They kept him overnight in the Nampa jail before a silent, stone-faced cop—who clearly wasn’t happy about drawing the duty—accompanied him on a horribly turbulent flight back to Los Lobos. Los Lobos cops met them on the tarmac and whisked him off to the local jail to await his trial. They put him in a cell by himself. No one saw him or spoke to him, except whatever guard happened to bring him his meals. Like his very existence was a great big secret.
How the hell did they find him after all this time? He never tweeted from his own computer, and he hadn’t posted the one tweet that would have given away his true identity—at least to those in the know. The tweets he had posted could easily have been the tweets of a nut. As far as he’d been able to tell, no one even believed them. And yet…someone did figure it out. And tracked him down, clear out to Nampa, Idaho.
Maybe it was his own damned fault, weakening and finally responding to Sammy’s text that night. She never would have turned him in, but she obviously suspected he was behind the tweets. If she unwittingly mentioned the wrong thing to the wrong person, it could have gotten back to Benetti. And if that was his undoing, he hoped to hell she hadn’t gotten herself into trouble, too.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. What a disaster he’d brought down. Ruined so many lives, his own included, and maybe even Sammy’s. Too goddamned clever for his own good, thinking he could take a swipe at GSI, stop the Trojan horse. Keep others from going through what Raymond had. And thinking he could do it without collateral damage. Stupid. Now he didn’t know what would become of him. Or Sammy.
No one told him much of anything, aside from the charge: corporate treason. And that this was a criminal trial, not a lawsuit. Still, MoonPop had to be behind it. The trial was being held in secret. No spectators, no press. They whisked him over from the jail in an unmarked car, through a back entrance. Made sense. MoonPop would want to see him punished, but not at the expense of airing its true business model to the general public.
So the courtroom was empty except for the bare minimum: judge, bailiff, court reporter, prosecutor, public defender—and defendant. The PD might as well not even be there, for all he did. Or at least as far as Zach could tell. All the evidence was being presented to the judge behind closed doors, so he had no idea what they had on him, whether it was real or faked, or what.
If they had somehow figured out he replaced the Payoff module, then he was screwed for sure. He thought he’d covered all his tracks when he swapped out the file. But then, he didn’t think they’d find him in Nampa. So he must have overlooked something. Just one more fuckup to seal his fate. He bowed his head.
The judge looked up from his papers, gave a bored sigh, and banged his gavel. “I’m prepared to render my verdict.”
“All rise.” The bailiff nodded and stood.
Zach struggled to his feet. The air felt thick, hot.
“In the matter of State versus Winters, I find the defendant guilty as charged. As to the sentence, while he has no prior record, the heinous, deliberate nature of the crime compels me to hand down the maximum. Corporate treason is a serious crime for good reason: the economic effects on the country can be devastating, as they most certainly were in this case.” The judge took off his reading glasses and glared down from the bench. “Zach Winters, you are hereby sentenced to life without parole.”
The gavel came down again. Zach blinked and flinched, then stumbled back into his chair.
Roy Benetti smiled as he watched the sentencing on closed-circuit TV in the court’s secret observation room. That sneaky little bastard would get his due for what he’d done to MoonPop. Hell, to the entire nation’s economic structure. Damned near brought it to its knees with his sabotage.
But the economy was starting to recover now, thanks to the President’s emergency order—in combination with the sabotaged version of Payoff. Ironic. In the end, Winters helped create an entirely new means to boost prison occupancy rates. Now both MoonPop and GSI were back in the black and doing fine.
He couldn’t say the same for Winters.
Roy pulled out his cell. “He got life. Make sure he gets solitary—and that he’s never heard from again.”
CHAPTER 57
Third Wednesday in May, 2022
200 Miles outside Los Lobos, California
“In there.” The prison guard nudged Zach in the ribs with a steel baton.
Zach lurched forward, then gaped at the sight of the cell’s interior. He’d never seen anything so bare, so unforgiving. It looked like a miniature concrete bunker, containing only a thin mat on the floor, a cracked, stained plastic bucket, and a dull steel basin.
There was no window.
More than anything, he wanted to turn around, to run like hell as fast and as far as he could, no matter the consequences. But heavy metal shackles bound his ankles and wrists, and a chain linked both sets together. Best he could do was a slow shuffle. No way could he make a break for it.
Solitary. For the rest of his life. You’d think he’d murdered the President.
The intake process alone had been more traumatic than anything he could ever have imagined. Two armed guards hauled him into a small, bare room, packaged up all his personal effects—cash, ID, everything—and issued him an orange jumpsuit, just like in the movies. But that was the least of it.
Then the older, heavier guard performed what they euphemistically called a cavity search while the younger, skinnier one looked on and cracked jokes. That guard made sure to take his time doing it, too. He still hurt inside from his enthusiastic thoroughness. Then they took him to another room where they pushed him into a chair and shaved his hair right down to the skin. Blood still trickled from a couple of places on his scalp where the razor bounced and jabbed. All this while cuffed hand and foot.
“Get in.” The baton to the ribs, harder this time.
