All Chained Up (22 page)

“
Yes
. You did.” Essentially
that
was it. The truth.

She backed away, sipping air into lungs that felt raw. “I get it now. It doesn't matter what I think or feel. It doesn't matter that I might be a little in love with you.”

As soon as the words escaped, she knew they were a lie. There was no
might.
She was a
lot
in love with him, and she stood before him exposed, her heart bared and bleeding.

“Briar.” He said her name gently, pitiably. As though she were a dumb girl who went and fell in love with him when he didn't want that. When there was no chance in hell he would stick around and love her back. God. She
was
that dumb girl. “You don't feel that way. This was sex. Good sex. Sometimes that gets confusing—­”

“No,” she snapped. “Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot who doesn't know the difference between sex and love. I know what I feel.”

For a moment he looked like he might touch her again. If he touched her, she would fall apart.

But he didn't.

“And,” she added hoarsely, the words sliding from a throat that felt raw with burning tears, ready to fall, “I know what someone looks like when he's running away. Because he's scared.”

“I am scared,” he admitted, his jaw locked tight. “Scared of making the same mistakes and going back in that box again.”

So she would be a mistake.

“Understood,” she said, with far more composure than she felt. “So go,” she commanded. When he still stood there staring at her, she blurted out, “Get the fuck out.” The sooner he was gone, the sooner she could fall apart.

He didn't even flinch at her language. He nodded once, looking so damned stoic. The same impenetrable mask he wore the first day she met him at Devil's Rock.

Without another word, he slipped out of her bedroom and out the front door.

HE CURSED AS
he slammed into his truck and pulled out of Briar's parking lot. Regret welled up bitter as blood in his mouth, but not for walking away from Briar. That had to happen. She thought she loved him, but she didn't. She was wrong about that. She couldn't love him.

He was getting out just in time. Hell, he probably should have gotten out sooner. When he initially tried. Before she showed up at Roscoe's and threw his world off kilter.

He wouldn't lose control again, and Briar made him do that. He felt too much around her. He wanted her too much. Cared about her too much. His mind shied from thinking about love in relation to her. It wasn't love. He came from a world where you staked a claim. Prison taught him about taking, having. Marking what was his. That was his instinct when it came to Briar. Not love.

She was risk, and he had vowed to leave risk behind when he stepped out of that prison.

He regretted ever starting this between them in the first place. He regretted that he hurt her. He should have fucked his way through half of Roscoe's instead of having something clean and sweet like Briar.

His phone started ringing in his pocket. A quick glance down revealed his aunt's name. He felt a flash of worry. He hoped everything was okay with Uncle Mac.

He answered, “Hey, Aunt Alice, everything okay?”

“Knox, have you seen the news?”

“No, what's wrong?”

“There was a riot at the prison.”

His stomach heaved. “North?”

“We just got a call. They took him to Memorial Hospital.”

“What's his status? Will they let us see him?” He knew the only way they let family visit inmates in the hospital was when the prognosis was grim. As in deathbed grim.

“Not yet. The social worker said he'd call back with an update.”

“I'm on my way. Be there in ten minutes.”

He hung up and stared straight ahead into the setting dusk, his gaze burning. The guilt he felt for leaving North behind twisted and swirled like an angry hive of bees in his stomach. It was just one more thing. One more weight added to the piles of bricks that already crushed him.

He should have been there. Then maybe North wouldn't be in the hospital now.

He pressed down on the accelerator, eager to get home and be near the phone when they called back.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

D
EEP SHADOWS DRAPED
the hospital room. A dim glow radiated from the panel above Reid's hospital bed, saving the space from complete blackness. Someone outside his room laughed as they passed his door. The footsteps faded. Otherwise the hospital was quiet with that humming quality of a building that never shut off. Like him. Reid was wired tight. Tension knotted his shoulders as he reclined in the bed. He never shut down. Never turned off. He couldn't afford to. Not until he was a pile of ashes in a box. Then, he'd rest.

Doctors, nurses, and other personnel worked the six floors of Sweet Hill Memorial with seemingly little thought to the felon in Room 321. Exactly the way he wanted it. He'd been here eight days. Eight days since he was taken from Devil's Rock in an ambulance. In that time, he'd been an exemplary patient. He withstood all the poking and prodding without complaint. He slept and he ate. You could say whatever you wanted about hospital food, but compared to prison food it was five-­star cuisine.

He'd used his time to store up energy and plot his next move. He had only one chance and he couldn't fuck it up.

He'd be sent back soon. He wasn't hooked up to any beeping machines anymore. His wounds had pretty much healed, leaving only the black lines of stitches and fresh, itching scabs. No threat of infection or continued bleeding. His arm sling could come off in a few days. According to the doctor, he was lucky to be alive. Half an inch to the left and the shiv would have hit his heart.

He'd said nothing when the doctor told him that, looking at him so expectantly. As though Reid might express relief or gratitude. He might be alive and breathing, but he had died a long time ago. Nothing but a walking ghost now.

A ghost with nothing to lose.

