Jet (14 page)

“I’m Sandra,” Jet responded, using the name she’d been booked under. She’d been processed into the jail as a Jane Doe, the name Sandra invented on the spot.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Right.”

The guard at the head of the column blew her whistle again, and the line of prisoners shambled forward like a giant gray millipede. Jet noted that nobody searched the prisoners on the way out of the mess hall, which presented some interesting possibilities for the steel cups they drank from. If she could confiscate one and smash it flat, she could hone the edge into a blade, giving her a manageable weapon – crude but effective, depending on how stiff the collapsed vessel wound up being.

The line rounded a corner and shuffled along the long corridor, cell doors open on either side. Yulia had whispered that she was in the same cell that Jet had been assigned, but hadn’t seen her arrival due to mess duty. They came to the cell and entered with the rest of the prisoners, and were halfway to the rear of the space when three women rushed toward Yulia, one of them with a jagged shank in her hand.

Yulia recoiled and Jet stepped away, remembering her vow to avoid trouble. The woman with the homemade dagger lunged at Yulia, drawing blood and a cry. Jet could see the weapon was one of the wooden spoons sharpened to a lethal spike, and it was immediately evident that her new friend would be no match for the three assailants, all of whom outweighed her.

Jet held up her hands. “Hey. Everybody relax…”

The face of the woman with the shank twisted with rage. “You want to die, bitch? Stay out of this.”

Jet nodded and made to retreat, and then brought a stiffened hand down in a brutal strike against the woman’s forearm. She dropped the spoon with a howl and swung a meaty fist at Jet’s head, which Jet easily avoided before kicking her in the chest. Jet’s effort was rewarded with a snap as several ribs broke, and then the woman’s friends rushed her, swinging and howling like animals. The circled prisoners screamed warnings and encouragement, the fight a welcome diversion from the tedious routine of incarceration.

Jet parried the first blow, allowing it to glance along her shoulder, and met it with a knee to the abdomen. The second woman’s breath escaped with a woof and her eyes bugged out, and then she was falling, Jet’s chop to the back of the neck dropping her like a bag of rocks. The woman with the shank made a feeble grab for Jet and got a kick to the face for her trouble. Blood sprayed from her ruined nose, and then Jet turned to the third prisoner as the gathering whooped and hollered catcalls.

“Well? You want some? Might as well make it a three for one,” Jet said, waiting.

An inmate near the door yelled out, “Take her, bitch.” Several of the rest nodded and whistled.

The third woman’s eyes roved over Jet and then moved to just past Jet’s shoulder in an amateurish bluff, signaling that she was about to try something – a kick, judging by how she’d shifted her weight to her left leg, Jet reasoned.

Jet played along and pretended to turn, and then caught the woman’s leg in midair and flipped her back with all her might, swiveling and pivot-kicking immediately afterward to finish the maneuver. The woman flew backward through the air and smacked against the hard floor with a sickening thud, and Jet recognized the sound of more bones breaking, likely in her right arm, which had absorbed most of the force of the impact.

A cheer went up at the sight of the downed assailants, and Yulia was stepping toward Jet when a shout greeted them from the open cell door and four guards entered, brandishing truncheons.

“Everybody back,” the first one yelled, pointing her club at Jet. “Except you.”

The crowd obeyed as the guards neared Jet. The attackers moaned from the floor and the lead guard’s eyes narrowed as she took Jet’s measure.

“I was defending myself,” Jet said, hands hanging unthreateningly by her side.

“Who else was fighting?” the guard snapped.

Jet’s eyes flitted at Yulia and then back to the guard. “It wasn’t a fight. They came at me from behind. I defended myself from being stabbed with that,” she said, pointing at the shank. “These three lost.”

The guard looked to Yulia suspiciously and back to Jet. “Fighting’s against the rules.”

“I told you. I wasn’t fighting.”

“Why did they attack you?”

“I don’t know. I just got here.”

The guard looked confused. Nobody was talking, and Jet was sure that the code of all prisons, where the guards were the enemies and you didn’t volunteer anything, would hold, at least until pressure was applied. The guard took another look at the three fallen inmates and made her decision.

