“I am with the Freedom Project,” she said.

“Of course,” Mallard said. “He’s an unstable man, though, Ms. Jordan. I have to say that.”

“He doesn’t look that way to me,” she said.

Mallard almost frowned.

“I know looks can be deceiving,” she said. “And I know you have a job to do.”

“Four-hundred and sixty-three of the most vicious men in the state,” Mallard said.

“And not an escape since the new wall went up almost a hundred years ago, I’m told,” Casey said.

“Well, just one, actually,” Mallard said.

“And a blood test?” Casey said. “Do you have someone who could do that?”

“We have our own infirmary,” Mallard said.

“I would be glad to sign anything you need from our end,” she said, giving him her best smile. It was a dynamite smile and she reserved it for such occasions.

Mallard sat up straight. His cheeks flushed, somehow increasing the brilliance of the shine atop his head, and he said, “I can handle it.”

Mallard picked up his phone and with an important-sounding voice asked to speak with the captain of the guards. He told the man to retrieve Dwayne Hubbard and bring him to the infirmary right away.

“That fast?” Casey said.

“Would you like to speak with him there?” Mallard asked. “Explain things to him? We’ll need his permission and Dwayne has somewhat of a reputation.”

“He looks like a math teacher,” Casey said.

“Right,” Mallard said, nodding in agreement, “I meant more as a slick talker. He’ll argue with you about the color of the sky if you let him.”

“I wondered before about him being chained up when we first met,” Casey said. “The guard said something about his file.”

Mallard shrugged. “We like to do things by the book. He’s been here quite some time. Someone back in the day may have checked the wrong box. That happens. Better safe than sorry, though.”

Casey followed the assistant warden through a maze of hallways with mint green walls and dull gray floor tiles cracked and waffled at the corners. They descended a stairway, footsteps echoing through the empty space, before a guard let them through a barred doorway that clanked shut behind them. Beds bolted to the floor lined the walls of the infirmary. The crisp white sheets would have looked ordinary but for the manacles hanging from the four corners of each bed. The room’s only occupant lay in the far corner, his face wrapped like a mummy’s in white gauze.

Mallard nodded toward the man and said, “The other guy stuck a hose down the gas tank of a food service truck, sucked out a mouthful, and pulled a circus act on our friend down here.”

“Fire-eater?”

“Spit it out at him over a cigarette,” Mallard said. “Doesn’t need his face, really. He’s a lifer.”

A bulky nurse entered, checked the burned man’s pulse, and waddled toward them.

Through a doorway on the far side of the infirmary, Casey heard the clash of bars rolling open and Dwayne appeared in shackles, followed by a guard. Casey held Dwayne’s indifferent stare as she explained why she was there and what she needed from him. While his expression never changed, her voice rose with enthusiasm.

“Robert Graham, whom you met with me last time,” she said, “is working on pulling some strings to get this lab work moved to the top of the pile. Dwayne, we could have you out of here in a matter of days.”

The nurse reappeared with a test tube, needle, and a rubber strap.

But instead of holding out his arm, Dwayne Hubbard shook his head hard enough to jangle his chains.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You don’t get my blood.”

25

CASEY’S MOUTH DROPPED open. She blinked and said, “Dwayne, we need this to get you out of here. You get that, right?”

“The machine has worked against me since the day I was born,” Hubbard said, his eyes glittering at her. “Now you’re here to tell me it’s different? You think I’m like the rest of these cattle? I have an imagination. It runs wild with the possibilities for what you could do with my blood, other unfinished business to be tagged on me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Casey said.

“Because you’re here to help me?” he said, holding her in his gaze. “That’s what my original lawyer said, too. That’s what they said with my appeals. All of a sudden, some media lawyer shows up with her billionaire boyfriend? When it seems like it’s too good to be true, it’s because it is.”

“Jesus,” Casey said.

Dwayne turned to go, but with a nod from Mallard his guard stepped in front of him and blocked his path, raising his baton.

“Wait,” Casey said, appealing to Mallard as she stepped toward Dwayne. “Even if you’re right-let’s say it’s someone’s game-why wouldn’t you let me try? If I can show your DNA isn’t a match to whoever raped that girl, you go free. If there’s a game, you’re still here, but you’re here anyway.”

Dwayne grinned at her. “Lady, you want something from me. I might be locked away, but I know an opportunity when I see one. You want what I got? Okay. Maybe. What do I get?”

“You get out of here,” Casey said, her smile crooked with disbelief.

Dwayne’s smile faded. “I want something in case I don’t.”

Casey studied his face.

“You killed her, didn’t you?” she asked, the words spilling from her mouth without thought.

Dwayne’s face lost all expression. “I told you I didn’t.”

Mallard cleared his throat and in an undertone said, “You don’t have to listen to this, Ms. Jordan. I can get whatever you need.”

“Sure he can,” Dwayne said, nodding intelligently. “He can have them beat me to death if he wants, or beat me until you’ve got all the blood you want. Is that what you want? Some lawyer. Thanks for your help. Shit, I bet you sleep real well at night.”

“What do you want?” Casey asked Dwayne, ignoring Mallard.

Dwayne’s shoulders relaxed. A smiled curled the corners of his mouth. “Love.”

Dwayne gave Mallard a knowing look.

“What does that mean, Dwayne?” Casey asked, impatient and annoyed.

“He knows,” Dwayne said, angling his chin at the assistant warden.

Mallard pursed his lips, and to Casey he said, “He wants a wedding.”

“What wedding?” she asked.

“Dwayne has a pending application for marriage.”

“Pending for about five goddamn years,” Dwayne said, the anger flaring in his eyes.

“Why?” Casey asked.

“Married prisoners get conjugal visits,” Mallard said, pushing the glasses up higher on his nose, his cheeks flushing.

“And you found someone on the Internet,” Casey said, turning to Dwayne.

“There’s someone for everyone, Ms. Jordan,” Dwayne said.

26

BALLOONS RESTAURANT sat just around the corner in a cramped row of houses on Wall Street facing the forty-foot-high concrete barrier that no convict had ever gotten over. The single escape in the history of the wall had been a murderer who found an old overflow pipe in the bowels of the prison’s ancient underground maze, and he’d gone under it. The restaurant looked like its neighbors except the front room had been blown open into one big space with a well-worn wooden bar and two large picture windows facing the wall. Graham waited for Casey at one of the tables crowded into the paneled back room. When he looked up and saw her, he said something she couldn’t hear into his cell phone before snapping it shut and standing to pull out a chair for her.

“I’m impressed,” he said, sitting back down on the other side of the small round table and signaling a waitress.

“You’re the one who fast-tracked the DNA analysis,” she said, removing her napkin from the paper place mat, a map of the red, white, and green boot of Italy. She flipped open the napkin and placed it in her lap.

“Anyone can load up a congressman with campaign contributions and push the red button,” Graham said. “By the way, Marty’s held up at the office.”