Page 81 of Hard Heart

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with it.” She marched back inside, examined the widget carefully, and then used a nail file to pry out the battery. It pinged across the room and hit the wall. “There, problem solved.”

“Uh, wasn’t that evidence?”

“It still is evidence. But now it’s evidence that isn’t transmitting who knows what to who knows who.”

“And whoever put it there knows we’re onto them.”

“You think they aren’t already aware? They bugged my damn suitcase. But now there’s a chance they’ll think we’ve found out more than we actually have.”

“This is like some twisted game of cat and mouse.”

Raelene nodded and took a sip of her tepid drink.

“Then we just have to make sure we’re the cat.”

CHAPTER 24

LEVI

Motherfucker.

Levi’s side hurt like a bitch. His neck too. The lights were unusually bright, but when he tried rolling over to escape the glare, he realised his wrists were secured. And what was that damn beeping? He gritted his teeth and forced open gummy eyelids, taking in the monitors, the paper gown, and the CO sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed, tapping away at his phone. They’d sent Jim. Hell, Jim had probably volunteered. He liked an easy life.

“What happened?” Levi croaked, although he remembered bits and pieces, a grisly tableau of flashbacks that jumped like a movie on fast-forward.

Waiting in line for lunch.

Those El Camino kids cutting in.

One of them turning, a shiv in his hand.

Burning pain in his gut, again, again, again.

Your girlfriend is sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.

Another slash, blood spraying.

The floor coming up to meet him.

Diesel yelling, kneeling beside him.

More pain.

More yelling.

Darkness.

“Somebody didn’t like you much,” Jim said. “Those new guys with the face tattoos.”

“I barely even spoke with them.” Levi tried stretching his legs, then winced as a lightning bolt lanced through his stomach. “Ah, fuck.”

“You need more painkillers? They’ve been rationing those.”

Because they didn’t like giving cons drugs, even when meds were very necessary. Gingerly, Levi raised a hand to his neck and felt a dressing stretched across his throat.

“How many times did they get me?”

Jim reached for the “call” button and pressed it. “Five or six. Diesel was holding your guts in, and then all hell broke loose. They had to lock the place down to get you out.”