they marched closer that he realized there was a word in gold letters across the glass.
WARDEN
The blond guard rapped on the glass twice before opening the door. Inside was a man with salt and pepper hair and wire rimmed glasses perched too low on his nose to be of any use for anything but maybe reading. He wore jeans and a white zip front cardigan, like he hadn’t anticipated making this midnight trek to the prison.
Guess he got the note.
“I’m Warden Jethro King. It was brought to my attention that you wanted to speak with me,” the man said, tone bland, as if he didn’t expect this meeting to last long.
Webster reminded himself he now had the upper hand. “Nicholas Webster. Do you want to have this discussion in front of them?”
The officers puffed out their chests, and the one who did most of the talking growled, “We’re not leaving the warden alone with you.”
The warden opened his drawer and set a Browning 9mm on his desk, barrel pointed at Webster’s chest. “Leave us. I’ll be fine. I’ll hit the button when we’ve finished our little chat.” The men gave one long look at Webster before leaving and closing the door behind them. Once they were alone, the warden traced a finger over the barrel of his gun. “You have a lot of nerve summoning me here.”
Webster arched a brow. “Do you really want to get into which of us has more nerve, Warden King? I have a whole bunch of files that say you’d win.”
The man’s hand went to the trigger. “I could just shoot you.”
Webster’s pulse jumped, but he gave a bored shrug. “I suppose you could, but that would trigger everything I know being sent to every major news outlet in the country as well as several civil rights groups…complete with names. Names like yours. Up to you, I suppose.”
The muscle in the warden’s jaw ticked, but he eased back in his chair. “If you have enough information to destroy us, what are we doing here, Mr. Webster?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? “My boss is about to hand over all my data to his former NSA buddy. He’s already working on proving I didn’t hack the FBI. While I’m sure your guy is good, he wasn’t good enough to dismantle my firewalls or delete my program before I found the data I needed. Luckily for me, your guards didn’t think anything about my attorney having a laptop with her or I never would have had the information I needed to put all the pieces together.”
The man threaded his fingers together over his slight paunch. “You should think carefully about what you do with that information. There are people involved in this who go way higher than you and I, Mr. Webster.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” Webster said with a smirk. “I mean, just one simple search of records and I easily found four judges, two law clerks, an assistant DA, and two public defenders on the take. Imagine if somebody had more time to dive deeper?”
“Get to the point, Mr. Webster. What happens now?”
“What happens next is up to you…and them, I suppose,” Webster said, voice steady. “See, Elite doesn’t really like to get involved in this sort of thing. We’re simply a security agency. We have clients whose businesses are less than savory. I wasn’t trying to expose your little prison scam when I created my computer program, I was simply trying to free my…brother.”
“What are you trying to say?” King asked, his frown highlighting the wrinkles on his forehead and cheeks, showing his age.
Webster mimicked the warden’s body language, folding his hands over his stomach. “I’m saying this can go one of two ways. One: you make the charges against me go away like they were never there and you release Cyrus Whitaker immediately. Two: You do nothing and spend the next ten years swimming in lawsuits.”
The warden scoffed. “Getting you out of here requires only a phone call, but I’m afraid your friend is in a bit of trouble right now. I can’t ignore that he poisoned and maimed another inmate—”
“One who was threatening to gang rape and kill me,” Webster said through gritted teeth.
“Regardless,” King said dismissively. “I can’t just ignore what he did, and I certainly can’t just pick up the phone and set a prisoner free just because. That’s not how the system works.”
Webster pulled a face. “Well, you better think of something quickly or your little prison is about