“Are you watching my house?”
“Not me, no. I just arrived.” The warden lit a cigarette and gestured at a second car down the block. “But, I do like to check on things I own.”
“You don’t own me.”
“Don’t I?”
Beckett swallowed his anger, thinking how even the smallest pebble could start an avalanche. “We were friends, goddamn it.”
“No. William Preston was my friend. We were friends for twenty-one years, and now he’s dead, his face so badly beaten his own wife won’t recognize the corpse.”
“What do you want?”
“A prisoner killed one of my guards, one of my closest friends. That doesn’t happen in my world. Understand? It breaks the natural order of things. What do you think I want?”
“I don’t know where Adrian is.”
“But you’ll find him.”
“Let’s get a few things straight.” Beckett turned in his seat, large enough to fill the space, and frustrated enough to be dangerous. “You don’t own me, and threats are only good to a point. You asked me to keep Liz away from Adrian. Fine. I helped you with that because she’s not thinking straight and shouldn’t be near him anyway. You want inside track on where Adrian goes and what he does. That’s fine, too. He’s a killer, so fuck him. But you stay away from my wife. You stay away from my wife and my house. That’s the deal.”
“That was the deal. It’s different, now.”
“Why?”
“Because prisoners don’t kill guards. Not in my world. Not ever.”
It was said so flatly and coldly that Beckett felt an actual chill. “Jesus, you’re going to kill him.”
“I let you have Olivet so you could issue a warrant, a BOLO, an APB. Whatever you needed. Whatever it took. But this is how it plays between the two of us. You find Adrian for me, and your secret stays safe. Otherwise, I’ll rip it all down. Your world. Your wife’s world.”
“She doesn’t need to know about any of this. I’ll handle Adrian.”
“Handle? No.” The warden laughed, and it was bitter. “What do you know about handling a man like Adrian Wall? Nothing. You can’t. So, here’s what’s going to happen. You find out where he is and you call me. You call me first, and no one needs to know about your wife’s sins or the things you’ve done to protect her. She won’t like prison, and you won’t either. I can promise you that.”
Beckett sat silent for a long moment. It was coming apart; he could feel it. “You were supposed to be my friend.”
“I was never your friend,” the warden said. “Now, get the fuck out of my car.”
*
Beckett did as he was told. He stood in the road, hands clenched as the SUV rolled away, and the second one followed. Most times he could pretend his life was his own, that he’d never spilled his guts to a devil dressed as a friend. But he had. He’d been distraught and trusting and overwhelmed with guilt. Now, he was this half man, this slave. He reminded himself there were reasons, then thought of his wife, who was forty-three and gentle and lovely to her bones.
She was in the kitchen when he found her, a ring of blue flame on the stove. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure baby. I’m fine.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“You sure?”
“All is well. I promise.”
She bought the smile and the lie, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Grab the bacon for me?”
“Sure.”
Beckett opened the fridge and saw the beer can on the top shelf. “What is this?”
His wife looked up from the stove. “Oh, that. The warden brought it for you last night. I told him you don’t drink beer, but he said you’d like that one. Isn’t it Australian?”
“Foster’s. Yes.” Beckett put the beer on the counter. It was cold. He was cold.
“It’s a shame, really.”
“What’s that?”
She cracked an egg in the pan, and the edges cooked solid. “You two were so close, once.”
25
He woke early because he could feel it out there. Endings. Exposure. Police were pulling bodies from beneath the church, and they’d find something eventually. A fingerprint. DNA.
The photograph …
Lying in the dark of his bed, he worried most about the people close to him. Would they understand?
Maybe, he thought.
Maybe that was the last piece.
Feeling his way through the house, he went to the bathroom, flicked a switch, and blinked in the sudden light. Whose face was this staring back, whose doubt-filled, aging features? He frowned because life had not always been this way. There’d been youth and promise and purpose.
That was before the break.
The betrayal.
He’d learned since then to hide the emotions that drove him. Smile if expected. Say the right things. But inside him was this raging desolation, and it was not enough to simply live with it. He had to wear so many masks. They slipped on and off with such ease that he forgot at times who he really was.
A good man.