Page 31 of Endangered Species
“Stop calling me Nicky. It makes me feel like you think I’m not making it out of here. I need a huge favor. I need you and Chao to come for a meeting tomorrow. It’s an emergency.”
There was a long pause before Linc said, “Okay.”
“Did you know attorneys are allowed to bring laptops for their meetings with their clients?” Webster asked, voice uncharacteristically cheerful.
“Yeah, message received. We’ll see you tomorrow.” There was no goodbye. Linc disconnected, leaving Webster to stand there with the receiver still in hand.
Without Cy, their cell was like a crypt, cold and quiet, the only sound the steady drip of the faucet in the corner, which soon began to feel like torture. Even though Webster couldn’t sleep in Cy’s arms at night, there was something calming about the steady cadence of his breathing in the bunk above him and even the way the metal creaked each time he rolled in his sleep. In just a few weeks, Webster had gone from hating sleepover guests to longing for the sound of Cy’s quiet snores.
By the time they shuffled Webster into the conference room the next day, he hadn’t slept in at least thirty hours. His eyes burned and his brain was fuzzy, but seeing Linc seated beside his attorney caused a spike in his heart rate. Webster missed his friends. He missed the outside world. He missed iced caramel lattes and pillows and just getting in his car and driving. Shit he’d taken for granted for years. He missed being treated like a person.
Linc rose like he was going to hug him, but the burly guard snapped, “No touching.”
Chao fixed the guard with a withering look. “We’ll call if we need you.”
The guard slipped from the room to stand before the large window carved out of the wall in the hallway. Chao pulled Webster’s clunky black laptop from her bag and opened it, turning it so the three of them could see the screen. When Webster pulled it closer, the guard tapped his nightstick on the glass, shaking his head.
“Well, this is going to make this significantly more difficult,” Webster said, rubbing his bleary eyes. He looked to Chao. I’ll walk you through how to access the program and the results, so I can see what we’ve got.”
The task was far more difficult than they’d imagined, but when the results were finally laid out on the screen before them in terms all three could understand, there was no doubt that this was the reason he’d found himself in prison. There were nine names. Webster only recognized three. Dooley, Johannesburg, and Donaldson. Three of the key people involved in sending Cy away for twenty-five years.
“We’ve got it,” Linc said. “This is it, right? Proof?”
“What does it prove? That these nine people are part of a conspiracy to incarcerate guilty people? That’s their job. It means nothing unless we can prove that what they’re doing is more than just putting away people who committed a crime,” Chao said. “Rigging your case docket might get somebody slapped with misconduct, but it’s not going to prove what you think it will. We need more evidence.”
Webster slammed his hand down on the desk, causing his chains to rattle. “Dammit!”
The guard whipped the door open, but Chao just leveled another cold stare at him. “Did we call you? No. Don’t interrupt us again.”
The guard sneered at her but closed the door. Webster shook his head. “Cy is in the hole. Thor is in the hospital. I need to get out of here in order to prove my innocence and they know it. But I need Cy out of here as well. They’ll use him to get to me.”
“We have people working on proving that you weren’t the one who hacked the FBI, but whoever framed you knew what they were doing. I don’t know how to get you out of here.”
“There are over six hundred and forty names on that list. Six hundred people who may have been wrongly put away for years. Do you have any idea what that means? I can’t just do nothing,” Webster said. “They robbed Cy of twenty years.”
“Nobody is asking you not to do anything,” Linc said. “I’m asking you to be patient.”
Webster’s eyes widened. “Be patient? Cy may have just killed somebody trying to protect me. He might never get out of here because of me. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about him.”
Linc shook his head, like he didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say. Not really. Cy sacrificed himself for Webster, to keep him safe. He was prepared to do the same. Even if it meant dying for it.
Once more, he scrubbed his hands over his face. “I need you to listen to me carefully…”
Webster gave his instructions in clipped tones, doing his best not to get emotional. This wasn’t about him anymore. This was about Cy and the six hundred and forty others who’d possibly had their lives taken away from them all for money.
Before Linc and Chao left, Webster used her legal pad and pen to write a message to the warden, handing it over to the guard before he escorted Webster back to his cell. “That needs to go to the warden.”
The guard scoffed. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’m serious. He’s going to want to read what’s on that note, and if it doesn’t end up in his hands and shit goes sideways, I’m going to make sure that you’re the one who goes down for it. Got it”—he looked at the guards name tag—“Lempkins?”
There was just a moment of hesitation, but then the man rolled his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.”
Lempkins’ tone was mocking, but Webster knew the letter would reach its destination. All he had to do was bide his time and hope Cy could do the same. Webster wished he could just talk to him, let him know that he had a plan. Well, not so much a plan as a hail Mary but it was all he had. It was all either of them had.
Sweat dripped onto the concrete floor below as he lowered himself into another push-up. There wasn’t much else to do in the hole, and if Cy didn’t keep moving, he was going to start imagining things. Dark things. He couldn’t afford to let his imagination run away from him in this place. He’d seen too many men go in the hole a person and come out barely human. Solitary was designed to break people down.
There was no way to tell how much time had passed, but he suspected it wasn’t nearly as long as he imagined. Cy was grateful for the dull, flickering fluorescent light high overhead. In some prisons, there was no light at all, no sound. Just a man and his thoughts and silence so heavy it made the ears ring.
