by Sam Sisavath
Why would they? I didn’t believe Aaron.
But there was a catch: she didn’t really know Aaron, not the way she knew Joe and Craig. She had become close to Joe, looked up to him like the brother she never had. But Joe was a practical person, someone who didn’t believe in things he couldn’t see, touch, or hear. And he wouldn’t believe this.
As for Craig… Well, she was sleeping with him. But was that a pro or a con? The detective had come to see her last night and had even pulled strings to meet with her alone. Did that mean he was more prone to believe her story about a conspiracy to frame her?
She lay down on the bed and stared up at the chipped white ceiling. She was trying to figure out what to do next, how to contact Aaron (Great; my life rests in the hands of a teenage kid), when she felt a presence and sat up.
Jack, the same male guard from last night, was standing on the other side of the bars. He held a finger to his lips, then nodded at the cells flanking her.
She nodded back, understanding.
The guard took a phone out of his pocket and tossed it inside. Zoe wasn’t ready for it, but Jack’s toss was true, and it landed almost perfectly in her outstretched hands. She sighed with relief as Jack showed her his hands with all ten fingers extended. She gave him a questioning look, but instead of answering, he walked away.
Ten fingers?
Right. Ten minutes, just like last night.
The phone, set to silent, vibrated in her hands almost right away. She climbed off the bed and hurried to the other side of the cell where she could hide behind one of the walls. The last thing she wanted was to be seen with a phone in here.
“You’ll want to use your inside voice for this one,” the familiar voice on the other end of the line said. “Don’t want your neighbors to overhear.”
Converse.
“We have ten minutes before Jack comes back for the phone,” Aaron said. “So listen closely, because we’re only going to get one chance at this. First of all, I’m giving you a choice; tell me now if you still want to go through with this. If you want to back out, say so now.”
She didn’t answer him, even as she thought, And do what, Aaron? Trust Baldy and Balder? Yeah, right. They’re already looking at their next case and we haven’t even gone into court yet.
Aaron took her silence as a cue to continue. “There’s a plan, but it’s dangerous. I’m not going to bullshit you, Zoe on the Case. There’s a fifty-fifty chance it won’t work. Best-case scenario? It works, and you become a fugitive for the rest of your life.”
Best case? This is what my life has become?
“Worst case?” Aaron continued. “You die in the process.”
She sighed but still didn’t say anything.
“So this is where you choose. Hang up now, and I’ll take it as a sign you’d rather take your chances in court. Don’t hang up, and I’ll put the plan in motion. There are a lot of pieces that need to be ready; timing is everything. But it’s your life, so it’s your call. Do we do this, or not?”
She would have laughed if she could. Did he really think she had a choice? She had seen the look on Baldy and Balder’s faces, had heard Joe’s voice when they talked on the phone this morning before the lawyers arrived.
What choice? She didn’t have a choice.
“Do it,” she whispered.
The Harris County Jail was housed in a massive and squat red brick structure on the edge of downtown Houston, with the County Criminal Courthouse conveniently located within walking distance across the street. The two buildings were separated by Buffalo Bayou—a long, winding body of water that twisted its way through most of the city—and connected by a skyway. It was a short three-hundred-yard walk, even in prison manacles.
Zoe was taken to her arraignment at the courthouse with four other inmates, their wrists and ankles shackled, though thankfully not to one another, which allowed them to move at a reasonable pace as they entered the jail side of the skyway. Zoe was in the middle, flanked by a woman with way too much acne for someone in her thirties behind her and a heavyset woman in front. Two female guards walked alongside them, with a male guard leading the way and a second one bringing up the rear.
The walk got noticeably noisier as soon as they entered the long connecting tube, the sounds of their metal restraints clanking loudly against the enclosed space. The walls were thick enough that people couldn’t see in, but Zoe could see the gridlock traffic on the parallel bridge outside just fine. The brown bayou waters would be somewhere under her in a few seconds, but at the moment there was only the sledgehammer in her chest and the loud rattle of iron in her ears.
“Hey,” a voice said behind her.
Zoe ignored it and kept walking.
“Hey,” the voice said again.
Zoe glanced over her shoulder at the woman walking just a bit too closely behind her. She looked even more acne-stricken up close, if that was possible. “What?”
“You’re her,” Acne said.
“Who?”
“The lady on TV. The reporter.”
“You got the wrong person,” Zoe said, and looked forward.
The guards—including the one just a few steps to the right and in front of Zoe—didn’t seemed bothered by their talking, which Zoe thought probably explained why Acne hadn’t even attempted to lower her voice.
As long as we get to where we’re going, right?
Zoe was hoping that breaking eye contact with Acne would be a sign to the other woman she wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation, but Acne either didn’t care or didn’t get the hint.
“You sure?” the other woman asked. “’Cause you really look like her. Hair’s a mess and you look different without all that TV makeup, but I’m pretty sure you’re her.”
“Like I said, you have the wrong person,” Zoe said, and thought, And please shut the hell up. I’m trying to concentrate on not getting dead here, you idiot!
