Convicted

by Kim Fielding

  He placed the book back on the shelf. Perhaps he’d try again later.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he growled as he paced the floor. “You deserve what they’ve done to you. Deserve worse. You should be nothing but dust and bones now, like Larry.”

  Although those words were true, they didn’t make his suffering any less.

  Wilde had been forty-six when he died. That was.... Shit. Only a few years older than Des was now. In his mind’s eye, Des was still a youth in his early twenties—perhaps because the last time he’d seen his reflection was the day he and Larry were caught.

  They’d been staying in an old farmhouse in Kansas. Larry claimed he’d rented the place legally, but Des had harbored doubts when he saw the personal effects of the previous residents—an elderly couple, by the looks of things. But by that point Larry and Des had already killed multiple people and were on the run, so Des hadn’t pressed any questions, deciding to take Larry at his word.

  They’d had sex as soon as they woke up that morning, which was usual. Then Larry went off to work in the barn. He didn’t like Des nearby when he worked, which was fine with Des, who’d instead gone for a long walk and admired the fresh greens of springtime fields. When he returned to the house, he showered and spent some time in front of the mirror, experimenting with different ways of arranging his hair. He was in the middle of making lunch when the door burst open and the house flooded with gun-wielding agents.

  Des hadn’t put up a fight. Over the years he’d sometimes wished he had. They would have shot him, but maybe that would have been better. He’d surrendered at once, dropping a butter knife and raising his hands high. He’d been facedown on the old linoleum, cuffs being tightened around his wrists, when he heard the gunshots from the barn.

  Nobody had ever told him whether Larry resisted or if the agents simply decided to gun him down like a rabid dog.

  In any case, that mirror in Kansas, the one with the chipped edge and worn silver backing? That was the last one he’d seen.

  He clearly remembered what he’d looked like at twenty-three. He’d been vain then, aware of his good looks and prone to spending a good amount of time admiring them. As he walked the endless circuits of his cell, he tried to picture that face now: lined with age, pain, and hopelessness and framed by the hair he’d once fussed with, now lank, washed only weekly, and hacked once a year by a dispassionate prison guard.

  “Would any man want me if I were free?” Assuming they were unaware of his history, of course. Nobody would want him if they knew what he’d done.

  “This is a foolish way to spend your time, ya eejit.” That came out sounding so like his mam that he didn’t know whether to smile or cry. He was still considering those options when the lock on his door thunked open.

  Des went entirely still, and dread slid ice into his veins. This wasn’t the time of day for the guards. What did they want from him now?

  Two guards came through the metal door and entered the small space. Des felt oddly relieved—but even more confused—when Agent Powell followed. With an impatient look, Powell pushed past the guards and halted when he was nearly touching the bars. He wore the same suit as last time, or one exactly like it, and stood very straight and tall, his expression unreadable. He didn’t say anything. Des simply gaped.

  It was Des, in fact, who finally broke the silence. “The books are from you?” He gestured toward his shelf, which now held four times as many volumes as before.

  “I asked my chief to arrange for some.”

  “Did you choose which ones?”

  “No.”

  So the Wilde was somebody else’s idea of a joke, apparently.

  Des nodded at him. “Thank you. Much obliged.”

  Powell turned his head slightly to address the guards. “Leave us.”

  “That’s against policy, sir,” said the blond one.

  “Chief’s orders. That supersedes your... policy.” He said the last word as if it were something disgusting.

  “But sir, he’s danger—”

  “Is he capable of passing himself through metal bars?”

  “Of course not, sir, but—”

  “And once he’s magically moved through the bars, is he impervious to the bullets in my gun? Or maybe he can move really fast, like Superman?”

  Des hung his head to hide a grin.

  The guard sputtered for a moment before giving it another try. “We’re not supposed to—”

  “Get out. Now.” Powell said it with such authority that disobedience seemed impossible. And sure enough, the guards scrambled back and, judging by the sound of their footsteps, hurried down the corridor. Without any sign of self-satisfaction, Powell pulled the big door nearly shut.

