Page 2 of Above ’N’ Beyond

The inmate’s pace quickened, as did Jamie’s pulse. This was it. Had to be.

“Tony,” the guy called out.

Mancuso stopped and turned. The other man caught up to Mancuso, engaging him in conversation Jamie couldn’t hear.

Keeping his eyes on the inmate’s hands, which were still in his pockets, Jamie walked faster, but not too fast. He was twenty feet away and closing in. He’d pick up his pace, but with Mancuso’s crew watching, he couldn’t take the chance of making it look like this was preplanned. It had to appear as if he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Mancuso glowered and took a step back.

The inmate pulled his hands from his pockets. Something shiny glittered in one of his hands—a shank. Probably a fork, or a spoon, or some other piece of metal filed to a sharp point.

“Go fuck yourself.” Mancuso spat on the inmate’s shoes and turned to walk away.

The guy grabbed Mancuso’s arm, jerking him around. He raised his other arm, readying to plunge the shank into Mancuso’s chest.

Jamie was still ten feet away. If he didn’t intervene in time, six months of prison would go down the drain, and Mancuso might very well die in prison. Inadvertently, courtesy of the FBI.

“Hey!” Jamie shouted, sprinting toward them.

The inmate jerked his head around, the shank poised in midair.

Jamie plowed into the man. They hit the ground hard, knocking the breath from Jamie’s lungs. He gasped for air, willing them to refill faster.

The inmate raised his arm, about to plunge the shank into Jamie’s chest. He grabbed the guy’s wrist, holding the shank above him, its pointed tip gleaming in the midday sun.

All around him, people shouted. Feet pounded as guards came running.

Jamie had a good fifty pounds on the inmate, but he was scrappy, slippery with sweat, and Jamie lost his hold on the guy’s wrist. The man’s arm whipped down. Sharp, stinging pain speared into Jamie’s left side.

The inmate was on top of him now, straddling his chest and preparing to stick him again. Jamie slammed his fist upward, directly under the guy’s chin, rocking his head back and disorienting him enough for Jamie to shove him away. On his knees now, he plowed his fist one more time into the inmate’s jaw. The guy fell face down on the grass and didn’t move.

The shank—a sharpened spoon—lay a few inches away, its tip covered in blood. His blood. The FBI’s carefully orchestrated plan had turned into a shit show.

Guards surrounded them, pushing back other inmates who’d gathered around to witness the latest prison fight. Pain spiked Jamie’s side, and with every breath he took, radiated down to his hip and up to his chest. Through the pain-filled haze now clouding his vision, he saw a twenty change hands. The fight had lasted only seconds. That hadn’t stopped the other inmates from placing bets. Guards made quick work of collecting the bloody shank and cuffing the other inmate.

Breathing hard and not wanting to give the guards a reason to hit him with one of their batons, Jamie remained where he was, on his knees, holding his hand to his bleeding side. Every breath he took brought with it more stabbing, burning pain, as if someone had jammed a hot poker into his flesh. Christ, he was only thirty-four, but he was too damned old for this.

“Santoro, can you walk?” one of the guards asked over the squawk of radios.

“Yeah,” he answered, regardless of whether that was true. His once white T-shirt was soaked with blood and, with every shift of his body, the red stain spread outward from the penetrating wound.

“C’mon, boys,” a voice—not belonging to one of the guards—ordered. “Let’s get him up.”

Mancuso and Paulie Nuts helped Jamie to his feet. The second he was upright, an even sharper twinge jabbed at his gut. He hissed in a breath. Getting stuck like a pig hadn’t been part of the plan.

“Step back,” a guard shouted. “We’ve got him.”

With their arms looped around Jamie’s back, they walked him inside the prison and up to the medical unit.

…

Three hours later, Jamie limped into the mess hall and lined up to eat another bowl of slop that tasted like cardboard and Elmer’s Glue and looked suspiciously like dog vomit. Yet another aspect of the prison system’s master plan. If the food sucked that badly maybe ex-cons would work harder at going straight.

The prison doc had cleaned and stitched up his wound, then given him antibiotics and a tetanus shot. The superintendent, Sean Capra, had stuck his head in the medical unit long enough to discreetly inform him the inmate who’d shanked him had been sent down to “the box,” a small locked cell where he’d spend twenty-three hours a day for at least the next week. Standard punishment for getting caught with a shank or a razor. Capra had also notified Special Agent Jenkins of what had gone down in the yard.

Jamie got his food and headed to his assigned table. Footsteps sounded closely behind him. Too close. He gripped the tray tighter, preparing to ram it in the neck of whoever was creeping up on his six.

“Relax, kid,” a gruff voice said.