Still, starting that fight had been a gamble. He winced, recalling how quickly everything had escalated and turned into a full-­on riot. He'd only meant to get himself injured. Instead inmates had died. Guards were injured. He'd seen North go down in a shower of blood. He felt like shit about that. He'd promised Knox he would look out for the kid. Reid had made inquiries and knew he was in a room somewhere else in this hospital. Thankfully, North would recover, but that face of his wouldn't be so pretty anymore.

And that sucked. More guilt. More sins to heap at his feet. But it was done. He, better than anyone, knew you couldn't change the past. He just had to make sure it meant something. That it wasn't for nothing. Then he could go back to rotting away for the rest of his life.

He took a deep, mostly pain-­free breath as a nurse entered his room for a final bed check of the night. He was the last to be told anything concerning himself, but he knew. Even if he hadn't spied the paperwork on the doctor's clipboard authorizing his release, Reid knew. His time here was done. It was now or never. He had to act tonight.

“Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything? Another pillow?” Nadine asked as she adjusted the one beneath his head, bringing her chest close to his face. It was a game she liked to play. Tease the hard-­up convict. Lingering touches on his body that didn't feel quite so clinical. It'd been a while but he knew when a woman was into him.

The guard who'd accompanied her into the room snorted. Reid leveled his gaze on Vasquez. The man clearly found her compassion toward a scumbag like him unnecessary.

Reid looked back at the nurse. “I'm fine.” He smiled at her. It felt a little rusty. He hadn't done a lot of smiling in the last eleven years, but it seemed to work. She smiled back.

He picked up the remote control with his arm that wasn't in a sling. “I might watch some television.” The more noise coming from his room, the better.

He punched the on button and the TV flickered to CNN, the channel Landers, the day guard, preferred. It was a good thing Landers wasn't here tonight. He hung out in the room with Reid a lot. Vasquez, on the other hand, only entered the room to accompany hospital staff. The rest of the time he stood watch outside the door.

“Don't stay up too late,” Nadine advised. “You need your rest.”

He nodded, training his gaze on the TV as if he cared about what was happening in the rest of the world.

Footage rolled across the screen of a vaguely familiar female dressed in a boring gray suit that hung on her like a sack.

“. . . an inside White House source reports that the First Daughter has been missing for over twenty-­four hours, ever since Wednesday afternoon following a luncheon with the Ladies Literacy League in Fort Worth, Texas, where she delivered a speech on . . .”

The nurse tsked. “Can you believe it? Someone abducted the president's daughter. What's the world coming to?”

He shook his head as if this was indeed something he gave a fuck about.

“She probably took off for a weekend to Padre Island,” Vasquez grumbled. “Meanwhile, every law enforcement agency in the state is on full alert, wasting time and taxpayers' money searching for her.”

The timing couldn't have been better as far as Reid was concerned. Deep satisfaction pumped through his veins, mingling with the building adrenaline. That meant they would care less about one escaped convict.

He didn't bother pointing out that the dark-­haired female—­who looked anywhere between the ages of twenty and forty—­was the least likely candidate for a wild weekend at Padre.

“Haven't you been watching the news?” Nadine asked. “They suspect terrorists,” she pointed out with an indignant sniff.

“What does the media know?” The guard rolled his eyes. “Watch. She'll show up on Monday.”

Nadine shrugged and looked back to Reid. “Good night.”

Reid fixed a smile to his face as she slipped from the room, the guard close behind her.

The door clicked softly shut, and he sat there for a long while, letting the minutes tick past, letting the hospital sink further into night, his hand twitching anxiously at his side.

CNN streamed a constant feed of First Daughter Grace Reeves while reporting absolutely nothing new or enlightening. Graduate of some all-­girls college with a degree in astronomy. She looked uncomfortable in her own skin. She was dating the White House communications director, with rumors of an engagement imminent. Surprising, since she didn't look the type to be with the slick-­looking guy mugging for the camera.

They flashed pictures and footage of Grace Reeves from awkward adolescent to current day still-­awkward-­looking adult. You would think the President had someone on staff that could coach her not to look so pinch-­faced. Maybe they could dress her better, too. Not like a middle-­aged bureaucrat.

When the clock on the wall read 12:34, he decided he had waited long enough. He knew when he planned this endeavor they would likely leave him unrestrained. With his level of injuries and a guard standing watch twenty-­four/seven, they deemed it unnecessary. The trick would be getting out of the room—­and out of the hospital—­undetected.

He rose from the bed and slipped the sling over his head. He moved his arm gingerly, experiencing only a slight twinge of discomfort from the deepest laceration in his chest. He'd had worse.

He fashioned a lump under the covers, doing the best he could to make it look like a body. He turned off the light above his bed. It might pass for him if someone took a cursory peek inside the dim room.

Moving quietly, he slipped the surgical scissors out from where he'd stashed them under the mattress and moved a chair beneath the ceiling access panel.

A draft crept through the back slit of his hospital gown as he climbed up on the chair and lifted his arms, working two of the tiny screws loose in the panel. It swung down soundlessly.

Sucking in a breath, he pulled himself up through the panel, grunting at the strain in his still sore muscles. The square space was barely wide enough for his big body, but he managed to heft himself through.

