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  The three of them stumbled into the middle of the lane. Tires screeched and a taxi skidded to a stop just short of them. The man turned his head back. His mouth hung with a crooked slackness. He looked at Garrett as if it was the first time he’d noticed he was there.

  “Let her go!”

  There was no reaction to his words, as far as Garrett could tell; no indication the man had even heard him. Taking a hold of both her arms, Garrett leaned all his weight back and churned with his legs, ignoring the increasingly painful throb in his right hand, but the man’s grip remained fast and he didn’t seem to budge. Garrett felt the woman’s hands lock on his wrists and his gaze jumped to her eyes. Her head was tilted back, a fistful of her hair still in the man’s hands. Her eyes were wide but otherwise composed as her body strained against her attacker, her feet kicking back against his legs whenever she could find the footing. And she was able to maintain eye contact. That was good, Garrett thought. Not panicking. Not yet, at least.

  “I said, let her go!”

  Garrett thought this time he may have gotten through. He sensed a subtle difference in the man’s stance, felt the woman’s body shift. He took a step forward and saw the man’s arm slide out from around her waist. He took a breath, slowly adjusting his grip. It was a move in the right direction, at least. Garrett started to pull her closer, staring the man down, willing him to let go of her hair.

  But instead the man yanked her head back and thrust his hand at Garrett’s face. Garrett gagged as fingers penetrated his mouth, jamming his tongue back into his throat and curling over his teeth. A thumb pressed up from beneath his jaw, digging into his flesh, making it impossible to breath. The man’s hand squeezed and Garrett let go of the woman, instinctively taking hold of the man’s arm, leaning back, like he was winding a gigantic horn.

  There was a rotten, sour taste in his mouth, bitter and foul, and a putrid odor filled his nostrils as he struggled to take a breath. It took him a second to think of biting down. He clamped his mouth shut with all the force he could muster, clenching his jaws. Something sticky and gelatinous oozed over his gums and beneath his tongue as he felt the hard resistance of bone. His teeth sank deep, but the man’s grip didn’t change. Garrett tried to bite down again, even harder this time, but couldn’t.

  He realized his eyes were closed. He opened them and began frantically to punch at the man’s arm, hoping to weaken his grip. He slammed his palm against the man’s elbow, brought a hammer strike down on his bicep, dug his fingernails into the nerve clusters near the end of his forearm. All it seemed to accomplish was to set his injured hand on fire, the hot pain shooting through his arm while homeless guy didn’t so much as flinch. The woman was doing similar things, swinging her elbows, stomping back against the man’s shin, her eyes on Garrett the whole time. No reaction from the guy, no visible response. Nothing. A second passed, and Garrett found he was able to take tiny breaths through his nose if he inclined his head and relaxed his throat. His immediate fear receded enough for him to think about the possible ways this might play out, whether he might somehow avoid being killed or seriously injured. He heard a siren approaching and hoped the police didn’t bother leaning over the hood of the cruiser with a bullhorn and just went ahead and tackled the guy with their nightsticks swinging. He also hoped this woman appreciated what he went through to help her, hoped that she would remember more than simply how pathetic his rescue attempt had been.

  As the siren grew louder those thoughts were replaced with a sudden feeling of dread. He shot his gaze over to the woman, then back to the man, and realized he knew exactly what was coming. He wasn’t sure how, but he did. He knew the woman did, too, and he briefly wondered whether it was something in her eyes that told him. He did not have time to follow the path of that thought very long before the man flung himself into the next lane, pulling Garrett and the woman with him, the three of them ending up dead center to the oncoming ambulance with the deafening siren that obliterated Garrett’s thoughts almost as thoroughly as did the shards of bone shattering through his brain, the driver caught so off guard he didn’t even take his foot off the gas until after the vehicle had cleared the bodies, the oversized van thumping over them as skulls and limbs bounced off the pavement and ricocheted against its undercarriage.

  Garrett’s last thought, the one violently ripped apart, was that it certainly hadn’t been anything in the man’s eyes that gave it away. There’d been nothing there to see.