“No, no, I’m pretty sure. Zane? Zen? Something with a Z.” Then, her voice rising slightly, “Zoe on the Case!” The woman laughed. It wasn’t a very pleasant-sounding laugh, either. “Fancy meeting you here!”
Acne had nearly shouted that last part, and the guard in front of Zoe finally turned around. “Shut the hell up and keep moving.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Acne said, and didn’t say anything else.
That’s all it took? Zoe thought. I should have tried that first.
Zoe concentrated instead on keeping her legs moving so she didn’t lag behind the heavyset woman and the more athletic one that had been put to lead their pack. She guessed that was on purpose, to set the pace for the others.
They were somewhere near the middle—or at least, Zoe thought they were, but they could have been almost at the other end of the skywalk for all she knew—when—
There!
It was a small sound, a barely-there click.
Of course, it could have all been in her mind, something she had convinced herself she had heard when in reality she hadn’t. That was definitely possible, because she knew it was coming and had been waiting for it, and her pulse was racing out of control—
There was a slight creak just before the walls and ceiling around her began to vibrate. Zoe stopped moving, as did Heavyset and Athlete in front of her, along with the guards around her. A look of confusion flashed across everyone’s face.
Except for Zoe’s. She was caught somewhere between anxious and terrified.
“What—” the closest female guard started to say when the ground broke up underneath them.
That wasn’t quite true. The floor Zoe was walking on didn’t so much as break apart as it seemed to disintegrate, and suddenly there was just open air and the dirty brown water of Buffalo Bayou below her and she was falling, falling through the gaping hole that wasn’t there mere seconds ago.
“Don’t panic,” Aaron had said on the phone. “The guys I’m with have it all figured out. All you have to do is not panic.”
“They’ve do
ne this before?” she had asked.
“Well, not this, exactly, but something like it.”
Oh great, something like this, but not this, she remembered thinking, before wondering if it was too late to change her mind.
But she hadn’t changed her mind, because there was no other choice. It was this or let them railroad her, and Zoe was going to be damned if she let that happen. Her father didn’t raise a quitter and she wasn’t about to become one now, though she did wonder, even if it was just for a brief second or two, what her father would say if he were still alive to see what had become of her career, never mind her fall from grace.
“Why are you helping me?” she had asked Aaron.
“Because I can,” the teenager had answered.
She didn’t understand his answer, but that wasn’t a surprise. What did she really know about the kid?
And yet here you are, putting your life in his hands.
God, this is such a bad idea. Such a supremely bad idea.
But all that doubt vanished (or at least lost priority) as soon as Zoe became aware of screaming as she continued to plummet through the air. She didn’t know if that was her or Acne or Heavyset or Athlete, or maybe even all of four of them at the same time. She was still unsure when she finally hit the water and went under, and instinctively told herself Don’t swallow the water! Jesus Christ, no matter what you do, don’t swallow the water!
But she did—some of it—though that was the least of her worries as she thrashed about the (muddy? Why is it so thick and muddy?) water around her. She did her best to tread, to stay afloat, but it was difficult (Impossible!) with her wrists and ankles still shackled, the iron restraints pulling her down. She thought she heard cars honking somewhere beyond the surface, but that quickly got lost in the background when one, then two bodies torpedo-dived into the murky sludge in front of her.
She was struggling to stay afloat, wondering how long it was going to take to finally drown (God don’t let me die down here, not in this disgusting bayou!), when she felt something underneath her.
Land!
Or, at least, very muddy and slippery dirt. But it was stable enough that she wasn’t going to be pulled under. It was the bottom of Buffalo Bayou, because the river was shallow enough that when she stopped flailing about like a maniac and finally straightened up, she was able to push her head through the surface and saw the gorgeous orange ball that was the sun welcoming her back to the land of salvation.
There was a flurry of motion to her left, and she turned in that direction, saw people rushing out of their cars parked along the bridge nearby. Half of the pedestrians had produced cell phones and were taking videos.
Pieces of the walkway floated around her, along with the bobbing heads of correctional officers and inmates alike. Zoe only knew who was who by the color of the clothes they were wearing. Someone was screaming and thrashing behind her (Acne? Heavyset?), while others had begun to realize that the water was shallow enough they could actually just stand up if they stopped fighting their panic-stricken selves.
Zoe stuck her hands out of the water and into the air as high as possible, just as she had been instructed. It didn’t take more than five seconds before someone grabbed them. She struggled at first but finally managed to spin around.
A face (I know that face!) stared back at her. It smiled just before its owner began pulling her out of the water and over the side of a boat that had appeared out of nowhere. As soon as she landed on the bottom of the craft, it began moving. First slowly—someone was rowing them away?—before the sound of an engine fired up, and then the sky was rushing by above her in a blur of white clouds.
Zoe finally managed to sit up and vomit as much of the water as she could while someone was patting her on the back.
“Get ready, we’re coming in,” a voice said. It was the same woman that was crouched behind her, though Zoe didn’t think her savior was talking to her.
