Page 61 of Pulling Strings

“She wants to make you an investigator.”

The words sounded no less ridiculous coming out of his mouth.

I frowned. “Pfft, no. She doesn’t. But, if she did, why wouldyouwant that?”

Grimm reclined in his chair, lacking any sense of urgency while everything in me begged to take off running.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiled. “I’m already in Maximus Lyle’s hip pocket, and I promised you all would be able to join me. What better for you to do than keep tabs on his overachieving daughter?”

Pain from the headache spiked. Withdrawals were still making me their bitch and piling onto the idiocy of this so-called plan. I’d waited for this? Worried andsweated and told Donovan I was going to work things out only to end up rolling over and showing my belly to the Capitol?

“So, you want me to plea out?” I shoved the belly chain past my hips then rounded the table toward Grimm while anger mounted. “Make up some shit about the gang so they feel like they made the right choice not taking off my head?”

Grimm rose as I closed in. “Fitch—”

“They could change their minds, you know,” I snapped. Papers scattered across the table. A few took to the air, trying to fly away while I continued, “How long am I supposed to wait—”

“Fitch, listen to me!” His shout stopped me mid-rant with my chest heaving. “You’re not going to plea out.”

“What, then?”

His eyes checked the papers beginning to settle before fixing on mine. “You’re going to trial, and you’re going to win.”

21

Break Out

The fluorescent light overhead cut to black, prompting an auxiliary spotlight in the corner to turn on.

An alarm blared.

I was still reeling, processing Grimm’s conflicting advice and bursting with questions that never found a voice.

“That’s our cue.” Grimm walked quickly to the door. As he moved, his clothing changed to a prisoner’s bland, beige coveralls. His hair shortened and so did his beard, now a buzz cut and bristle on a generic face.

Shouts and pounding footsteps echoed down the hall outside. I turned toward the noise, then looked at Grimm, who waved me ahead.

“You ready, inmate?” He winked.

For what? Why all this if I was going to trial tomorrow? A prison break, after all, but for who?

“You said you talked to Ripley,” Grimm said as though answering my thoughts. “Where is he?”

I stiffened. “The infirmary, probably.”

“Do you know the way?”

“I think so.” But Iwanted to say no.

Were they doing all this for that Benedict Arnold? And wanting me to help? Then what? I would go to trial in the morning and pretend nothing happened? Or shake hands with Holland Lyle and seal my fate for the next untold number of years?

Winning at court and making nice with Holland seemed mutually exclusive unless I grossly misunderstood her and Grimm’s—or Talbot’s—negotiation tactics. Another thing I hadn’t thought about while languishing in jail: a guilty verdict wasn’t a guarantee. Old-timey mobsters got away with as much as I’d done, many times over. How often had Al Capone dodged justice’s bullets? Maybe I could do the same.

“Let’s go,” Grimm said at last. “We’ll meet up with the boys en route.”

The isolation cells were situated in the bowels of the prison, underground. Traveling to the upper levels to reach gen pop and the infirmary meant ascending two levels and crossing from one side of the facility to the other. We looked the part—a pair of prisoners out for a stroll—but the need for disguises vanished the moment we stepped into the hallway.

A crush of people ran this way and that. Bodies moved in every direction while shouting and causing riotous mayhem. Everything was on backup power with intermittent spotlights glaring across the sea of movement. Red strobes at the ends of passageways beamed ominously into the shadows. I caught sight of passersby in flashes. Guards and inmates scurried.

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