  CHAPTER 1

  JAKE HATCHER KNEW HE WOULD SPEND THE REST OF HIS life right where he was, or somewhere just like it, if he rolled off his bunk, applied a rear choke hold, and snapped his cellmate’s neck. But he wouldn’t have to listen to the man’s babbling anymore, so at the moment it didn’t seem all that unfair a trade. He wondered what it took to wear out a set of vocal cords. Less than his sanity could stand, he was sure of that.

  “And them Chinese, those are some strange fuckers, let me tell you. You know?”

  Hatcher held a breath in his chest, felt the pressure grow, blew it out toward the ceiling a few feet above him. He had serious doubts as to whether Tyler Culp had ever shut up for one goddamn minute his entire life.

  “You want to know what I read about ’em? Wanna hear something strange?”

  Sleep tugged and teased, drawing his heavy lids closed. He saw Tyler emerging from the womb, pictured the swollen head of a redneck on a baby’s body, a flow of annoying goo-goos and ga-gas tumbling incessantly out of his mouth. The last half hour had been a stream-of-consciousness diatribe that started with Tyler recalling all the Korean “free corn” he’d seen, how he’d learned it popped up everywhere over there because farmers ate a lot of corn and shit in the rice fields. That annoying, forceful whisper of his scratched relentlessly at Hatcher’s ears as he’d gone on to explain in a variety of ways, illustrated by a variety of anecdotes, how he never, ever ate Korean vegetables after that. Would not eat them when in Seoul, would not eat them in a bowl. Wouldn’t eat the vegetables over there, or the tomatoes, which he pointed out was a fruit. Or pussy. Especially not the pussy. Figured any culture where shitting on crops was okay, you couldn’t trust the feminine hygiene. Japanese, that was different. He compared that to good sushi.

  A monologue would have been bad enough, but Tyler didn’t seem to think of it that way. He expected his audience to pay attention, to listen. Listen and acknowledge. Constantly.

  “I said, do you want to hear something strange?”

  Hatcher tensed the muscles in his jaw, felt something pop near his ear. “It’s what I live for.”

  “I read about these guys got arrested over there for killing these women, prostitutes mostly, but some poor village slopes, too. Gave the parents some yuan, or whatever the fuck they use over there, and ended up snuffing ’em. You know why?”

  Tyler’s neck was pretty thick, Hatcher thought. It might take a lot of effort. “Can’t say I do.”

  “To sell their bodies to marry dead guys. Ghost brides, they call ’ em. You ever heard of such a thing? I mean, ain’t that the damnedest thing you ever heard?”

  Hardly, Hatcher thought. He’d heard worse. Way worse. Heard worse, seen worse. In the eyes of some, probably done worse.

  “Sure is.”

  “These families would, like, buy them, so they could bury them with their sons. So they’d have a wife. In the afterlife.”

  He’d said it like it was three words. Af. Ter. Life. Hatcher smiled at that, in spite of himself. That’s exactly what kept him in check, and the thing that kept this ass-hat from puking blood and looking for his ribs. The hope of an afterlife. Fifty-eight days, and counting.

  “That’s why they called ’em ‘ghost brides.’ Get it?”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  It was no accident he’d been celled with Tyler; that much he knew. He had less than two months to go, and Gillis wanted him to fuck up. Wanted it badly. Tyler had showed up eight days ago, six foot three and about 285, with a short fuse and thin skin.
Fifty-eight days. Hatcher knew he had to put up with him, had to find a way. The alternative was exactly what Gillis had in mind.

  “How do you think those people came up with that shit? I mean, who’s the first one who plants his kid and says, ‘Hey, we gotta find some gal to bury with him, so he’ll have a wife over there’?”

  The sun was coming up. Hatcher could see the light seeping in from the corridor through the bars, bathing everything it touched in a blue gray glow. They’d be forming for PT soon, then showering before the breakfast formation and work detail. Formations were good. A few minutes of standing in silence where he could sneak some shut-eye. A minute or two of it in the shower, another couple at breakfast. Sleep was a weapon. He was good with weapons.

