Marionette: Pulling Strings by Quinn Cameron

Author:Quinn Cameron [Cameron, Quinn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

17

Payback’s a Bitch

I remembered enough of high school to find the prison cafeteria an accurate representation. Cooks slung gruel behind sneeze guards while inmates shuffled by with melamine trays in hand. People chattered. The pair of women behind me were tongue-deep in each other’s mouths, which would have been a turn-on if I wasn’t sick to death of this whole, damned place.

Six days left.

Don’t worry.

Grimm, via my brother, had made his terms clear. If I wanted out of prison before judgment day, I needed to bring the self-professed saboteur, Ripley Vaughn, with me. Maybe he wasn’t taking my place in the gang, after all. Maybe the welcome back was a sham, and one revenge plot begat another.

Rescue from Thorngate was rapidly becoming a distant hope, so I’d moved on to plotting escape instead. The biggest hurdle became the need for allies, of which I had none. Unless you counted Clyde. And I couldn’t dig through the wall of my cell without the big guy giving me the go-ahead, and cutting through the chain link fence around the yard required a distraction.

Suffice it to say, I was still in the brainstorming phase, and I was about sick of that, too.

The would-be lunch lady wore a hairnet over his full beard. He grunted a wordless offer while holding a ladle of yellow goop above a tray.

I scanned the steaming chafing bowls and found the meal options continuing a downward trend. Dinner tonight consisted of barbecue hot dogs and mac and cheese. Judging by the breadcrumbs in a large dish at the end of the line, they’d already run out of rolls.

“Sure,” I told the cook and shrugged.

My tray slid down the line, getting a scoop of sliced hot dogs and some browning apple slices before being thrust at me. Drink choices were cartons of white milk and cups of iceless water. I grabbed a cup and took it like a shot, then turned toward the room with a sigh.

Everything was beige, from the walls to the floors to our one-piece uniforms. The people were only marginally more interesting. Routine had made everything dull, and I’d grown weary of the bruisers arm-wrestling for cigarettes or extra snacks while the small-time crooks clustered around hedging bets.

Guards lurked near the commotion. Not nearly enough of them. Common areas like this were so crowded that passing through meant brushing shoulders with at least five other inmates. I could only hope none of those were having a bad enough day to take physical contact personally.

I crossed the room, stepping over the legs of those deemed unworthy of seats at the tables. Fellow prisoners watched with wide eyes. I was shorter and slimmer than most, so I could weave through a crowd largely unnoticed. At least, I could have if my mug shot hadn’t been featured on every news broadcast for the past three days. They didn’t just have radios in this place; there were TVs, too. Even if someone managed to come into Thorngate not knowing who I was, they could pick me out at range now.

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