Officer Reed was there too.
Her hands were cuffed.
A bruise darkened one side of her face.
“You shouldn’t have copied that file,” Holt told her.
Reed spat blood onto the floor.
“You shouldn’t have started a fire.”
Holt’s expression hardened.
Mara quietly scanned the room.
Old electrical cabinet.
Emergency ventilation controller.
Mechanical alarm station.
Analog phone.
All overlooked during the renovation.
Old systems were ugly.
But ugly systems had one advantage.
They were difficult to control remotely.
“You burned the records,” Mara said.
Holt looked at her.
“You think this is a courtroom?”
“No. Courtrooms have cameras.”
He laughed.
“You think you’re going to frighten me?”
“No.”
Mara glanced at the old alarm panel.
“I’m keeping you talking.”
Sloane saw the glance.
So did Reed.
Holt did not.
“For years,” he said, “this facility was bleeding money. The recycling contract saved jobs. Saved programs. Saved this prison.”
“By poisoning inmates?”
“They’re convicted criminals.”
Reed stared at him.
“They’re human beings.”
Holt ignored her.
“Do you know how much taxpayers complain about prisons? Too expensive. Too comfortable. Too soft. Then someone finds a way to make the system pay for itself and suddenly everyone develops a conscience.”
Mara shifted one step sideways.
One of the officers grabbed her shoulder.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
“Beth Carver,” Mara said.
For the first time, Holt hesitated.
Sloane noticed.
“Where is she?”
Holt said nothing.
Sloane surged forward.
“WHERE IS SHE?”
The guards restrained her.
Holt sighed.
“She had an industrial accident.”
“You erased her file.”
“She became a liability.”
Sloane’s face changed.
Mara had seen that expression before.
On firefighters.
On parents.
On people who had just realized hope had been taken away from them.
“Is she dead?” Sloane whispered.
Holt did not answer.
He didn’t need to.
Sloane lunged.
Chaos exploded.
A guard pulled her back.
Reed slammed her shoulder into another officer.
Mara moved toward the electrical cabinet.
Holt shouted.
“STOP HER!”
Mara kicked the emergency ventilation lever.
A mechanical siren erupted throughout the underground corridor.
Then she pulled the red auxiliary alarm.
Nothing happened.
Holt laughed.
“Disabled.”
Mara looked at him.
“That one?”
She pointed to the red box.
“Yes.”
Then she nodded toward the ancient black telephone mounted beneath it.
“What about that?”
Holt’s face changed.
Mara grabbed the receiver.
No dial tone.
She struck the cradle twice.
A faint click.
Old copper emergency line.
Independent circuit.
Exactly what she had hoped.
She dialed three digits.
Holt ripped the phone from her hand.
“You stupid—”
A voice came through the receiver before it hit the floor.
“County emergency dispatch. State your location.”
Nobody moved.
Sloane began laughing.
Holt crushed the receiver beneath his boot.
Too late.
Reed smiled.
“Dispatch has the origin.”
Holt grabbed Mara by the collar.
“You think anyone will believe three inmates and a guard?”
Mara stared calmly at him.
“No.”
Holt smiled.
Then Mara looked toward Reed.
“But they’ll believe your voice.”
Reed slowly opened her fist.
Inside was a tiny digital recorder.
Holt went white.
“You said you made one copy,” Mara told her.
Reed smiled through the blood on her lip.
“I made two.”
Sirens appeared beyond the prison walls eighteen minutes later.
Not Blackridge sirens.
County police.
Fire investigators.
Then state corrections officers.
Holt tried to order the main gate closed.
The order was ignored.
By sunrise, the deputy warden was in handcuffs.
The investigation lasted months.
The recycling contractor had concealed toxic exposure incidents for years.
Medical files had been altered.
Injured inmates had been threatened into silence.
Several officers had accepted payments.
Beth Carver had died after being transported to a private clinic under a false name.
Her family had been told she had been moved to another correctional facility.
The fire had been set to destroy the records before an outside inspection.
And Mara’s own case contained one final surprise.
The engineering company that had testified against her years earlier had been partially owned by the same parent corporation behind Blackridge’s recycling contractor.
Investigators reopened her conviction.
The inspection report bearing Mara Quinn’s signature had not been signed by Mara Quinn.
It had been copied.
For years she had believed proving it would be impossible.
Then one corrupt prison official became careless enough to connect everything.
Six months later, Mara stood beside the main gate of Blackridge carrying a cardboard box.