Zach grunted and stumbled into the cell. The door clanged shut behind him. Solid. Permanent.
“Turn around and stand next to the bars.” The guard took out a key, dexterously unlocked and removed the shackles through the cell bars, then turned and left without another word.
Zach rubbed his wrists and watched him go, the thunk of his heavy boots receding down the corridor until he was out of sight. He turned around and leaned back against the bars. The cell was maybe six feet by eight, a concrete shoebox. Maybe that was being generous. Or maybe it just seemed smaller than it was. He’d lost all perspective and couldn’t even tell anymore.
He stepped over to the pad on the floor and nudged it with his slippered foot. It was thin, threadbare, and covered with stains of various colors. But it was all he would have between him and the cement floor for sleeping. He trembled. Hard to imagine sleeping in this place. Ever.
Zach went over to check out the facilities. The bucket must be his toilet, judging from its smell and the stains inside it. He wondered how often someone would come to empty it. The metal sink featured several dents, likely from an angry fist. He twisted the handle. A sluggish trickle of yellow-tinted water came out. It smelled of iron. He wrinkled his nose and shut it off.
And that concluded the grand tour.
Zach turned and gazed out beyond the bars. Nothing. This end of the corridor was dimly lit, the wall across from him featureless. He heard no one else nearby. This is what it felt like to be nowhere.
He turned his back on the nothingness, glanced around the cell once more through a haze of tears. One bang of the gavel, and everything was gone, over. Sammy. His career. All his hopes and dreams. Everything. He clapped his hands to his shaved head. His own damned fault. If he’d just done his job and minded his own business, none of this would have happened.
He’d lost it all, and he hadn’t even accomplished what he tried to do. The bastards won out in the end. What a fucking waste, a disaster in every way possible.
Zach let out a growl and delivered a vicious kick to the filthy pad, knocking it across the cell floor. Something glinted in the dull light. He bent down for a closer
look.
A knife.
CHAPTER 58
First Wednesday in September, 2022
100 Miles outside Los Lobos, California
After a draining two-hour drive out of town and through some of the ugliest outer-ring suburbia ever, Sammy finally pulled into the prison visitors’ lot. She grabbed the first open spot she saw, then cringed as she sat back and took it all in.
The massive, hulking concrete complex seemed alive, in a malignant and threatening sort of way. Its watchtowers loomed over her like evil beings out of some dark fairy tale. Glittering concertina wire ran along all the walls and fencing, eager to shred anyone who dared challenge it. No wonder Zach despised GSI and everything it stood for. And if the exterior was this intimidating… She rubbed her hands over her face and took a deep breath to steady herself. Hang in there, be strong for Zach!
Why the hell did he take such a terrible risk, anyway? Did he dig up even more than the Trojan horse code he tweeted about? She had no end of questions for him. Maybe now she could get some of them answered. She stole another glance at the hideous complex. No matter what it took, she had to find a way to get him out of there.
It had cost her some serious bucks, but Rutherford sure delivered. Somehow, he tracked Zach down to some dinky town in Idaho. Nampa. Wherever the hell that was. It helped that Zach hadn’t bothered to assume a fake identity, but it still took a good amount of professional sleuthing to find out what happened to him.
Rutherford checked in with the Nampa cops, and found one who remembered taking a missing-persons call on Zach—from someone at MoonPop. That cop also remembered having to accompany Zach to Los Lobos so he could be jailed there while he awaited trial for corporate treason. Rutherford put two and two together and figured if Zach had been convicted, he would be in the prison outside Los Lobos.
After Rutherford told her what he found, Sammy set right to work looking for an attorney to tell her what could be done to free Zach. As it turned out, lawyers who took criminal appeals were few and far between. The one lawyer who did seem remotely interested cooled quickly when he found out she hadn’t even talked to Zach yet. So she looked up the prison’s visitors’ hours and made the trek out to see him the first chance she got.
Sammy tucked her bag under the driver’s seat and took just her keys and ID with her. Better than having some security guard pawing through all her stuff. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she glanced around for the visitors’ entrance sign, then threaded her way toward it through the rows of parked cars.
Part of her wanted to race inside, to see and talk to Zach as soon as she possibly could. The other part of her—the part that was afraid of what she’d find, that imagined all the worst things—wanted to get right back in her car and head for home. Zach had likely been in there for something like four months by now. What had he been through? Had he changed? Would he be happy to see her, or would seeing her only make him feel worse?
And how would seeing him again after all this time affect her? As much as she’d missed him and as hard as she’d worked to find him, the longer they’d been apart, the less real he seemed. The more she’d begun to feel like she could—and maybe should—move on. Seeing him now would reopen everything, without any clear and near-term way to get him out, to be with him.
Sammy came up to the visitors’ entrance: a forbidding metal door that looked like it could keep a fortress safe. She squared her shoulders and pulled it open. Inside was a small, featureless lobby with a few metal folding chairs on one side, a guard sitting behind a glass window, and a single metal door leading to the actual visiting area. Not the most welcoming place.
She went up to the window and cleared her throat. The guard glanced up at her and nodded. Zero expression on his face.
