The Prince of Spies (Hope and Glory #3) - Elizabeth Camden Page 0,30

he looked unnerved too.

“You can see the damaged wall I mentioned,” Mr. Castor said, gesturing to the far side of the room. It had a high ceiling, which probably accounted for all the echoey noise. There were no windows on the ground level, but a few near the ceiling let in enough light to take pictures. Barely. The superintendent steered the prisoners to one side of the room so she could have a clear shot of the corrosion.

Everything looked and smelled awful in here. She took shallow breaths while setting up her tripod and screwing the camera into place. She centered the viewfinder on the blooms of white scale and the rust stains trailing down the wall. What a horrible room, and this was where the men came for recreation? Even if she wanted to obey her supervisor’s instructions to make the jail look good, it would be impossible. This place was an abomination.

“I keep painting, but it doesn’t do much good,” the superintendent said. He continued talking about how he wanted a decent security fence so he could let the prisoners outdoors for an hour each day, but the funding never materialized.

She took half a dozen photographs and was about to move the tripod to get a different angle when Luke grabbed her arm.

“Marianne, I’ve got to get out of here.” It was cold, but his face was covered with perspiration. He looked like he was about to throw up.

“Yes, let’s go,” she said immediately.

She picked up the camera and tripod in one swoop. There would be time to take the photographs later, but something was wrong with Luke, and she urged the superintendent to unlock the door quickly.

As soon as they were out, Luke strode into the hallway, sucking in great gulps of air.

“Is there a washroom he can use?” she asked the superintendent.

Luke shook his head. “I just need to get outside into the fresh air. Please hurry,” he urged Superintendent Castor as the older man unlocked the final door to the lobby.

The moment the door was open, Luke bounded through and headed outside. She sent an apologetic look to the superintendent and followed Luke.

He paced in a tight little square on the prison’s front stoop, still breathing heavily. Every time she’d seen Luke before, he had been charming and irreverent, but now he looked nervous and sick.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said on a shaky breath. “I’m not a big fan of jails.”

“Any particular reason?” It was a terribly intrusive question, but he was so agitated, and she desperately wanted to know why.

“Your father didn’t tell you?”

“No, he hasn’t told me anything about you.”

Luke wiped the perspiration from his face and kept pacing—three steps forward, half-pivot, then three steps that way. He did the same pattern several times before speaking.

“I did a stint in jail,” he said. “Most of it was in a Cuban jail, but some of it was the American military prison in Havana. I’m surprised your father didn’t tell you that I was a traitor and a spy for the Cuban rebels.”

It took a while to find her breath, she was so appalled. “Were you?”

He shook his head. “I was spying for the Americans, not the Cubans. The mission took a bad turn, and I ended up in jail, accused of treason.”

He pulled her down to sit beside him on the top step and recounted the whole story. He had been sent down to infiltrate a group of Cuban rebels who were being helped by a traitor inside the American military. Luke pretended to be sympathetic to the rebels in order to learn the identity of the turncoat. When he was imprisoned, he couldn’t confess the truth without endangering the entire mission. He was put in jail alongside a dozen of the Cuban rebels and eventually managed to win their trust and learn the name of the American traitor.

“How long were you in jail?”

“Fifteen months, in a six-by-ten-foot cell. I got out in September. This is the first time I’ve been back in any sort of locked facility, and it caught me off guard. The looks and smells are different, but the clang of the locks slamming shut is the same. It was unsettling. I wasn’t prepared for it.”

His hands shook as he spoke. The fact that he had been willing to accompany her into a jail made him even more impressive in her eyes. It was easy to be fearless when a person was ignorant of the danger, but Luke walked back into