CHAPTER TWO
Adam waited as patiently as he could in the cell they called a hospital room, perfectly still, staring at the blankness of the walls, listening to the sounds of the guards stomping their way around the corridors as the prisoners slept.
There were more of them wandering the halls, just as he’d hoped. Enough that it would confuse things. Paige had done exactly what he wanted.
He generally found that people did, one way or another. Even when they thought that they couldn’t be manipulated. Especially when they thought that they couldn’t be manipulated. They all had their little levers that made them act or fail to act. For some, it was money, for others, fear, for a few, the promise of love or power, the sense that they were in control of the situation.
Adam told them what they needed to hear, and they danced for him like puppets on a string. It made the moments when he actually strung them up like puppets all the more meaningful. More meaningful than any of them were, at least. They were ants, compared to him.
Although he had to admit that Paige was… special.
Take the guard who would even now be approaching his cell. What had it taken to persuade him? A little charm. The promise of sex, obviously. Lesser people seemed to put so much emphasis on that, as if it weren’t something that could be gotten anywhere, anytime.
There was money in addition to the sex, of course. Julio was a bad gambler, and Adam had called in some favors to arrange for him to run into much better ones, with the result that he owed more than he could ever afford to repay. The kind of debt that got people scared and stupid. Julio had already paid off a part of those debts, with the promise of much more to come when he helped with this.
He’d arranged it all carefully, all leading up to this point. To the moment when he would leave this place behind and do everything he had to do next.
Julio knocked on the door first to announce his presence, almost delicately. So polite. Then he opened it, revealing himself there, standing shorter than Adam but broader, muscles filling out his uniform. He was unshaven and heavy browed, with broad features and dark hair. He was carrying a bag. Adam could see the look on his face of… hope? Expectation? He’d worked hard at learning to read faces, at least partly so that he could make his own show whatever he wanted. Whatever people expected.
Right now, he made it show delight that Julio had come here to save him. As if he were some kind of damsel in distress, needing to be rescued.
“You came,” Adam said. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
He added that little hint of doubt deliberately. Julio was a man who tended to rise to the bait with things like that, far too easy to provoke. It was a part of what made him such a bad gambler, and such a useful helper in this tonight.
“Of course I came!” Julio said, starting forward towards Adam as if he might embrace him.
Adam put a coy hand on his chest. “If we start here, we won’t stop, and then all the extra guards will catch us as they come by.”
That brought a flicker of disappointment, and Adam assuaged it by moving his hand to the guard’s cheek in a caress. It seemed like the least he could get away with doing.
“We have all the time in the world. I have a place waiting for us, and it’s far more comfortable than this.”
The disappointment quickly changed to eagerness. Adam never ceased to be disappointed by how easy to manipulate people were. They were all so weak.
Take Paige King. There had been a point in their sessions where Adam had started to believe that she might be almost as clever as him. He still held out hopes for her. Yet she’d let him find out all about her easily, and she’d given him exactly what he wanted now. He wasn’t sure whether to kill her, or… no, better not to get ahead of himself.
“Do you have it?” Adam asked Julio, wanting to focus on tonight.
He saw Julio bring out a bundle of clothes from the bag. A uniform of black pants and brown shirt exactly matching the one Julio wore. Boots, a belt. An ID card, even if the photograph on it wasn’t of Adam. And a cap, so that his face wouldn’t be quite so obvious.
“Are you sure this will work?” Julio asked as Adam started to change into the uniform. He saw Julio’s eyes roving over him and suppressed a flash of annoyance at the intrusion. “There are a lot of guards around now. And they’ll be watching CCTV in the halls.”
“More guards are good,” Adam replied. “More guards are the point.”
It was why he’d pushed Paige in their session. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. It was always better to accomplish more than one thing.
Adam finished dressing. “How do I look?”
“Wonderful, of course,” Julio began.
Adam waved that off with another flicker of irritation. “Do I look enough like a guard to pass for one?”
Julio nodded, and he looked serious enough while he did it that Adam was prepared to accept it as true, rather than as mere flattery. He straightened up, picturing how the guards walked, with that heavy tread and hint of swagger that came from knowing they were the ones in charge. That was almost as important as the disguise.
It was so easy to become someone else, when he’d had to work to show the slightest emotion growing up, when everything that showed on his face was an act, and when failing to do so had gotten him beaten. It was one act he’d perfected to the extent that he could fool almost anyone, and here, now, it was going to be more than enough to fool a few guards.
He and Julio stepped out into the blank, institutional expanse of the corridor, shutting the door behind them and walking without hurry. Running would be the worst mistake they could make, drawing far too much attention. Adam had no problem with staying cool as they moved along past the other cells. Fear was for other people. His only real concern was that Julio might not be so cool. Already, he could see the guard looking around as if he expected discovery at any moment.