“What’s up?” I stood and walked to the bars.
“It’s going down at three o’clock—the guard just handed me this note.” He held up a piece of paper that had the time jotted in blue ink.
“We’re not…” I looked over at Josef Weber. “We’re not killing him.”
“Just be ready.” He nodded. “We don’t have to do anything to him, but if all hell breaks loose, we might get a chance to run—probably the only one we’ll get before they send us to a prison.”
I hated to admit that Brody was right, but I was terrified that he wasn’t telling me everything. Why would a guard be planning something if we hadn’t agreed to the deal? If they were going to create a distraction, it wasn’t so we could escape—it was so that Josef Weber would be laying on the floor when order was restored.
I understood the need for vengeance—the call of darkness that consumes everything around you, including rational thought. I just wasn’t the type of man that would pay off someone else to handle my business—if I thought someone deserved to be turned into a corpse, then I’d do it myself.
Except I didn’t—not when Anabelle betrayed me. I froze. I saw those beautiful emerald eyes filling with tears and they trapped me.
“It’s almost time.” Brody looked over at me—pacing in his cell like an animal that could taste freedom on his breath.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” I glared at him. “If we get a chance to run—we run. That’s it.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “We run.”
At three o’clock there was some sort of power surge that swept through our cell block, then another one—then darkness. All of the jail cells opened. The emergency lights turned on, but it was absolute chaos. The kind of chaos that would have resulted in a riot if we were actually in prison, but we were just in county lock-up where people got held before trial—or if their sentence wasn’t long enough for them to see the inside of a real prison.
“Come on!” Brody motioned to me. “This is our chance.”
“Fuck.” I exhaled sharply.
This will be our only chance to run. We have to take it. We’re innocent men—but we can’t change our future from inside of a jail cell. Running is the only option we’ve got if we want to find a way to prove our innoc
ence.
Some of the other guys in jumpsuits were taking advantage of the chaos to act like idiots. The strangest part—eerie perhaps—was that no guards had walked down our block to try and restore order. They should have been there immediately, handing out beatings until everyone was back in their cage where they belonged.
I was the first one out of my cell and I immediately headed for the exit. I looked over my shoulder to make sure Brody was behind me—but he wasn’t. He was standing outside of his cell—staring right at Josef Weber. I turned to run back, but other prisoners were starting to come out of their cells. Even if they weren’t interested in chaos, they saw the opportunity.
“Brody—don’t!” I yelled as I tried to push my way through the mob that was tossing mattresses from their cots and making a lot of noise.
It was too late. Brody wasn’t going to listen—he never had any intention of walking out of that jail without collecting the bounty on Josef Weber. I watched in horror as he entered the cell and grabbed the older man by the throat.
I pushed one of the prisoners in front of me out of the way, but that just made him angry—and apparently, a couple of the other guys were his friends. Suddenly, Josef Weber’s last few moments on earth weren’t my biggest problem.
“You wanna fuck with us, big man?” The larger man chuckled, and then he swung.
I had been fighting so long that I didn’t have to think about my response. It was just instinct. I caught the fist aimed at my skull, twisted it in my hand, and snapped the guy’s arm like a twig. He screamed in pain, hit the floor, and then his buddies came at me. I ducked a punch—crushed a rib underneath my knuckle. That allowed the other guy to hit me in the back—three shots—right in my fucking kidney. He had a fast punch—probably would have been a Golden Gloves champion if he had any technique—might have been fast enough to make me bleed if he had a shank in his hand.
“Son of a bitch!” I spun around, grabbed him by the face, and slung him sideways.
I heard the crunch of his skull when it bounced off the cell and several of his teeth rolled towards my shoe. Three bodies on the floor—all clutching something that was not going to heal overnight. The rest of the prisoners backed off, so I turned my attention to Brody. He was no longer holding Josef Weber by the throat. He was looking down at him. Weber was on the ground and Brody looked like a man possessed with rage.
“Brody—what the fuck.” I ran over and pushed Brody, feeling my anger rise.
“Let’s go.” He growled under his breath and started walking towards the exit.
I couldn’t stay, even if I was pissed. We had one opportunity in front of us and we had to take it. Brody kicked the door open at the end of our block and I finally saw why the guards weren’t doing anything. The door that connected our block with the others was jammed—and they were stuck on the other side.
Those two rich assholes must have paid a lot of people off to make sure Josef Weber didn’t see daylight again. Fuck.
Other prisoners were starting to come through the door Brody kicked open—they were heading for freedom too. We ran towards the door that separated us from the outside world and it was unlocked. Convenient—too convenient really, but I couldn’t take time to think about that. I didn’t know how much time we had, and we needed to get put as much distance between us and the jail as possible before reinforcements showed up to help the guards that were trapped.
“Let’s hotwire one of those cars.” Brody motioned to the parking lot once we were outside.