  “They’ve cameras in here, you know,” Des said. “Don’t know if they have sound, but they can certainly watch.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not here to tell secrets. I didn’t want those assholes breathing down my neck.”

  This time Des didn’t hide his smile. Even if Powell was here to inflict something nasty, at least he was entertaining.

  “This is where you’ve spent seventeen years,” Powell said.

  “I’m allowed outside for a bit at night. And sometimes I get to visit with the prison doctor. Or a Bureau agent.”

  Powell grimaced.

  “You don’t care for the décor, agent? I think it’s very minimalist chic. I expect the fancy magazines to ring me anytime for a photo shoot.” He waved his arms as if showing off the ugly plumbing, concrete furnishings, and dun-colored walls. He’d once used his limited rations of paper and pencil to make some terrible drawings of trees and flowers and mountains, then used toothpaste to stick them to the walls. But after the guards tore down the papers and punished Des, his walls had remained bare.

  Unimpressed by Des’s theatrics, Powell rested his arms on the bars, his hands dangling into the cell. Des found himself pulled forward as if by a magnet. Someone who wasn’t a guard was in his cell with him—well, a bit of him was, anyway—and he didn’t seem inclined to harm him. Someone was here.

  “I’m not entirely like Wilde,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “It’s a poem in one of the books you gave me. A poem about a prisoner.”

  Powell shook his head. “I don’t know any poetry.” He didn’t move his hands away when Des moved almost close enough to touch. “It’s cold in here,” he said instead.

  “Not what you’d expect in the desert, yeah? I suppose I ought to be grateful I don’t roast in here during the summer.”

  “Heat can be as bad as cold. Worse, maybe. It makes things rot.” Then Powell shook himself and his gaze sharpened. “We need your help with those boxes.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know. Can tell you again if you want, but I don’t have anything new for you.”

  Powell nodded as if expecting this. “The cities you and Krane stayed in during the months before you were caught... if you were there right now, do you think you could find the precise locations? The exact houses or rooms?”

  “Are you going to try one of those guided imagery things?” He’d seen that on a television show once. He didn’t know if it was a real thing but thought it might be related to hypnosis. “I don’t fancy the idea of someone digging about in my head, but I’ll do it if you want.” At least it would add some variety to his life.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Powell raised a hand to stop Des from saying more. “Shut up and listen, okay?”

  Des nodded.

  After a brief pause, maybe to see if Des would stay quiet, Powell heaved a noisy sigh. “I’ve been authorized to offer you a deal. It goes like this. I accompany you on a retrospective tour of your old hangouts. You put all possible efforts into looking for those goddamn boxes. You’ll have a tracking device on you, so don’t get any ideas about making a run for it. If you try, the Bureau will find you and make your existence such a living hell that you’ll remember this cell as the Taj
Mahal in comparison. Ditto if you attempt any violence against me or anyone else. Ditto if you dick around and waste my time. But if you follow the rules and we find those boxes, you’ll be returned to this prison with an upgrade. Bigger cell, bigger exercise yard and more time to use it, plus an assortment of other small privileges. You’ll still spend the rest of your life here, but you’ll be more comfortable. Agreed?”

  The words went into Des’s ears, and at some level his brain processed them, but he couldn’t respond. Couldn’t do much of anything, actually: his lungs seized, static filled his head, and his knees gave out. He collapsed to the floor and clutched the bars as if they’d save him from drowning.

  Powell didn’t react—not even now that Des was inches from touching him—and Des was incredibly grateful for that. Once Des’s harsh panting evened out, Powell dropped into a crouch to meet his gaze. “You back?” he asked gently.

  “Y-yeah.” Des’s legs remained weak and his head swam, but he managed to get to his feet again, and Powell rose too, the distance between them only as wide as the bars.

  “I can….” Des took a steadying breath. “I can leave this place?”

  “For a while. You’ll have to come back.”