  He heard the first stirrings of the jailhouse, the faint clanging of metal, the creaking of heavy hinges. Since the run-in with Captain Gillis, Hatcher’s days had been designed to make him crack. He appreciated the irony of it, of being on the receiving end of sleep deprivation. Probably Gillis’s idea of a joke, or would be, if the guy actually knew. Gillis was big on jokes, had lots of them, none of them funny. Thanks to Gillis, Tyler shadowed him everywhere except for his afternoon motivational training, his daily penance for the run-in that started this whole thing. He assumed that’s when Gillis allowed the moron to catch up on his own sleep, because at night Tyler seemed to need an hour or two at the most. The rest of the time he talked. And talked. And kept talking. Tyler was beefy, thickly slabbed through the chest and in the arms. Not a chiseled, health-club body, but not just a mass of fat, either. It was the kind of size that would make the guy carrying it think he could take anyone. Make him think he could talk wherever, to whomever, and for however long he wanted.

  Hatcher felt a thump through the thin, flimsy mattress. It was a hard enough poke to make him suck in a breath. “Are you listening? I said, who’s the first one who plants his kid and looks for some gal to bury with him?”

  Fifty-eight days. Shutting him up meant hurting him, hurting him meant additional time. There was no way around it. Hatcher wiped a hand down his face, squeezing his eyes closed and inhaling deeply. He caught a whiff of something pungent in the air, realized it was the asshole’s breath.

  “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “I think it just goes to show you how scared everyone is. Scared of that big dirt nap. So they start acting like it’s not the end, hoping they can believe, believing they can make it not the end. You know?”

  “Yeah,” Hatcher said. “I know.”

  “It’s like all these people who assume there’s a Heaven, but they don’t believe in Hell. I mean, what’s up with that? You know? Hey!” A couple more thumps into Hatcher’s ribs. “You there? Hello, I’m talking to you.”

  Hatcher had decided early on that Tyler was just a useful idiot, a pugnacious talker put there to bait him. Guys like Gillis didn’t have the balls to actually cut a deal, and certainly didn’t have enough sack to sanction the infliction of grievous bodily harm by one prisoner on another. At least, Hatcher didn’t think Gillis had the balls. His type would be too scared the guy would talk, too worried about an inquiry if someone got hurt. No, Gillis would have just dropped clues about what he wanted, mentioned in passing how he would be happy if Hatcher didn’t get much sleep. Hinted he’d like some trouble to come Hatcher’s way without actually suggesting it, and never at the same time he discussed Tyler’s upcoming prisoner review board. He probably figured Tyler would catch on, and the rest would take care of itself. Plausible deniability. If Hatcher got curb-stomped, great, but what Gillis really wanted was for Hatcher to buy himself another few years. Showed what a cocksucker Gillis was. All Hatcher had done was dislocate the fucker’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m just saying, you can’t have one without the other. Like when people say, ‘Oh, he’s in Heaven now, sweetie.’ How the hell do they know? Does anyone say, ‘Oh, so and so’s died and gone to Hell?’ Do they?”

  They sure do, Hatcher thought. Sometimes. “Guess not.”

  “So, who’s going to Hell, right? I mean, somebody’s got to be. What d’ya think?”

  The recording of morning reveille crackled through the facility speaker system. Hatcher swung his bare legs over the side of the bunk. He felt cool in his T-shirt and boxers, but not cold. It was going to be a mild day, and he hoped they’d be on golf course duty, same as last Tuesday. Gillis always assigned the two of them to the same detail, and mowing the golf course meant separate mowers and loud engines. He could sneak some sleep behind a mower as he enjoyed its innocuous drone and not have to listen to Tyler’s incessant prattle. With any luck, the dickhead hadn’t realized that.

  “You gonna answer me, or what?”

  Hatcher pushed himself off, felt his feet slap against the concrete floor. “Somebody’s in Hell. No doubt about that.”

  “You making fun of me?”

  Tyler was being particularly belligerent this morning. The more Hatcher thought about it, the more it seemed Tyler had been escalating things for days. He wondered if Gillis had been applying more pressure, dangling something special in front of this lunk to make sure he was properly motivated.

  “No,” Hatcher said. “None of this has been fun.”

  Tyler stood, using his three-plus inches of extra height to look down at Hatcher as he pressed in close. “I think you’re making fun of me.”

  So, this was it then. Either Gillis finally decided to force the issue, or Tyler Culp decided he needed the brownie points right away, that he couldn’t wait any longer. Review boards meet on Wednesday. Hatcher was willing to bet Tyler’s just got moved up to tomorrow.

