The Reed Montgomery Series Box Set

by Logan Ryles

  I’ve slept on concrete that was more welcoming.

  Stiller waited, then chuckled. “Ah, the fresh meat daze. Still can’t believe it’s real, huh? Well, take it from me, homie. It’s real. Sooner you own it, the better your life will be. You take the bottom bunk. I won’t sleep well with a dude your size hanging over me.”

  Stiller settled down on the bottom and untied his shoes, kicking them off before hoisting himself onto the upper bunk. “So, you got a name or what?”

  “Reed. Reed Montgomery.”

  “A pleasure, Reed. What’d you do?”

  Reed folded his arms and leaned against the wall. The concrete bit into his shoulder blades, but he didn’t move. He clenched his fists into his armpits and closed his eyes.

  Stiller laughed again. “So, you’re one of those. Whatever makes you feel better. Myself, I got busted dealing dope. I’ve got a dime coming my way. Been here since June.”

  Reed pushed his hands into his pockets, searching for warmth to thaw his numb fingers.

  “At least tell me how long you’re in for,” Stiller said.

  Reed hesitated, then slumped over. It didn’t really matter, he guessed. “Until they finish renovations at Leavenworth. I’ll be there until . . . it’s over.”

  Stiller frowned, tilting his head, and then an apparent realization dawned on him. He sighed. “Damn sorry to hear that, Reed. May you find favor with the appeals gods.”

  Reed shrugged and looked out into the hallway. “Who was he? The tall guy.”

  Stiller grunted. “They call him Milk. No idea what his real name is. Even the COs call him that.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  Stiller chuckled again. The sound was strangely comforting.

  “Dude, you need to understand something. Everyone in here is dangerous. Milk isn’t particularly burly, but he’s shady and ruthless, and he’s got a lot of friends. A lot of bitches, too—people who fear him and run his errands. My guess is, he was here to test the waters with you.”

  Reed stared into the hallway, rubbing his fingers together inside the pockets. They were still numb, but a hint of warmth built between the folds of the fabric.

  “Did he try to push you around? Demean you?” Stiller said. Reed grunted, and Stiller leaned back into the pillow. “Yep. He’s testing you. Better deal with it, Reed. It’s not something you wanna leave hanging.”

  Reed kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the blank, merciless floor between his feet. “I’m not here to fight. I just wanna—”

  “Do your time and be left alone.” Stiller finished the sentence with another snort. He rolled over on the bunk, and then his head appeared upside down next to Reed’s. He had a handsome face with two days’ worth of scruff on his cheeks. “Let me give you some advice, Reed. Best case scenario, you get off of death row and spend the rest of your life inside a cell. Worst case scenario, you work through the appeals courts for the next ten years, and they still kill you. Either way, you’re gonna be in prison for a hot minute. It’s up to you how hot that minute is.” Stiller slid off the bunk and shoved his feet back into the shoes, then shuffled through the open door.

  Metal and shoes rattled outside the cell, and the grey walls around Reed blurred out of focus. Everything closed around him, drawing in toward his skull. Reed staggered to the sink and splashed water on his face, gasping for air as he clutched the edges of the basin. His reflection in the dirty mirror showed the white pallor of his cheeks and the panic in his eyes.

  I can’t stay here.

  Two

  “Lights! Lights!”

  The sharp pop, pop of the industrial switches being thrown preceded a flood of light blazing into the cell. Reed blinked and groaned, pulling the blanket over his face.

  Stiller crashed to the floor beside him, then smacked him on the arm. “Get up, Reed. It’s not an option.”

  More clanging resounded outside, this time on the second level, and growing closer. He pushed his feet out of bed and dropped to the floor. The shoes were tight around his toes, and a new shiver ripped through his body as he shuffled toward the locked door.

  Two grey-clad correctional officers stomped in front of his cell, and a metal flashlight clicked against the bars before blasting his face with light. The beam swept over both bunks before the guards disappeared toward the next cell.

  “They’ll open the doors and order us out. Fall in behind me. Keep your hands out of your pockets, and walk with the others. Don’t talk to the guards.”

