Nightrise (15 page)

Her fingers moved to his forehead, moving a lock of hair out of his eyes.

"Jamie left you," she went on. "Do you remember — at the theatre? That's when they came for you, and your brother just abandoned you. All your life you looked after him — but he didn't care. The first chance he got, he was away, leaving you to all this. Right now, he's laughing at you. Because he's all right. He's having a fine old time. And you're stretched out on your back, connected up to all these nasty tubes, and you could die here and nobody would think twice.

"But that's the mistake you've made since you were little, Scott. Do you remember Ed and Leanne in Carson City? You thought they'd look after you but they let you down. And then there were Don and Marcie, who were even worse. But that's the thing about life, isn't it? It's always the good people who get pushed around. The little people. Do you want to be a little person, Scott, or do you want to be with me?

Because, you see, in the world that's going to come, I'm going to be in charge and you're going to have to start asking yourself — which end of the whip do you want to be on?

"I'll leave you to think about it, my dear. There are some people I work for…well, not exactly people.

They'll be with us very soon and they'll be so glad to know that you've joined us, that you've decided to become their servant. Jamie, unfortunately, is not sensible enough to make that choice. But maybe one day you'll be able to get back at him. Maybe one day we'll let you take that little swine and put a knife through his heart.

"But right now, I must go. You think about what I've said and maybe tomorrow we'll have another little chat."

The door opened a second time. Somebody else had come into the room. The woman stood up.

"Mr. Banes has come to see you now," she explained. "I wish I could stay with you and keep him away.

But until you're ready for me, until you're mine, I can't. I'm so sorry, my dear. But I will come back. I promise."

The bald man had sat down in her place. Scott squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, deep inside himself.

He heard the door close softly and the two of them were left alone.

TEN

Silent Creek

Jamie had been in court once before, so there were no surprises here: not the smallness of the room, the few people in it, the speed at which everything took place. There were two tables facing the judge — a middle-aged woman dressed in black, sitting on a high-backed chair between the flag of Nevada and the Stars and Stripes. Jamie was at one table with his lawyer. His probation officer and a woman from the district attorney's office were at the other. A clerk took notes and a security man stood by with a seen-it-all-before look on his face. There were two rows of chairs at the back of the room. No press or public were allowed into a juvenile court, but Alicia was sitting there on her own, an anxious look on her face.

She had come as a family friend.

Jamie's hands and feet were shackled. That had alarmed him because it hadn't happened the last time he had been taken into custody. But this time the offense was more serious. He had been arrested, supposedly, for selling drugs at school…a crime which would guarantee him jail time. It was all fake, of course. The probation officer and the lawyer were both part of the setup, somehow connected to John Trelawny, who had arranged the whole thing. They had even given Jamie a false name: Jeremy Rabb, case number J83157. Somehow they had slotted him into the Nevada juvenile justice system, and as far as Jamie knew, the judge was the only person in the room who didn't know what was really going on.

It was all fake — and yet the plastic strips binding his wrists and the chains around his ankles were horribly real. Free movement, the most basic of all human rights, had been taken from him. He felt the horror of having his identity stripped away, of belonging to a system that would now do with him as it pleased. Worse still, he remembered what the senator, John Trelawny, had told Alicia on the telephone.

"I can get him in, Alicia, but there's something you have to appreciate: I can't get him out again, not once he's been sent to Silent Creek. Too many people would know. What we're doing here is necessary and I can justify it in my own mind, but it's borderline illegal. Do you understand what I'm saying? Once Jamie's inside the system, I cannot intervene."

Alicia had explained it to Jamie, who understood. The senator was already sticking his neck out for him and couldn't risk a scandal if it all went wrong. At the same time, Jamie wasn't too concerned. He had his power and he could use it to walk out of prison at any time. And he thought about Scott. Finding his brother was all that mattered to him, and there was no other way. It was only now, unable to separate his hands, unable to walk without shuffling, that he had second thoughts. He was about to be sentenced, processed, swallowed up. When that happened, he would be completely on his own.

