Trailing the line of people, we reach a door that leads into a small room containing a few plastic chairs and a rectangular coffee table.
Running my hand through my hair, I take stock of the other visitors and suddenly wish I hadn’t.
Most of them have removed their visors and are swiping at red-rimmed eyes, tears streaming down their faces. There’s a woman rocking in the chair in the corner, pressing her hands so hard against her eyes that I fear she’ll push them into her brain. A middle-aged guy is standing there, squeezing his eyes tightly closed and clawing at his throat. It’s like the aftermath of an apocalypse.
I tug on the sleeve of the nearest guard, who eyes me suspiciously. “Hey, I don’t need to see a medic. I’m fine.”
He just continues to stare at me.
“Look at me,” I demand. “I don’t look like any of these people. I’m fine, honestly. I just want to leave and get some fresh air.”
Glancing at the rest of the people, he turns and, with a nod, ushers me out of the room. Taking me back through the maze of corridors, he leads me to the entrance.
“What happened in there?” I ask, almost running to keep up with his large strides.
“Not sure yet,” he answers without slowing his pace.
“Was it a disagreement between family members?” The journalist in me hasn’t been quelled by the tear gas.
“God, no.” The guard tuts. “That, we would have been able to deal with. No, this was an organised job.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean that someone from the outside wanted a message sent and used a visitor to send it.”
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head.
“The inmate who was attacked will have a list of enemies as long as your arm. These guys usually do, or they wouldn’t be in here. And it doesn’t take much to get someone to send them a message from the outside, just like you saw today,” the guard explains.
“How do you know that?”
“Because the guy who attacked the prisoner wasn’t your average Joe Bloggs throwing a punch in a bar. This guy knew where to strike.” Pausing to open a door using a fob, the guard glances at me, eyes wide. “He broke Luchesi’s fucking neck,” he tells me, and for a second, he isn’t a prison guard anymore. He’s just a guy who came to work today to earn his living to pay his bills and put food on his table and ended up witnessing a vicious attack.
“Is Luchesi alive?” I ask, assuming he must be the prisoner who was attacked.
Rubbing day-old stubble, the guard blinks. “Not sure, but if he is, he might never fucking walk again.”
“Why did Luchesi agree to see that man if he knew he was going to attack him?”
“He didn’t know, and the guy will have been sent by someone and probably registered by a different name. There are ways of getting in. Trust me. If someone wants to send a message to someone in here, no amount of policies, rules, and procedures will stop that message from being sent.”
A sinking feeling glugs in my stomach, the note I received weeks ago coming into my mind’s eye.
Someone wants Valdemar Montresor dead.
Someone knows I’ve been visiting him.
Someone has asked me to kill him.
But who?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
On my returnfrom the prison, I head straight home, not trusting the streets of Amontillado not to have their eyes on me. The fight has left me shaken and angry, and I hate to admit how vulnerable I feel without Valdemar’s protective wings around me.
My mother is waiting at the table in the kitchen as I drop into the chair, and I tell her everything that happened, pulling the note out of the drawer I’d stashed it in and slamming it down.
I fire question after question at her. Who knows I’m visiting Valdemar? Why do they want him dead? Are they hoping I’ll do their dirty work for them? How do they even know who I am? Am I being watched? Do they want me to kill him while I’m visiting him like what nearly happened to Luchesi today? I’m no fighter and certainly no trained killer, so what the hell do they want me to do? How do they expect me to smuggle a weapon into a prison when I’m searched before every visit? Valdemar said he has enemies, and the guard confirmed that all those men in there do, but how do they know I’ve been visiting him, and more importantly, what will they do if he continues to live?