  Reed reluctantly pulled his hands from his pockets and shifted on the hard floor.

  What time is it? How long did I sleep?

  There was no time in this place. No concept of day or night. It could’ve been three in the afternoon for all he knew.

  “Open full block!” The command snapped from the end of the hallway, and the electric controls of the doors squeaked and groaned. Each steel door slid open.

  “All convicts, fall in!” The voice boomed over the speakers, buried out of sight in the ceiling high above. Stiller stepped out of the cell and turned left. Reed followed him and stood behind, looking down the long line of white-clad prisoners. Nobody spoke. All eyes were directed at the line of COs standing on the ground level, brooding, and swinging nightsticks on the ends of leather lanyards.

  “Move out!”

  Jumpsuit legs swished against one another, releasing body odor down the hallway as the column of convicts migrated toward the door. The lights flickered, and sweat filled Reed’s palms as he clenched them against his sides.

  I’ve got to get out.

  Someone shoved him in the lower back, and Reed looked over his shoulder.

  A tall, cross-eyed man gave him a crooked grin. One eye stared at Reed while the other twitched at random. “Fresh meat,” he hissed.

  Reed shot him an icy glare and faced forward again. Doors and hallways flashed past—one flight of stairs, then two metal gates that opened into a wide courtyard outside. Block walls topped with razor wire surrounded them, canopied by a black sky without a hint of sun. White spotlights blazed from above, driving the shadows into the far corners of the yard.

  “Line up on the grid,” Stiller whispered.

  Reed followed him down the sidewalk and stopped on a wide white line. The other prisoners followed suit, forming into eight neat rows of twenty men standing shoulder to shoulder. The air was bitter cold, biting straight through the thin coveralls and into Reed’s bones, making every joint feel stiff and brittle.

  “Count off!” the lead CO shouted from the end of the first line.

  His cohorts walked between the lines of prisoners, tapping each one on the arm as they counted. Reed stiffened as a nightstick smacked against his elbow, and the CO passed without making eye contact.

  The private from the end of the line saluted the sergeant at the front of the courtyard. “All prisoners present and accounted for, sir!”

  “You may begin the drill, Officer.”

  Reed’s stomach fluttered, and he looked at Stiller. “Drill?”

  Stiller squeezed his eyes shut. “Contraband. They found contraband. This is what happens.”

  “All right, you cons. On the ground!”

  The men around him fell on their stomachs. Reed followed, placing his hands beneath his chest as the private began to count off. One, two. Each pushup burned, sending prickling heat shooting down the backs of his arms. Within minutes, a pool of sweat built on the concrete under his nose. Stiller pumped up and down beside him without a sound, his face down, vision fixed on the pavement.

  Reed gritted his teeth and continued as the CO at the end of the line shouted the count. They passed the thirty mark and kept going. The ache building in his back ran toward his tailbone, but Reed’s hardened muscles tightened and delivered.

  “On your feet! Move it!”

  All one hundred sixty men scrambled up, and a clapping resounded from the nearest CO.

  He jerked his arm toward the nearest block
wall. “Move it! Let’s go! Laps!”

  The crowd of sweaty men piled in along the walls and began to circle the courtyard, running as the CO continued to shout commands and urge them onward. Reed had run many times in his life. It was his favorite exercise during boot camp—simple, rhythmic, and predictable—but this was totally different. Men slammed into his back and shoved him sideways, making it almost impossible to maintain his pace. The tight pack of bodies around him was like a dense swarm of fish, all piled on top of each other and desperately trying to escape the wide, open mouth of a killer whale.

  “Faster! Let’s go!”

  Reed gasped for breath and pushed back the mental revulsion to the burn in his legs. The world spun around him, still covered by a black sky. One lap followed another, broken into segments of a hundred yards by fifty yards. Some of the men flagged and stumbled, but were driven on by the shouting COs.

  “Halt!” The sergeant bellowed over the prisoners, and the long column fell over each other as they collapsed against the fences and the ground. Reed held his stomach and gasped. A tinge of orange slowly brightened the sky over the mountains.

