Hell and Gone

19

Prison exists to serve one purpose: locking people away from life’s good things.

—Sin Soracco, Low Bite

Manhattan—Now

“CARE FOR ANOTHER?”

Mann realized all at once that was she awake and sitting at a bar. As promised, the Industry had deposited her into a very nice hotel. In front of her was a diamond-cut tumbler of Domaine de Canton, a ginger liqueur, that she did not remember ordering. This was not entirely strange, because she had been prepared to experience missing time. To keep the location of the prison absolutely secret, all its visitors were injected with a serum (allegedly harmless) that erased short-term memory, somewhere in the forty-to-fifty-hour range. The exact cutoff was imprecise; all at once you would snap “awake” and realize you couldn’t remember what had happened over the past two days—including where you had been and what route you had taken. When Mann rolled up her sleeve and looked at the crook of her left elbow, there was a piece of cotton taped there. She peeled it back. The injection site had been healing for a few hours. She must have been given the shot earlier in the day, rested for a while, wandered down for a cocktail, then “woken up.”

Until Mann slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the folded card that housed her room key, she didn’t know what city she was in. New York City, it turned out. A Hilton.

“No, thank you,” Mann said, then signed the check, leaving a 20 percent tip. She then stepped outside for some air.

The sun was beginning to set, and the air was muggy and hot. Mann realized she was standing directly across from Ground Zero. Construction continued on the so-called Freedom Tower. The last time Mann had been to lower Manhattan, the site was still just a big, depressing hole in the ground.

She stepped back inside and took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, which, according to the folded card, was where she’d find her room. Mann always traveled light. Never take anything you’re not fully prepared to leave behind.

At Penn Station she bought a ticket on an Acela bound for 30th Street Station, Philadelphia. Mann thought about Charlie Hardie for much of the ride down. Had he figured out the prison yet? Or had he been beaten to death upon his arrival? Of course not. Not her Charlie. The man was unkillable, right?

She hadn’t thought about him in a long while. Not actively, anyway. Seeing him in the flesh, though, brought all those old bad feelings back. She tried not to show it, but he seemed to sense it anyway. The pure cold hate. Much as Mann tried to rationalize it away, the truth was…he had derailed her life. Utterly, completely. She thought that seeing him in that tiny little interrogation room, and knowing what fate had in store for him, would bring her some peace.

It did not.

In dreary, humid Philadelphia, Mann picked up the SUV she’d rented using her smartphone and followed 76 up to Route 611 and out to the suburbs of Montgomery County. The address had been written on the back of the folded hotel card.

The house was modest for this neighborhood, which was good. Nobody would be driving by and gawking at it. A split-level. Some tree cover, bushes, a wooden fence in need of paint. Mann parked the SUV across the street and swept the area with her eyes. The family allegedly had some guardian angels in the FBI looking over them—but as far as Mann could tell, the house was utterly exposed. Nobody on the perimeter. No sophisticated alarm systems. No one even doing drive-bys.

She removed the smartphone from her pocket and had her hand on the door handle when she heard a noise.

Behind her—

Then a form, stumbling out of the bushes.

Mann’s body tensed up. Had she missed someone? Was the FBI out there? Not that it mattered, because she could flash any number of phony credentials that would ease her passage from the scene. But she would be highly disappointed in herself if she’d missed something like that.

The form darted past the SUV and into the street, casting furtive glances to the left, then the right, before jogging toward the house.

Mann squinted.

It was Charlie Hardie.

The junior version of him, anyway.

What was a young man doing out at this hour, stumbling around in the darkness outside his own house?

After a few more seconds of observation Mann had figured it out. The boy had been drinking. Look at him, how uneasy he is on his feet. He must have sneaked past Mom to go pound beers with his asshole friends somewhere in the wilds of Montgomery County. Absent father, single mother—textbook rebellion move.

So tell me, boy—what would you be drinking if I told you that your father was in some secret prison right now? Would you upgrade to vodka, maybe some coke?

She was half tempted to jump out of the SUV and tackle the boy, right there on his front lawn, put the tip of a pen under his chin and tell him it was a knife and that she was going to cut his head off. Would he act like his father and try to punch her in the eye? Would he have a wisecrack? Would she see any of the father in the son?

It was tempting.

So incredibly tempting.

But she had other work to do. The night was just beginning.