“Had you two become friends?”
Choosing her words carefully, Abby said, “He’s a good listener. Not judgmental. I find that a rare combination. I hope he’s all right.” A tear slid down her cheek. “He had a way about him too. Just made you feel good about yourself.”
“Do you think he and your son might have left the hospital together?”
“I don’t know. Danny was pretty beat up. If it wasn’t for Ben.” She stopped and looked at Annabelle. “What’s his real name?”
Annabelle hesitated, but Abby appeared to be genuinely concerned about Stone. “Oliver.”
“If it hadn’t been for Oliver I wouldn’t have my son at all, so whatever I can do to help you I will.”
“If you think of anything that might be helpful you can reach me at this number.” She handed Abby a card, gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and left.
Back in the van, she sat lost in thought in the passenger seat.
“What do we do now, Annabelle?” asked Caleb, while Reuben stared at her curiously.
“You okay?” he asked.
She started and looked at him. “What? Yeah, I’m good.”
“Boy, Abby Riker has some big bucks,” said Reuben as he glanced back at the enormous house.
“Yeah, only thing it cost her was her husband.”
“What do we do now, Annabelle?” Caleb asked again.
Annabelle didn’t say anything, because she didn’t have an answer.
Where the hell are you, Oliver?
CHAPTER 63
BEING PROCESSED into Dead Rock included standing bent over naked with your butt cheeks spread as painfully as possible while a group of men and one woman looked on. The woman was also videotaping the proceedings, which added considerably to the dignity of the event. The body cavity search completed, their heads were then shaved.
Suspicion of lice, Stone heard one guard say, while another chuckled about a weapon perhaps being concealed in their hair roots.
They sat crouched in a corner naked while men scrubbed them raw with stiff brushes that felt steel-tipped. After this a fire hose blasted them with such force that they were pinned against the wall like ants at the mercy of a berserk garden hose.
Dressed in orange jumpsuits, cuffed and shackled, they were led down a stone hall to a cell. Guards held stun guns an inch from their prisoners’ sides, seemingly just praying for a reason to hit them with a 50,000-volt tickle. The cell door was solid two-inch steel with a food and cuffing slot cut into the bottom half and a small viewing window in the upper half. They were pushed in, the shackles removed, the jagged links stripping at their skin, and then the door slammed shut and was loudly bolted behind them.
Knox and Stone slumped down next to each other as their gazes drifted dully over the eight-by-twelve-foot space. There was a steel toilet and sink unit bolted to the wall with no knobs that could be fashioned into weapons. There was also a steel slab for a desk and two steel slabs on the wall with a thin plastic mattress and pillow on each. A six-inch vertical slit in the thick concrete block and rebar wall constituted the sole window.
For the next half hour each man groaned and moaned and rubbed at innumerable bruises, cuts and bumps on their bodies.
Knox finally sat back against the wall, wiggled a loose tooth in the back of his mouth with his finger and looked over at Stone. “Whatever the hell happened to due process?”
“It seems to be growing less popular these days,” Stone replied as he rubbed at a knot the size of a quarter on the side of his head.
“I’m surprised they put us in here together. I’d assumed we’d be segregated.”
“They did it because they don’t care what we tell each other.”
“You mean because we’re never getting out?”
“We don’t really exist. They can do anything they want. And he murdered a man right in front of us. That shows he doesn’t expect us to be a witness anytime soon. You think the cell is bugged?”
“I doubt they care that much, but you never know.”
Stone drew closer and lowered his voice to a whisper and tapped his shoes against the walls to disrupt any audio surveillance. “Any chance your agency will find you?”
Knox joined in the wall-tapping. “There’s always a chance. Looks like the only one we’ve got right now. But even if they do, you realize how many places there are to hide us here. Like you said, we don’t exist.”
“And they can always kill us. Invisible in life, nothing in death. Who sent you after me?”
“I guess it would sound pretty stupid to say that’s classified under the present circumstances. Macklin Hayes.”
A tiny smile crept across Stone’s face. “I guess that makes sense.”
“You served under him.”
“If you want to call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“I didn’t serve under him, I survived him.”
“You’re not the first to tell me that.”
“I’d be surprised if I were.”
“You earned that medal. Why didn’t you get it?”
Stone looked surprised. “How’d you find out about that?”
“Did some digging. You were a slam dunk for the big one.”
“Every soldier in my company would’ve done the same for me.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. I was over there too. All soldiers are not created equal. So why didn’t you get it? I looked at the paperwork. It stopped at Hayes.”
Stone shrugged. “I haven’t given it that much thought over the years.”
“You did something to really piss off the man, didn’t you?”
“If I did, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Tell me.”
“No, I’m not going to tell you!”
“Okay, next subject. I know you killed Gray and Simpson.”
“Good for you.”
“Is that a confession?”
Stone picked up the intensity of the tapping. “Right now we need to come up with a way to get out of here. Because if we don’t it won’t matter to either of us what I did or didn’t do.”
“Okay, I’m listening,” said Knox.
“And I’m still thinking. But if we do escape, what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
Stone’s eyes flashed. “You know what the hell I mean. About me?”
“If I had to answer you now I’d say
I was going to complete my assignment and turn your ass in.”
Stone took this in and finally nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. Just so we know where we stand.”
“So fill me in on the events leading up to us ending up here.”
Stone started talking. A half hour later he was finished as both