  “Fall in! Showers!”

  The column of prisoners slipped through the gates and back into the hallways, working their way up two flights of steps. The prison was alive now with blazing lights and the clamor of guards and workers. As they passed one of the dining rooms, the sour stench of stale grease took away any appetite Reed might have had. Everything was old, dingy, and utilitarian. No hint of beauty or life touched this place. It was like a graveyard for the living.

  One more hallway opened into a wide room with tile floors and rows of showerheads on the walls. There were no partitions, and a draft blew in from someplace overhead.

  “Strip! Let’s go!”

  The prisoners shucked their sweat-soaked coveralls and dumped them into a line of laundry carts. As Reed peeled off the sticky garment, he searched for Stiller, but his undersized cellmate had already disappeared somewhere in the line of naked bodies that formed between the carts and the shower stalls. Reed stepped back to the end of the line and held his hands loosely at his sides, flexing his toes over the cold tiles.

  Where the hell am I?

  He joined the Marines to get out. Get out of southern California, out of the gangs, out of his mother’s boyfriend’s stinking apartment. To be free. Be his own. How had that vanished so quickly? How had he ended up here . . . more a prisoner than ever before?

  Nothing was what he expected. Not that he gave a lot of thought to what prison would be like. He assumed it would entail lengthy periods of downtime, sitting in a cell by himself, staring at a wall. Forced PT, mass showers, and screaming COs hadn’t entered into that equation.

  He thought back over the past year, back before the courtrooms, the trial, and the handcuffs. Back to Iraq. Back to the sand and the heat and the bullets. And O’Conner. He saw her lying dead in the dirt with a bloodied face and the haunted, empty eyes of a woman who hours before had been spitting piss and vinegar and enough spirit to tame a dragon. Now gone. Crushed like a roach against hardwood.

  The hard edge of a nightstick smacked Reed on the arm, and a CO glowered at him. “Move it, con! Let’s go!”

  Reed hurried to close the gap between himself and the end of the line. As the room began to empty, a shower became available. The water that streamed over his back was lukewarm at best, but still eased the tension in his taut muscles. Flakes of greasy soap broke off the bar as Reed rubbed it against his armpits. He tried not to think about how many dozens of smelly bodies had collided with that bar since it assumed residency at the top of a mildew-encrusted ledge next to the showerhead. Somehow, soap still felt more sanitary than water alone, no matter how greasy. He spat a stream of over-chlorinated water against the wall and replaced the soap on the ledge.

  I’d do it again. Everything that happened over there…I didn’t have a choice.

  The thought rang as clearly in his head as it had the past July, right before he chambered a round into his rifle and aligned the scope with the base of Commander Gould’s neck. He shot that son of a bitch because he had no choice. He flew around the world and watched Americans get cut down like cattle at the slaughterhouse in the name of justice. In the name of independence. Things he valued. Something snapped inside of him when he looked down at Private O’Conner’s brutalized corpse. There was only one choice, and that was to execute the justice she believed in right up to the moment that her own countrymen choked the life from her lungs.

  Fuck it all. Reed slammed his hand into the wall.

  “Well, well. . . . Looks like it’s just you and me again, bitch.”

  Reed blinked away the soap and water. The voice was familiar, smooth, and venomous.

  Milk stood five feet away, his wet hair dripping over a naked, bony frame. With one hand held over his exposed crotch, he slowly rubbed back and forth, and his eyes, alight with menacing fire, blazed at Reed over a twisted smile. “You are a bitch, aren’t you? You look like a bitch. A lot like the bitch I took back in Nebraska. Oh, but she wasn’t as smart as you. She screamed bloody murder like she wasn’t even enjoying it. You’re smart, aren’t you, bitch? You know what’s good for you.”

  Reed cast a quick glance around the shower room. The COs were gone, as were the remainder of the prisoners—all except two tall, beefy men with thick arms that swung next to bulging guts as they closed in a few steps behind Milk. Reed recognized one of the goons by his cross-eyed glare, one eye fixed on his prey while the other roamed the room at random. Their bare feet smacked against the tile as water droplets cascaded over still-dirty hair.