In the last twenty-four hours, his hair had been cut short and he had been given a pair of thick, black plastic glasses to wear. He was surprised how much his appearance had changed. The danger was that anyone who had met Scott would recognize him as an almost identical twin. Now there seemed little chance of that. Looking in the mirror, he could barely recognize himself.

"…The sentence set down by this court is twelve months in a detention facility…" The judge was talking. Jamie had missed the first part of what she was saying. She turned to the probation officer. "I've looked through the case files and I think Summit View would be appropriate."

Jamie had heard of Summit View. It was a youth correctional center on the edge of Las Vegas. But the probation officer was shaking his head. "With respect, Your Honor, I was going to recommend Silent Creek."

The judge was surprised. "It's pretty tough out there," she remarked. "The boy is only fourteen and this is a first offense."

''Yes, Your Honor. But he was selling crystal meth to kids as young as twelve. Some of them are now in rehab programs, out of school. Rabb has shown no remorse. In fact, he's been pretty pleased with himself."

Rabb. Jamie had to remind himself that they were talking about him.

The judge thought for a moment, then nodded. "Very well. It'll be a hard lesson, but maybe that's what he needs." There was a file in front of her. She closed it. "Twelve months in Silent Creek."

The security guard stepped forward and Jamie was led out through a side door, his feet moving only inches at a time. The last thing he saw was Alicia watching him. Her eyes were wide and full of dread.

***

They took him by minibus, still shackled, with a bottle of water wedged between his knees. He was going to need it. The temperature would rise quickly as soon as the sun rose, and they planned to drive all night. There was nobody else on the bus: just the driver — an old, weather-beaten man — and a guard who had briefly checked Jamie's wrist and ankle restraints and then ignored him.

It had been eight o'clock in the evening when they left. Jamie had watched the darkness fall before he had nodded off, sitting uncomfortably upright, asleep but still aware of the shuddering movement of the bus. When he opened his eyes, the light dazzled him. They had left the highway and were following a track, kicking up a cloud of dust all around them. Jamie could see only sand and scrubland with a few Jericho trees dotted around the landscape. A mountain range, burned red by the sun, stretched out across the horizon.

And then the road dipped. They had come to a miniature valley. And now he saw his new home, Silent Creek. The two words were written on a sign — unnecessarily. The inmates surely knew where they were, and there was nobody else to read it for miles around. Despite everything, Jamie felt a shiver of excitement. He had seen the sign before — inside the head of Colton Banes. Scott was here, somewhere inside this complex. Jamie felt sure of it. He would find his brother and the two of them would bust out.

The nightmare was almost over.

A long, rectangular compound stood in front of him. The buildings were low-rise but they were surrounded by a razor wire fence at least thirty feet high. There were two satellite dishes pointing up toward the sky, and on the other side Jamie saw a playing field with two goals — but of course there was no grass, not in this heat. The surface was yellow-gray sand. At the far end of the field, there was a wall — like all the buildings, made out of cinder block and topped with more razor wire. As they bounced down toward the main gate, Jamie caught a glimpse of more buildings on the other side of the wall but realized he would be unable to see them again without the advantage of height. For some reason, Silent Creek had been divided into two: one third on one side, two thirds on the other.

The minibus passed between a number of outlying houses. These must be where the guards and maintenance staff lived. Jamie was annoyed with himself. He had only woken up at the last minute and he had no idea how near they were to any town or community. Scott would have been better prepared.

But it was too late to worry about that now. They had stopped in front of the gate. This was the entrance to the prison, known as the sally port. There was a buzz and the gate slid open electronically, allowing them into a narrow corridor between two lines of razor wire. The minibus jolted forward and stopped in front of a second gate. This opened only when the first one had closed. Now, at last, they were inside the prison. Jamie looked around him, searching for surveillance cameras.

There were no guard towers. Nor was there anybody in sight.

The minibus stopped one last time. The door hissed open.

"All right! Out!" They were the only words the guard had spoken since they had left.

