Luke spit out a mouthful of grass and dirt. “I’m not going back to jail. I didn’t do it.”
“Sure, sure,” the officer said, driving him forward.
It was hard to keep his balance with his hands manacled behind his back, and the cops had no mercy, shoving him harshly forward until he fell on his face and couldn’t even break his fall. Rough hands hauled him upright, but he hit the dirt three more times on his way to the jail.
Then the grim, granite-stoned building loomed straight ahead. Running had been stupid, but panic had gotten the better of him. He still had to think of a way to get out of this. For once he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was completely innocent. He hadn’t spied on Congress.
But Marianne had.
The documents she photographed had been commissioned by her father’s congressional committee, but Luke had been the one to hand them over to Dr. Wiley. Clyde was going to find a way to pin this on him, and it was going to be hard to wiggle off the hook.
“We’ve got a runner,” the cop said as he dragged Luke in the door and shoved him toward a counter.
The clerk at the desk didn’t even bother to look up. “Put him in solitary, then.”
This couldn’t be happening. Not again. But the clang of the locks sounded hideously familiar, and then Luke was propelled down a dank brick corridor. The edges of his vision began to blur, and prisoners behind bars laughed and jeered as he passed. Then through another set of locked doors to a cell with no bars, only walls.
“You’ll be in here for a while,” the guard said, nudging Luke inside.
The four walls were concrete block, and the only furniture was a board chained to the wall. He closed his eyes as fear engulfed him. Then came the closing of the door and the clanging of the lock.
He couldn’t breathe. It took all his effort to will his lungs to function.
Perspiration rolled down his face, but he’d survived this before. Prison was nothing new to him. When he was in Cuba, he had biblical passages engraved on his soul. He stumbled toward the cot and sat, bowing his head in prayer. He knew all the passages of comfort, and he said them over and over.
It wasn’t working. Wasn’t God supposed to answer?
But there was no answer. Only taunting laughter echoing down the hallways, the smell, and the suffocating sense of doom.
Gray arrived two hours later. The warden wasn’t taking any chances with Luke, and he was clamped into leg-irons and handcuffs before being led to a small meeting room. It had a wooden table, two chairs, and painted concrete block walls.
Gray was pacing in the confined space when the warden led Luke into the room. At least the guard had fastened his handcuffs in the front so he could offer Gray one of his hands to shake.
Gray squeezed his hand but maintained a grim silence until the warden left the room and closed the door. Luke flinched at the sound of the lock clicking into place.
“Spying on Congress?” Gray asked, his voice dripping with angry disbelief.
Luke lowered himself into a chair. “I didn’t do it. I’m completely innocent.”
“Then what convinced a judge to sign a warrant for your arrest?”
“I’mmostlyinnocent,” Luke amended.
Gray’s face turned to stone as he took the seat on the opposite side of the table. “Explain yourself.”
“I can’t provide any more details than that.”
Gray stood and kicked his chair, sending it skittering across the room and banging into a wall. “Don’t pull that with me,” he demanded. “How did this happen?”
In the past two hours, Luke had plenty of time to piece it together. Marianne had taken photographs of studies paid for by the Committee on Manufactures. That was almost a month ago. Marianne knew he intended to pass them along to Dr. Wiley, but Luke also pounced on the chance to write an anonymous articleabout them forModern Century. Clyde knew Luke wrote forModern Centuryand assumed he had stolen the documents. Anyone would.
Luke hadn’t spied on Congress. It was Marianne who ferreted out the studies and turned them over. Luke was merely the journalist who sounded the alarm, but he couldn’t clear himself without condemning Marianne, and that would never happen. He didn’t think Clyde would expose Marianne to the justice system, but Clyde might not have a choice. Now that the police and a judge were involved, if the finger of blame pointed at someone else, Clyde might have lost his ability to walk it back.
Even if Clyde could spare Marianne, he would never forgive his daughter for playing a role in this. She would be cut out of the family just like poor, doomed Aunt Stella. That meant there was a limit on how much Luke could disclose.
He focused on the peeling paint in the corner of the room while figuring out how to parse his words. “I think it has something to do with an article I wrote forModern Century,” he admitted. “Clyde serves on a congressional committee that ordered five studies on chemical additives. They released two that show the chemicals in a good light and buried the others. The article I wrote appeared last week.”
“How did you get your hands on the studies?” Gray demanded.