  “Right. But for a while anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  At the confirmation, Des almost collapsed again. His hands gripped the bars so tightly that his knuckles went white. “Yes,” he rasped. “Yes, please. Please.”

  “You understand the conditions of my offer?”

  Conditions. Des would have done anything—almost anything at all—for ten minutes out in the open. For a fleeting reminder that he was something other than a caged animal. “I understand. I accept. Please.”

  Powell nodded slowly. “All right then.”

  “When will we go?”

  “Now.”

  Des fell to his knees again.

  His preparations to leave took longer than he hoped, mostly because his hands shook so much that dressing was difficult. It might have been difficult even with steady fingers, since it had been nearly half his lifetime since he’d worn underwear and jeans or had tied shoelaces. The fabric of a gray T-shirt felt heavenly soft against his skin—nothing like the stiff, scratchy jumpsuits—and his shoulders were blessedly uncramped.

  Despite his urgency to get the fuck out of this place, he hesitated before approaching the cell bars. “Can I take a book with me?”

  “I’ll make sure they save your books for when you return,” Powell replied.

  “Thank you. But can I take one with?”

  After a pause, Powell twitched a shoulder. “Guess so.”

  Des grabbed the small Reading Gaol volume from his shelf and tucked it in a back pocket. He couldn’t have explained why he wanted it. It was almost as if he were giving Wilde a bit of the freedom the man had yearned for. “Don’t be daft. He’s been dead nearly a century.”

  “What’s that?” Powell asked.

  Des blushed. “Nothing.” Dammit. He was going to have to stop talking to himself, at least for now.

  Before Powell ordered the bars opened, he told Des to stick his right hand through one of the spaces. Des complied, watching with interest as Powell locked a thin metal band around Des’s wrist. It resembled an ornamental bracelet more than a manacle. “You can track me with that?”

  “The Bureau can, yes. Anywhere in the world. And by the way, I have no means to remove it. So don’t get any ideas about murdering me and finding the key. Someone else is going to have to take it off you once you’re back here.”

  “Fine.”

  Des wasn’t thinking about escape. The notion might get more attractive after he’d been out for a while, especially when the time to return to prison drew near. He hoped he’d have the sense to not do anything stupid.

  Finally—dear God, finally—the guards returned to open the gate, and Des walked into the corridor with no chains to hobble his stride or jangle as he walked. Powell had a long, swift gait that required Des and the unhappy guards to hurry to keep up. Jesus, it felt bloody good to be moving, even if he was still within the confines of the prison.

  They passed through a series of doors that had to be unlocked, finally ending up in an ugly reception area. The room didn’t look familiar. Perhaps Des had entered the prison somewhere else, or maybe they’d changed the place in the last seventeen years. Didn’t much matter, because a final set of doors opened and then… he was outside.

  He came to a halt on the sidewalk several yards from the entrance, stunned at how big the sky was. Same sky he’d been looking at all along, he knew that, but this was daytime, the blue so pure and bright that his eyes watered.

  “Let’s go,” Powell said. He led them to a lot filled with cars and stopped at the closest one, a frost-colored sedan that gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Nice car.”

  Powell gave the shoulder twitch that Des was already becoming accustomed to. “Bureau’s. Needed something unobtrusive.” He unlocked the doors and slid into the driver’s seat. After a moment, Des got in beside him.

  He’d known cars had changed since he was incarcerated; he’d seen them on TV. But he hadn’t realized how different they were now. Sleeker, with mysterious buttons and knobs. When Powell turned on the engine and a chime began to urgently ding, Des jumped in alarm. Had he already done something wrong?

  “Put your seatbelt on,” Powell ordered.

  Oh. Des clicked the belt latch and the ringing stopped.

  He held his breath as they rolled through the gate in the prison walls, but nobody stopped them. Then Powell turned onto the road and gunned the accelerator, and Des almost whooped with joy.