“Take her to solitary,” the guard ordered, “until we can figure this out.”

Jet was going to protest, but the guards looked like they wanted to use their truncheons, and she didn’t want to give them an excuse.

“Back up and hold out your hands, palms up. Nice and slow,” another guard ordered. Jet complied, and for the second time in one day, steel handcuffs braceleted her wrists. Two of the guards escorted her out of the cell as three more arrived at a run, but Jet wasn’t interested any longer. She’d only been in the prison for a few hours and she’d already attracted attention of the exact kind she’d wanted to avoid, and now would be stuck in solitary – for how long, she didn’t know.

The solitary block turned out to be on the men’s side of the prison. The doors were flat steel plates instead of bars, and the wing reeked of sweat and urine. The female guards watched as two male counterparts pushed Jet into a cell and bolted the door behind her, and then the light in the cell shut off, plunging her into complete darkness. Jet could barely make out their voices through the thick panel.

“Who is she?” a male voice asked.

“New arrival. Fighting. We want to keep her here until we figure out what happened.”

“How long? We’re tight on space.”

“Probably overnight.”

“I’ll call if we need the cell.”

“All right. Back to work for us.”

Footsteps echoed away, and Jet was about to move from the door when she heard more.

“She’s a looker, isn’t she?”

“That she is. Be perfect for our thing.”

“We have to be careful. Find out more about her first. If she’s just here for trial…”

“I’ll ask. But these days all these bitches want to make some money. You know that.”

“I don’t think we say anything till we know more.”

“Got a bunch of customers coming in tomorrow night. Nice to have some new meat to offer. She’d bring top dollar. I might even have a shot at her myself.”

The men laughed and walked off, continuing their discussion out of earshot. Jet’s eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, a small amount of light shining from beneath the door. A hole in the floor on the other end of the cell served as the toilet and drainage, and a single steel bench running the length of one of the lateral walls was seat and bed. Her nose wrinkled at the stink of the place, but she resigned herself to making the best of a bad situation and sat on the edge of the bench, her mind working furiously.

The guards’ discussion alarmed her, but if she had grasped the gist correctly, it might serve as the opportunity she needed. If they were running a prostitution ring using the female inmates, there could be a chance to feign interest and escape.

The problem was that she didn’t know any more than what she’d heard and was guessing. Which she hated, as it was the antithesis of her training. But desperate times demanded drastic measures, and she could hardly imagine anything more dire than being locked in a Russian prison, awaiting a vengeful sibling with enough clout to have her extradited and incarcerated. She was quite sure that was a date she didn’t want to keep, and anything that gave her a chance to break out had to be attempted. The guards might be sloppy, but she knew by the competence of the men who’d snatched her that the brother’s people wouldn’t be.

A muffled moan carried down the hall and Jet blocked it from her thoughts. She needed to find her cherished internal stillness and draw from it, to replenish her reserves before the guards came for her again. She was confident that eventually they’d figure out she had been telling the truth and hadn’t instigated trouble, but for now she was alone and could use the opportunity to her advantage.

She closed her eyes and an image of a crying Hannah flooded her imagination. She swallowed back a knot in her throat the size of a baseball and whispered to the walls, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll figure out a way to get back to you. Be brave. I will. I promise. Whatever it takes.”

In her vision, her daughter nodded understanding and wiped away her tears, snuffling quietly, her clear eyes visions of loveliness so real to Jet that she almost began sobbing herself. They’d had so many months of peace and quiet that it had seemed realistic that they were finally safe.

A dangerous idea for her to ever accept, she now knew. If she got out of this alive, she’d never let down her guard again.

She took a deep breath through her mouth and exhaled through her nose, willing away the disturbing image of her daughter and emptying her mind of everything but her mantra. As her awareness narrowed and dimmed, the rhythm of the repetition a silent pulse, she fell still and, for a little while, at least, was at peace.

