looked into the cell to find nothing but bloodstains on the floor, a rumpled bed, the squat cylindrical toilet, and a wadded napkin stained with sour gravy that was the only remnant from lunch. “Turn around, get on your knees, clasp your hands behind your back and stick them between the bars.”
Cole did as he was ordered. Once his hands were extended between the bars, he felt a pair of lightweight cuffs cinched around his wrists. Unlike the cuffs that had been used so far, these were lighter and scraped uncomfortably against his skin. Twisting his hands within the restraints, he could feel the warm flow of blood start.
“Don’t fidget so much,” the guard said. “You’ll only hurt yourself. Now get on your hands and knees.”
No matter how badly he wanted to get outside his cell, Cole hated crawling for the privilege. He assumed the position, clenched his fists and planned three different ways to defend himself from an attack that might be launched when he was vulnerable. The most threatening thing he heard was the brushing of fingers against a wall followed by the creak of hinges.
“Crawl through,” the guard said. “Backward. That’s your only warning. Try to come through any other way and I’ll cave your head in.”
Cole found the opening by tapping his feet against the bars and backed through as quickly as possible. Once he was outside, he choked back the desire to jump to his feet, and instead asked, “Can I get up now?”
“Slowly.”
The guard gripped the short length of steel links between Cole’s wrists and stood behind him. When Cole tried to move in a way the guard didn’t like, he felt the sting of the sharpened cuffs against his wrists.
“Are these cuffs standard issue?”
“No,” the guard replied. “We don’t answer to anyone when it comes to how we do things. Kind of like you guys, huh?” To make his point, the guard pulled up on the cuffs to send a jolt of pain all the way up through Cole’s arms. “You want me to tighten them, just keep on talking.”
Cole looked over to the cell where Lambert was held. The skinny man held up one arm to show him a wrist that had a thick scar encircling his entire wrist. The look in his eyes was a friendly reminder to do what he was told before the guard made good on his threat. When Cole looked at the cells he passed on his way to the elevator, he expected that his head would be shoved down, as it had been upon his arrival. But the guards didn’t seem interested in averting his eyes, so he took the opportunity to catch a fleeting glimpse of a collection of specimens from what might have been in a Skinner’s field guide.
Half Breeds paced in two of the cells on one side of the corridor, while a Nymar in a straitjacket sat on the toilet in another. The cell directly beside Cole’s was inhabited by a tall man wearing a standard-issue jumpsuit. He filled out the garment with a solid, muscular build. Unlike the bodybuilders one would expect to find in a prison, this one’s skin was pale yellow, segmented by rings that sectioned his flesh into narrow strips, and covered in bumps that resembled chunks of gravel embedded beneath his flesh. He crossed his arms, flexed the gill flaps along the bridge of his nose, his translucent lids blinking open to reveal solid yellow eyes.
The elevator doors slid open and Cole was shoved inside, to find Waylon already waiting with clipboard in hand.
“Evening, boss,” Cole said in an accent he’d lifted straight out of Cool Hand Luke.
After the doors slid shut, Waylon replied, “It’s afternoon.”
“Really? What day?”
“Two, since you were brought here.”
“Is that all?”
Waylon nodded while scribbling a few notes onto his clipboard. “Maybe.”
“Do I get my phone call yet?”
“No.” Punctuating his note with a loud tap that would have snapped the tip off of a lesser writing implement, Waylon pressed the button at the end of his steel gray pen and dropped it into the breast pocket of a crisp, dark blue shirt. “A woman has been making inquiries at the Canon City facility about you. Is she your partner?”
The rigors of the last few days had chiseled Cole’s expression into solid rock as he said, “Maybe she’s an ambitious lawyer.”
“It’s too late for that, Mr. Warnecki. After the commotion that was stirred up by the deaths of all those police officers, we were certain