  As Hatcher saw it, the problem was his cellmate’s size. Joint locks or nerve strikes were risky with a guy that big. A choke could work, but the cell was small and getting behind him would be tricky. And also risky. Hatcher didn’t want to be hanging over him, arm constricting his neck, waiting for the lack of blood flow to knock him out while Tyler tried to buck him off. Big guy like that would spin and thrash, slamming him against the bunk or the bars or the wall. No, to subdue him, he was going to have to injure him. And he knew that was what Gillis was counting on. Whether Tyler realized it or not.

  On the other hand, he could always just take a beating, possibly a serious one. The problem with that was there were no guarantees the story wouldn’t still be that he was at fault, his own injuries evidence of the fight, giving Gillis the ammunition he needed to get one of the JAGs to prosecute. If he was going to do time for it anyway, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be this jerk-off’s pinata. He stood there as Tyler’s blunt gaze hung over him, the man’s hot, rank breaths invading his nostrils, and decided to stop kidding himself. He was rationalizing, big time. No JAG in his right mind would prosecute a guy for getting his ass kicked, and no panel of officers would ever convict. But there was just no way he was going to let it happen. Turning the other cheek wasn’t in his nature, which was why he was in this situation to begin with. If anyone was going to get the shit kicked out of him, it was Tyler. But that would be giving Gillis exactly what he wanted.

  Of course, another option was to kill the man, make it look like an accident. Have him crack his skull off the side of the bunk. Wouldn’t fool Gillis, but that wouldn’t matter because he wouldn’t have any witness to coach. He wouldn’t have any witness at all. And given that kind of situation, he’d probably want to distance himself from the whole ordeal as much as possible. From a purely practical standpoint, Hatcher knew that was the option that afforded him the most control over things. But he really didn’t want to send the guy packing for oblivion, as much as he had entertained himself with that very thought over the past few days.

  Tyler poked a stiff finger into Hatcher’s pec. “I don’t like being made fun of.”

  Hatcher glanced down at his chest and watched the hand hovering in front of it, thinking, sometimes you got to play the cards you’re dealt.

  “Don’t do that again,” Hatcher
said.

  “What? This?”

  Tyler stabbed his finger into Hatcher once more, harder this time. Hatcher grabbed hold before Tyler could pull it away, wedging his palm up against it, wrapping his thumb and forefingers around it. The man’s hand was large and sweaty, digits like greasy pistons.

  For a big ugly, Hatcher realized that Tyler was fairly quick. He felt the man shift his weight, saw him coming over the top with a left. But Hatcher had already set his grip and started to curl his wrist forward and down, bending the man’s finger back. Tyler’s punch dropped like a dead bird and he fell to one knee, letting out a surprised noise somewhere between a dog’s yelp and a moan.

  It wasn’t something he had planned on, but it occurred to Hatcher that breaking a finger wasn’t a bad idea. Clean and inconspicuous. Painful, but not disfiguring. It would swell and bruise, but not leave any real marks. In an inquiry, it would smack of defense, not offense. And most important, it probably lacked any sex appeal to a JAG. Courts-martial were boring enough when a real crime was involved. Gillis would look like a moron pressing the issue beyond the walls of the facility. Or more of a moron, at least.

  And Hatcher also knew if he didn’t end the class with a bang, this guy just wouldn’t learn the right lesson.

  “I’m afraid this is going to hurt,” he said.

  The deep buzzing of the door to the corridor penetrated the cell block, causing Hatcher to stop and listen. Steel bars sliding. Multiple footfalls on the concrete. This was unusual. Procedure was for the cell doors to unlock and for the prisoners to form on the red line five minutes after reveille. Something was up and something being up was rarely good.

  Gillis and two military police guards stopped in front of the cell. One of the guards was carrying a clutch of silver chains with cuffs. Hatcher waited a few seconds before letting go of Tyler’s finger, making sure Gillis was able to grasp what had taken place. Tyler shook his hand out and seized it with his other, rolling back onto the lower bunk and muttering curses. Gillis glared at Hatcher, then gestured back down the hall toward the closed-circuit camera. A mechanical sound echoed around them, followed by the clunk of the cell’s lock disengaging.