Dobra, Romania

Matt pulled off the main road and followed the lane into the forested hills, looking for somewhere to park so he and Hannah could snatch some sleep. They’d been driving for almost six hours. The border crossings in Serbia and Romania had been uneventful, and they’d stopped at a gas station to refill an hour earlier and grabbed some convenience store food, heated courtesy of the station microwave, for their dinner.

Hannah was slumbering beside him in the passenger seat, the long drive and the afternoon without her customary nap having caught up with her. She’d been quiet the entire way, lost in thought as she stared through the window at the passing landscape, now so dark Matt could barely make anything out beyond the glow of his headlights.

He eased off on the gas as he studied the map by the light of the instrument panel. The road he’d turned off on was a faint line leading nowhere, as far as he could see.

Matt slowed further at a fork in the road and debated which way to go. Off to his right he caught the flicker of a campfire and saw a circle of caravans and beaten vehicles in a field. Gypsies, he supposed, who lived off the land and by their wits, ubiquitous in the region, moving from place to place as the mood struck them and weather allowed. Reviled by many cultures, Matt had heard stories in Kosovo demonizing the traveling bands, but this was his first glimpse of them in person.

He rolled past the gathering and saw a few dozen figures sitting around the fire, several with guitars. Not quite as threatening as he’d been led to expect, he decided, and he pushed on until the fire had disappeared in his rearview mirror. The gypsy camp confirmed for him that he’d have no problems camping out by the side of the road, and he scouted for a suitable clearing through the dense brush. Several minutes later, he found what he was looking for and eased the camper from the lane and onto the grass before switching off the engine.

Hannah stirred at the sudden absence of movement and sound and her eyes opened. She looked at him sleepily, and he offered a smile.

“Ready for bed?”

She nodded.

“Come on, then. Our hotel room awaits.”

He climbed from behind the wheel, walked around to her side, and helped her out of the cab. Matt locked the doors with the scarred fob and carried Hannah around to the camper door, pausing before he opened it to gaze up at the stars, so bright at the elevation they looked close enough to reach out and touch.

Once inside the camper, he laid out blankets on the pair of bunks by the dim light of the battery-powered wall lamps. “Want to use the bathroom?” he asked, gesturing at an enclosure that housed the portable toilet.

Hannah made a face. “No.”

“Okay. You take the bottom, I’ll take the top. Deal?”

“Pajamas?”

Matt was stumped. He hadn’t considered a change of clothes when he’d been driving, and he wondered whether Jet had had the foresight to pack the camper cabinets with any. He decided to punt.

“We don’t wear pajamas when we’re camping.”

Hannah frowned, unconvinced. “Oh.”

“But we take our shoes off.”

She sat on the bottom bunk and removed her sandals while Matt tried to suppress a smile. He left her to her chore and moved to the door to lock it. By the time he’d done so and returned, Hannah was in bed with the blanket pulled up to her chin.

“Good night, little angel,” he said, and leaned down to plant a kiss on her forehead.

“Better if Mama here.”

Matt nodded. “Yes. It would be.”

He climbed the three rungs of ladder and slipped onto the bed that extended over the truck’s roof, the double-wide mattress yet another reminder of his sudden aloneness, and yawned, the day’s events having taken their toll. He leaned over the edge of the bed and reached for the lamp. “Sleep well.”

“Okay.”

Matt started awake and almost slammed his head against the camper roof a few feet above him as he instinctively tried to sit up. He listened, unsure of his surroundings for an instant, and then remembered: the camper.

The sound of a scrape from beneath him resonated through the shell.

Someone was trying to break into the truck cab.

In an instant he was out of the bed and slipping his shoes on. He slid open a drawer and removed an aluminum flashlight, and then groped on the floor for the tire iron wedged under Hannah’s bunk, doing his best not to wake her. He failed, the iron bumping the wood frame, and she inhaled sharply. He shushed her.

“Keep quiet. Someone’s outside. I’m going to chase them away,” he murmured, and then turned to the door with the tire iron clutched tightly in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

He slid the bolt open, and then he was outside on the grass with the flashlight beam shining on a pair of youths in their twenties, long haired and unkempt, frozen by the passenger door. One of them held a long screwdriver, and Matt could see in his eyes that he was debating charging Matt with it.