  They’d driven through the desert without speaking for nearly an hour. The shadows were growing long and the sun had almost dipped behind the distant mountains. Des was intent on soaking up every detail of their surroundings, hoping to file away everything for later. Once he was back in prison, he’d recall all the shades of olive and sage green and the way rocks created sculptural shapes against the sand. He’d remember the music Powell played on the radio—most of the songs familiar from Des’s youth—and the scent of new car and something slightly woodsy that might have been Powell’s soap or shampoo.

  But that last thought was dangerous, because it suddenly made Des realize that another person—another man—sat only inches away, with no chains or barriers between them. And the more time he spent with Powell, the more Des came to like his looks. He wasn’t stunningly handsome in a standard fashion-model way, but his face was attractive: sensuous lips, a strong broad nose, heavy brows, and a sprinkling of dark freckles across the tawny skin of his cheeks. And those hazel eyes, of course. They sparked with intelligence and emotion.

  Powell had nice hands too, his long, slender fingers wrapped loosely around the steering wheel. Des found himself wondering how those fingers would feel—smooth or callused?—as they traced over Des’s body. “Stop it, Hughes,” he chided himself.

  “Stop what?” asked Powell.

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “Not thinking of doing anything foolish, are you?” Powell didn’t sound alarmed.

  “No.” Which was a lie, but surely Powell imagined Des might be considering violence or escape, not… something equally dangerous. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to work our way back. Everyone’s gone over that farm in Kansas about a thousand times, so we’re skipping that.”

  “Good,” Des said without thinking.

  Powell gave him a quick glance. “Good? Why?”

  “Not one of my favorite memories.”

  “I guess not.” Powell huffed something that was almost a sigh. “Where was the next place you headed after Boise?”

  That question wasn’t hard since Des had so recently recounted the entire itinerary. “Florida.”

  “So that’s where we’re going.”

  “That’s far.”

  Powell didn’t bother responding, but Des was secretly gleeful. He’
d assumed they’d go first to the locations closer to the prison. But he and Larry had covered a lot of miles. If he and Powell followed that route, it could be weeks before they were finished. Or longer. Jesus Christ, weeks of freedom.

  “Agent Powell?”

  “Kurt. We’re going for unobtrusive, remember? And you’re Desmond.”

  “Des. Please.”

  “Fine. Des.”

  The last person to call him that was Larry. It was lovely to hear his name from someone else’s lips. “Kurt, then. When we stop, do you suppose I could have a proper shower? With decent soap and shampoo?”

  Powell grunted something that might have been affirmative, and Des leaned back in his seat with a smile.

  Chapter Ten

  They stopped for dinner at a Burger King in Elko. Kurt was no fan of fast food, but he wanted to get back on the road quickly. Hughes—or Des, as he apparently preferred—attacked his meal with the type of orgasmic enthusiasm usually reserved for meals at four-star restaurants. “Jesus Christ, this is good,” he said for the fifth or sixth time as he tore into a second Whopper.

  Kurt wasn’t inclined to make fun of him. He remembered the first time he’d had pizza after returning from Vietnam and how he’d made a fool of himself over it. So now he simply dabbed his lips with a paper napkin while calculating how soon they could get to Florida. Conclusion: not soon enough.

  After Elko, Kurt drove far into the night. He expected Des to drop into sleep—the road was especially monotonous in the dark—but instead he stared avidly through the windshield and hummed along with the radio. They continued all the way past Salt Lake City, by which time Kurt’s eyelids were rebelling against his authority and trying to slide closed. He finally exited the freeway and parked in front of a lonely-looking old motel.

  “Come with me.” He turned off the engine.

  “You’re taking me with when you check in?”

  “I don’t plan to leave you alone.”

  Des gave him a teasing grin. “I thought you could track me down anywhere.”

  “We can. But I don’t want my boss pissed at me because he had to waste manpower chasing after your ass on day one. Believe me, you don’t want that either.” Kurt didn’t really think Des would run, at least not yet, but he didn’t want to provide any temptation.