She glanced back at the person who had pulled her out of the water, at the name DaCostas stenciled across the brown and black uniform’s name tag. The name didn’t match the face that looked back at her. Brown hair poked out from underneath the brim of the Sheriff’s Office cap, which also hid the woman’s eyes (The colors are all wrong) and the top half of her face.
And yet, Zoe knew right away who her savior was.
“You,” Zoe said almost breathlessly.
Quinn Turner smiled, then shouted over the roar of the outboard motor, “You’re lucky that water was so shallow! I can’t imagine it’d be easy to swim with those shackles on!”
“It wasn’t!” Zoe shouted back.
“Give me your hands!” Turner produced a key and unlocked the restraints around Zoe’s wrists, then handed the key to her.
Zoe took it and went to work on the metal around her ankles, even as the shapes of downtown Houston flashed by on both sides of the riverbank. She kept waiting to hear sirens even as the ugly red brick building continued to fade into the background. She was never more glad to see something shrink before her very eyes.
“It’s going to get tougher from here on out!” Turner shouted next to her. “You might end up wishing you were back there!”
“Hell no!”
Turner chuckled. “We’ll see about that!”
Zoe looked back at the Harris County Jail one last time as the boat moved with the curving bayou. She still couldn’t hear sirens yet, but it wouldn’t be long now before the guards realized what had happened, that the boat that had come to “rescue” them had only left with one person—and a prisoner at that.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I will end up regretting this, but I’ll be damned if I’m just going to sit there like a good little girl and let them set me up.
No way. No friggin’ way...
Chapter 17
The Candidate
“Are you voting for him?”
Tolbert didn’t answer.
“Hey.”
Tolbert remained quiet.
“I said, are you voting for him?”
“I don’t know,” Tolbert said, even though he’d heard the question the first time and simply decided not to answer, hoping that his partner, a new guy from New York or somewhere east, would shut the hell up and pay attention to what was going on.
Maybe they’re slower in New Yawk, Tolbert thought in his best New York accent—or what he thought was a fair facsimile of one, according to all the movies he’d seen.
“What’s with the smile?” New Guy asked.
Dammit, did I smile?
He must have, because New Guy from New York (Was it New York? Maybe it was New England, home of the Patriots. Somewhere east, I think.) was giving him the side eye. Tolbert didn’t acknowledge it and kept his eyes forward in the direction of the client, where it was supposed to be.
“You’re weird,” New Guy said.
I’m weird? You’re the one who can’t keep his mouth shut during a job. Douchebag.
But Tolbert bit his tongue. It didn’t pay to get into a back-and-forth with someone who wasn’t going to be around after today anyway. Lawrence was due back from his wife’s maternity leave tomorrow, and it’d be business as usual. Or as usual as you could get when your job was keeping a potential President of the United States alive.
I can’t believe this guy might actually win. Even his name sounds presidential. Robert Taylor…
Tolbert scanned the ballroom’s twenty or so rows of rich people. Every single one of them had paid a lot of money for the privilege to be here. If all the expensive watches on all the limp wrists didn’t already blind Tolbert when the festivities kicked off an hour ago, the glitter from all the jewelry would have done the job.
Damn, there’s a lot of money in this place.
The speech had been going for the last ten minutes, and it was due for twenty more, according to the prep material. Taylor had full control of the room, just like always, and it was lively enough that there was never a single moment of awkward silence. He knew how
to handle a crowd, to have them eating out of his hands. The guy was a born salesman.
And there it was, the thing that could potentially take him all the way to the White House.
Taylor had it.
“‘It?’” Lawrence had said. “What does that mean? What is it?”
“If you have to ask what ‘it’ is, then you don’t have it,” Tolbert had answered.
Lawrence had given him that familiar You’re just talking out of your ass again, aren’t you? smirk, but Tolbert hadn’t. He had meant it, because the client had it.
He could see it in the way Taylor made the crowd laugh and snicker and smile, all within the space of the same sentence. It was hard to explain, to really put into words, but after every speech, Tolbert always got the feeling what started out as a hopeless long shot just got less hopeless and less of a long shot. Not that you would know it from the news coverage. The media was laughing at the candidate, even mocking him on comedy shows.
But those people weren’t here where there was a no-media rule. Tolbert hadn’t understood why—he’d never met a politician yet who didn’t want (no, crave) media coverage—until he saw the people who were crowding rooms just like this one all across the country. He recognized some of the faces from TVs and magazines. They weren’t celebrities—at least, not the show business kind—but there were some pretty famous names in here with him right now.
Tolbert was sweeping the rows of tables in front and to his right—his designated areas of responsibility—for the fifth time in as many minutes when New Guy said, still using that low conspiratorial voice, “Well? You never answered my question.”
“Shut up and pay attention,” Tolbert said. It wasn’t quite a snap, but it was damn close.
Who the hell was this guy, anyway? Where had Perry gotten him? Why was he talking so much during a gig?
“I know all these people are,” New Guy went on anyway, as if Tolbert hadn’t said a thing. “Rich fat cats. I bet there’s a few billion dollars in this room.”
A few billion? Tolbert wanted to laugh. It was more like a few hundred billion, and it would still make this one of the cheaper dinner stops by the candidate in recent weeks.