Beth
The next day, Beth woke up early to get a take-out bag of breakfast from a diner down the street. Then she went to Bluebonnet a couple of hours before her shift was due to start. She wore her uniform to avoid attracting attention, and whenever someone noticed her and asked what she was doing there so early, she mumbled something about needing the overtime and scuttled away quickly, trying to keep the bag of food behind her back.
She carried the bag to the overseer's office in Ad-Seg, where Officer Rory sat in front of an array of security monitors with his feet up on the desk, reading an old, tattered issue of Penthouse. Rory was a morbidly obese man in his late forties, with short, spiky red hair that was starting to turn gray. The monitors displayed the live feeds from the cameras in the corridor, showing that the hall was empty and the cell doors were shut.
When Rory saw Beth, he tossed the magazine aside, licking his chops lasciviously. Beth wasn't sure whether he was ogling her or the food she was holding.
“Officer D'Amato! What brings you down to the bowels of Bluebonnet?”
Beth smiled warmly. “Well, I've been meaning to visit you down here ever since I started this job. Ad-Seg is my favorite part of the prison. There's just so much history down here. It must be fascinating!”
“It sure is, toots. We've had lots of famous bad guys come and go over the years. Come have a seat, and I'll tell you about some of them.” He chortled, putting his feet on the floor and patting his knee invitingly.
“Actually, there's one in particular I'd really like to talk about. The rich artist who killed his wife and her lover—Sam Lockhorn.”
Rory fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, loosening his tie. “Why, uh...I mean, what do you want to know about him?”
“Oh, it's not so much what I want to know as what I know already. For instance, I happen to know that while Lockhorn was staying down here before he was transferred to death row, you smuggled in some art supplies for him—”
“Now wait a goddamn minute—”
“—and that you currently own the last thing he ever painted, so you can anonymously sell it for upwards of a million dollars when you retire in a couple years.”
Rory's face was turning red. “That's a fucking lie.”
Beth shrugged. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I'm willing to bet that if word got out among the convicts, at least one of them would have friends or family members on the outside who'd be willing to break into your house and grab it while you're here on duty.”
“Oh yeah, you half-bright cunt? What makes you think I haven't got it stashed someplace else?”
“Simple. You have no friends, your family fucking hates you, and the painting's too big for a safe deposit box. Stop screwing around, Rory.”
Rory's teeth were clenched so tightly that the muscles in his jaw were twitching. Finally, he said, “Fine. So what do you want from me?”
“Nothing too complicated. Whenever Butler and his goons want to come in here without showing up on the security tapes, you arrange it. I want you to do the same for me.”
“What, now?” he whined plaintively.
“Yes, right now.”
Rory sighed, then dragged the computer keyboard closer to him and started typing. A few seconds later, the screens blinked, then continued showing the empty hallway.
“Okay, I've tricked the cameras so they'll show a loop of the empty corridor while continuing to stamp it with the current date and time. I'm assuming you want Hall's cell open?”
Jesus, Beth thought. It didn't take long for everyone to hear about that. But hopefully, in just a few short days, it won't matter how many people know about it. We'll be long gone.
“That's right,” she replied curtly.
Rory nodded and hit a button, unlocking Hank's cell. “Okay. You have five minutes.”
“If you want to hang onto your little retirement plan, then I have all the fucking time I want, fat man.”
And with that, Beth opened the door to the corridor and walked over to the door of Hank's cell. Her heart was slamming against her ribcage like a fist, and she could hear her own blood rushing in her ears.
This was it. The moment of truth.