. They couldn’t come after her if she’d announced the truth of what was going on to every major news outlet on the planet.

With this new information, and the presented opportunity, her plan was beginning to take a more specific shape. But, she wasn’t going to leap on board too quickly; that would be too suspicious.

“I can’t give my life to this place,” she said, her heart thumping in her chest. “I can’t condone—”

“Before you make the decision, I should make it clear. You’re never leaving this place again,” he said, serious as the graves surrounding them. “This compound is now your life, from this moment forever. You’ve been sentenced to life, just like the rest of us.”

The rest of them? Maybe there were people working here who were no less prisoners than those who lived behind bars. But, any good reporter knew how to put fear aside for a scoop like this and she’d never find another story better than this one. This would put her on the journalistic map and all she had to do was play nice.

“I can’t make you any promises,” she said, ensuring not to reveal any of her plan in her reactions. “I can’t pledge allegiance—”

“He’s given you three months,” he said. “If you’re not ready to pledge by then, we’ll both pay a price for it.”

Her curiosity about this Laird guy transferred to the one in front of her. “You vouched for me in some way,” she said, edging closer to look into him. “You weren’t born into this, but you didn’t tell me why you chose this life?”

“Inmate number one zero three eight.”

“You know him,” she said, wondering if maybe he’d chosen to come here to be close to a loved one.

“He raped and murdered my sister twenty years ago,” Diego said, his cool expression giving little away. “Couple of times a year the Laird lets me alone with the guy, something that’s not allowed the rest of the year.” The corner of his mouth curled, but the light in his gaze dimmed though an edge of pleasure lingered. “On those days, the leash doesn’t feel so tight. I’d give my life to the Laird over again for what he’s done for Mia.”

Resting a hand on his forearm, she got a look inside this man who harbored such hatred for inmate one zero three eight, understandably so. This place might march to its own beat, but it was one a lot of people out there might support if the causes were as understandable as Diego’s grudge.

“I’ll be your comrade, Diego,” she said because he’d already stood up for her. Somehow, Shea knew she’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for him. “Yours.”

“Follow the rules, Pest,” he said and she smiled, lifting her shoulders. “You’ll be under my supervision and I have a low tolerance for being embarrassed.”

“Embarrass you?” she asked, looping her arm into his to lead him back toward the compound. “I’d never do such a thing.”