Jamie shuffled out of his seat, along the aisle and out of the door. At once the heat hit him. It was like being physically battered. He was forced to squeeze his eyes shut, then open them more carefully, fighting against the glare. He was already sweating. The temperature had to be in the hundreds. Even the air was scorched. He looked around. The sun had sucked the color out of almost everything. The silver of the fence, the gray sand, the ash-colored cinder block…they all seemed to seep into each other like an overexposed photograph. An electric generator and a fuel tank stood next to each other, locked in a cage.

They were bright yellow. There was nothing else to catch the eye.

"This way!"

The guard led him to a door set in a wall that opened as they approached. Jamie noticed a surveillance camera, mounted high above. It swiveled to follow him when he moved. The door led into a large, shabby room with a second officer sitting behind a desk with a computer. There were a couple of holding cells, some chairs — none of them matching — and a shower with a plastic curtain drawn half across. There were no windows. The room was lit by strip lighting. Mercifully, after the furnace of the courtyard, it was air-conditioned.

"Sit down!" It was the second guard who had spoken. He was casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.

Jamie saw that he carried no weapon. He was a man in his forties, with black hair tied behind his neck.

He obviously had Native American blood, and Jamie wondered if that might make him more sympathetic to Jamie. But his manner was brisk and formal.

"My name is Joe Feather," the man said. "But you call me Mr. Feather or sir. I'm the intake officer and I'm going to process you and then show you into Orientation. Do you understand?"

Jamie nodded.

"You're going to find it tough here. You've had a spell in juvie — is that right?"

''Yeah."

"Well then, you know the basics. Keep your head down. Do as you're told. It'll make it easier on you."

He nodded at the other guard. 'You can take off the shackles."

Jamie's hands and feet were unfastened and gratefully he moved his legs apart. There were red marks across his wrists and he rubbed them. In the next twenty minutes, his details were entered into the computer…or, at least, the details of Jeremy Rabb, the boy he was supposed to be. He had been up half the previous night with Alicia, memorizing them before he had been handed over to the police.

"Go into the shower and strip," the intake officer told him. "I want all your clothes, including your shorts. You have any piercings?"

Jamie shook his head.

"Okay. I'll pass you your new uniform."

Jamie went into the shower and drew the curtain. But it seemed he wasn't going to be given any privacy.

The side wall of the shower contained a window, looking into a storeroom, and as Jamie stood under the running water, he was aware of Joe Feather examining him from the other side. Jamie had been through strip searches when he was in juvenile hall, but even so, he was embarrassed and turned away. That was when the officer saw the tattoo on his shoulder.

"Mr. Rabb…" Joe Feather spoke the words softly. "Turn off the shower."

Jamie did as he was told. He stood with drops of water trickling down his shoulders and back.

"Where did you get that tattoo?" the intake officer demanded.

"I've always had it. It was done when I was born."

''You have a brother?"

Jamie froze. Had he been recognized already? "I don't have a brother," he said.

"No brother?"

"No, sir."

Joe Feather handed him a bundle of prison-issue clothes. It fitted through a slot beneath the window.

"Put these on," he said. "I'll take you in."

***

Jamie was the ninety-sixth boy to arrive at Silent Creek. The prison could hold one hundred total with ten full-time guards — or supervisors, as they called themselves — to watch over them. There were four living units — North, South, East, and West — and life was arranged so that the inmates were kept apart as much as possible. That way, rival gang members barely saw each other and never spoke. Each unit ate at a different time — there were four sittings for every meal — and there were four exercise times in the prison gym. The age range went from thirteen to eighteen.

There were rules for everything. The boys had to walk with their hands clasped behind their backs. They weren't allowed to talk while they moved and they couldn't go anywhere, not even the toilet, without adult supervision. They were watched constantly, either by supervisors or surveillance cameras. They were patted down after every meal, and if a single plastic fork went missing, they were all strip-searched. There were six hours of school every morning, two hours of recreation (in the gym — it was too hot outside), and two hours of TV. Only sport was allowed — never movies or news. The prison uniform consisted of blue tracksuit pants, gray T-shirts, and sneakers. All the colors had been chosen carefully. Nothing was black or bright red. Those were gang colors and might be enough to provoke a fight.