“May I help you?”
“Yes, I’m here to…visit.”
“Are you on the inmate’s visitation list?”
“Well, I…I’m not sure. He’s probably not expecting me, but I’m sure he’ll want to see me.”
“You have to be on the approved list, pass a background check first. There’s a procedure.”
Sammy shifted her feet. “I understand. But I just drove in from Los Lobos. It’s really important I see him.”
The guard shook his head. “Sorry, the procedure must be followed, and it takes a couple of weeks to complete the processing. You’re not going to be able to see him today.”
“Please, isn’t there any way?”
“No. No exceptions are allowed. The best I can do is to start the process for you today. What’s the name of the inmate?”
Sammy slumped and sighed out his name. “Zach Winters.”
The guard stared down at his keyboard with a look of intense concentration, typing with just his index fingers. Sammy clenched her jaw. This was going to take all damned day and she still wasn’t going to get to see Zach.
The guard frowned. “How do you spell it?”
Sammy spelled it for him, and he shook his head.
“Sorry, there’s no one here by that name.” He glanced back up at her. “He might be in another facility, but he’s definitely not here.”
“Can you check for me?”
“I can check all the California facilities.” He bowed his head again, tapped his keyboard, and frowned. “Can’t find him. Maybe he’s in some other state?”
Sammy pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, if he’s anywhere, he should be here. I don’t know why you’re not finding him.”
The guard raised his hands, palms up. “I’m sorry. He doesn’t show up. I don’t know what else to tell you. If you want to check other states, you’ll need to use the inmate lookup on each state’s GSI webpage. I’m afraid I can’t take the time to do that for you.”
“’Kay, thanks,” Sammy muttered and turned to leave.
Back in her car, Sammy slouched in her seat. All this time, all Rutherford’s work tracking him down. And he isn’t here. She pulled out her cell and called him. Voicemail. Great.
“Hey Dan, this is Sammy Douglas. I’m at the Los Lobos facility. They say Zach’s not here—nor at any other California facility. Do you have any other ideas, or is this the end of the road? Call me, thanks.”
She slipped the cell back into her bag and started the car. Zach had to be somewhere. Unless something happened to him. Or Rutherford’s info was wrong. Or made up to make it look like he was earning his retainer. She slammed the steering wheel with her fist. If Rutherford couldn’t come up with anything better, it might be time to accept that finding Zach was a lost cause, and probably had been since he left MoonPop last year.
Tires squealing, Sammy sped out of the parking lot and headed for the freeway onramp. Maybe she should have just minded her own business and let Zach go. That would have been so much easier. Now it felt like she’d lost him all over again.
She pulled onto the freeway, whipped around one lonely car plodding along like it had all day to get where it needed to go, and settled into the fast lane for the long drive ahead. She switched off the radio and listened to the drone of the tires on the asphalt as she put some time and miles between herself and the prison. The monotonous sound slowed the chatter in her mind, let her calm down and focus.
Zach’s out there somewhere. Just have to try harder to find him.
Sammy stepped on the gas. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could work out a plan. She would find him, no matter what it took. And she would find out what made him run in the first place. Nothing else mattered.
CHAPTER 59
First Wednesday in September, 2022
100 Miles outside Los Lobos, California
Zach rocked back and forth in the semi-darkness, knees pressed to his chest and arms wrapped tightly around his legs, listening to the sound of his own breath. In and out. In and out. He sat like that a lot now. Nothing else to do. He’d lost all track of time, of how long he’d been there. Didn’t matter. Time was irrelevant now.
Maybe he should have kept track from the star
t, scratching hash marks into the wall or something, like in those old prison movies. Then he might not feel so lost now. But what difference did it make? Not like he had a release date to look forward to. Just endless limbo, oblivion. Nothing to do all day but sit there, immersed in despair.
He never dreamed a place could be engineered to so thoroughly degrade a person without resorting to outright physical torture. This is what absolute, utter, and total misery felt like—and what it looked like.
Time just trickled away with nothing to mark it, except when food appeared. A couple of times a day, a meal of some sort slid through the bars of his cell without comment or conversation. Hard to even call it food. Really more like something to put in his stomach and hope it didn’t poison him. He shit, he pissed—sometimes someone came and emptied the bucket. Barely noticed the stench anymore. He’d even gotten used to the foul taste of the water, though every so often, it still brought on hideous cramping and watery diarrhea. Such was a typical day.
A typical night was something different. Even more horrible than the day. He often didn’t sleep at all, just lay there staring into the claustrophobic darkness. When he did sleep, nightmares shook him back awake, leaving him weak and sweaty. He hadn’t slept a night through—not even once—since he got there.
And some nights, the sound of heavy boots broke the silence, echoing down the dimly lit corridor as they approached his cell. He’d hear his door open, then slam shut, the click of the lock signaling the horror to come. A guard, wearing a black mask that revealed only eyes wild with hate, would stand over him, expectant. He never knew when the guard would show up, and he didn’t know if it was the same one every time. The guard never spoke, only gestured with his prison-issued steel baton.
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