  Milk took a step forward, running a skinny tongue over his lips. “All right, bitch. Make it quick and strong, if you know what’s good for you.” He took another step and touched Reed’s arm.

  Reed slid to the right before grabbing Milk by the throat and placing his other hand against the base of the man’s skull. A lightning twist of his torso propelled Milk’s face directly into the wall. Flesh met tile with a crack, and blood exploded over Reed’s hands. He stepped back and grabbed Milk by the shoulder, then swept his left foot across the floor and into Milk’s shins at the same moment he pushed down on the shoulder. The bald creep crashed to the floor with a scream.

  Before Reed could turn around, Milk’s goons were on top of him, throwing him into the wall a millisecond before one of their meaty fists slammed home into his gut. He clutched his stomach as another fist caught him in the chin, followed by a knee to the groin.

  An eruption of pain flooded through him, weakening all other sensations as Reed flailed out with both arms. Another blow to his stomach, and his vision began to tunnel. Thick fingers closed around his throat, choking out the air and forcing his head into the tile.

  “Night-night, bitch,” the voice rumbled, half-chuckle, half-snarl.

  No. Not this way.

  Reed launched his fist forward in one more blind attempt to dislodge the grip on his throat, and he felt the satisfying crack of a nose collapsing beneath his knuckles. The fingers fell off his throat, and he gasped for air. Then a fist flashed into Reed’s view just as it tore through the air and crashed into his head.

  Three

  Lights from overhead burned through Reed’s eyelids. His clouded eyes felt both crusty and moist, blurring out the big, blotchy face that leaned over his. A medical mask was stretched over the nose, just below large, dark eyes. Reed tried twisting to get a better view, but his body was restrained by some thick strap circumventing his stomach. The familiar bite of handcuffs on either wrist secured his arms to the table.

  The distinct sting of a needle pierced his face once, then twice. With each push of the needle, fingers twitched against his skin, stitching one thread after another into his cheek. The pain restored his memory, and he saw Milk’s sneering face leaning over him again. The anger returned, along with maddening frustration.

  “Is he conscious?”

  The man in the mask grunted
, and a new face appeared beside his. It was the desk sergeant who checked Reed into the prison on his first day.

  “I knew you’d be trouble, Montgomery.” There was no hint of sympathy in the cold voice.

  Reed grunted and tried to twist again, then remembered the restraints. “They jumped me.”

  “Is that right? And by the look of it, you were happy to join in on the fun.”

  There was nothing Reed could say. The sergeant would either believe him or he wouldn’t. Either way, not much was likely to change.

  The sergeant barked at the medical officer. “What’s his prognosis?”

  The man in the mask grunted again, then snipped the end of the thread with a pair of scissors. “Cuts and bruises. He’ll be fine.”

  “Very good.” The sergeant snapped his fingers. “Officer!”

  The door opened, and another CO stepped in.

  “Take 4371 to isolation. Book him for three weeks. Minimum rations.”

  The private slid the handcuffs and belt off of Reed. As he stood up, head spinning, the private closed his hard fingers around his arm.

  “Learn your lesson, Montgomery.” The sergeant’s voice was unsympathetic. “There’s no forgiveness here.”

  The CO shoved him forward through the door and into a hall.

  Another oversized pair of white coveralls swished against his legs with each step, but his feet were bare. Bruises and aching joints fogged his mind, making each step agony. His head ached harder than ever, and his tongue stuck to the roof of a dry mouth.

  Light flooded his eyes as the private pushed him out into another courtyard. This one was much larger than the first, with grass and park benches. Small crowds of convicts stood around the perimeter, talking or milling about. Sneers and smirks mixed with a handful of blank stares met Reed’s gaze. The CO pushed him along the sidewalk, down the fence line, and toward the isolation ward. As Reed stumbled on, a scrawny man bent over a park bench with his back turned. Two other men stood nearby with their arms folded across their chests. Reed squinted against the bright sunlight, watching as Milk turned toward him, his face wrapped in a thick bandage.