Above his room, the space was dark and crowded with conduit pipes and hot water valves. He ducked his head, walking on pipes, carefully choosing his steps so he didn't crash through the Sheetrock.

Light trickled in from another access panel ahead. He peered down between the slats, identifying the hallway outside his room. He kept going, looking through the metal square panels until he finally came to one that overlooked a break room.

He listened to the rumble of voices below and glimpsed the top of one man's balding head as he changed shirts. “See you tomorrow, Frank.” A locker slammed shut. “Tell your wife to make some of those cookies again.”

“They're supposed to be for me,” Frank complained.

“I'm doing you a favor,” the other guy laughed. “You're fat enough.” He left the room and it was just Frank for a few more minutes. He was out of his range of vision, but Reid could hear him rustling around. Soon, another locker shut and he left the room.

Reid waited a few seconds and then worked the screws loose until the panel swung open. He lowered himself down, clutching the edges of the opening until his feet landed lightly on cold tile.

He moved swiftly, started with the lockers, hoping there was one where the combination lock hadn't shifted and would lift open for him. He got lucky on his sixth try. Even better, a pair of men's scrubs and a hoodie hung inside. Several dollars and loose change littered the bottom of the locker floor along with a pair of tennis shoes. Reid grabbed it all and shut the locker. Arms full, he disappeared into one of the bathroom stalls to change.

The shoes were a little snug, but the scrubs fit. He tightened the drawstring at his waist and slipped on the hoodie, zipping it halfway up. Snatching up his hospital gown, he stuffed it into a trash can on his way out.

He walked out into the hallway like he belonged there. Squaring his shoulders, he slipped one hand in the pocket of his hoodie and immediately brushed the cold cut of metal. He wrapped his fingers around the clump of keys, thumbing the clicker. Sweet. Lifting a car would be simple enough.

Reid didn't pass anyone as he strolled down the hall. He dove through a corner door that led to a stairwell and hurried down the flights. Vasquez could check on him any time. He needed to be far from here when that happened.

The first floor had a little more life to it. A nurse passed him as he strode toward the front lobby. She barely glanced up from the chart she was studying. He felt the stare of the camera in the corner but kept walking.

Later, they would study the footage and marvel at him walking bold as day down the hall. But by then it wouldn't matter. He would be gone.

He passed through a set of automatic doors and sent a smile to the woman behind the circular counter of the admittance desk. She gave him a distracted nod as she spoke into a phone.

Only two ­people sat in the waiting area. One dozed. The other stared at the TV in the corner where footage of the First Daughter ran in a constant loop.

His heart stalled and sped up at the sight of the security guard near the door. His attention was focused on the television screen, too. As Reid approached, he looked up and locked eyes on him.

“Evenin',” Reid greeted as he neared the door. Almost there.

The guard glanced him up and down before nodding. “Have a good one.”

Reid didn't breathe fully. Not even once he stepped out into the night. Every bit of him pulled tight. He didn't let himself feel free. Not yet. It wasn't time to drop his guard. He still had a long way to go to accomplish what he needed to do and kill the man that needed killing.

Glancing around, he pulled out the keys from his hoodie and pressed the unlock button. A distant beep echoed on the night. He moved in that direction, weaving between cars. He pushed the unlock button again and this time spotted the flash of headlights.

He advanced on an old Ford Explorer and pulled open its door. Ducking inside, he adjusted the seat for his long legs. Turning the ignition, he drove out of the parking lot.

He headed east for thirty minutes, stopping at a gas station to fill up the tank with the money he'd found in the locker. This late, the place was deserted. He kept his head low as he paid the sleepy-­eyed clerk, avoided looking directly at the security camera in the corner.

Reid pulled around the back, where a lone car sat parked beside the Dumpster. He swapped license plates with the clerk's car. The guy probably wouldn't even notice anytime soon.

He still had to get rid of the Explorer, but he figured that could be done after he got where he was going.

Satisfied, he hopped back in his vehicle and drove a ­couple more hours through the night, putting Sweet Hill far behind him. He constantly glanced up at the rearview mirror, half expecting to see the flash of headlights. They never appeared.

The highway was dark, the passing car rare on this isolated stretch of road. He rubbed a hand over his close-­cropped hair and settled into his seat. Desert mountains lumbered on either side of him, dark beasts etched against the backdrop of night. He flipped through radio stations. No news of an escaped convict. It had been a long time since he was this alone. He still didn't feel free, though. He doubted he ever would.

Eleven years had passed since he'd been out, but he expected to find Zane in the usual place. His brother was simple like that. Liked his routines.

The cabin sat several miles behind the main house on 530 acres located outside Odessa. The land had been in his family for almost two hundred years, granted to them after the Texas War of Independence.

The authorities didn't know about the cabin . . . or the hidden back road that veered off the county farm road you had to take to get there. The old Explorer bumped along the dirt lane. It was so overgrown with shrubs and cacti that it couldn't rightly be called a road anymore.

After an hour the road suddenly opened up to a clearing. The cabin stood there. Three trucks and a few motorcycles were parked out front, confirming that the cabin was far from forgotten.