Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Fell
"Say his name again," Valérie hissed. "I dare you."
Lucie Navarro stood in the middle of Briar Creek's prison yard with a fist twisted in the front of her gray uniform. Around her, forty women had formed a ring. Nobody called for help. In this yard, help was something you paid for.
"Thomas Navarro," Lucie whispered. "He said I'd find the traitor here."
Valérie's smile vanished. She was an inmate, but everybody called her the Warden. She decided who got a mattress, who got medicine, and who woke up bleeding. Even the officers stepped around her as if she owned the concrete.
"Thomas is dead," she said.
"I know. I buried his empty coffin."
Valérie swung. Lucie caught her wrist, turned under the blow, and used the older woman's own momentum to put her on the ground. It was fast, controlled, and over before the circle remembered how to scream.
Lucie pinned Valérie's arm without twisting it farther. "I didn't come here to hurt you."
"Then you've come to the wrong place."
A whistle shrieked. Officer Raines pushed through the women, his hand on his baton. "Navarro! Get off her!"
Lucie released her. As Valérie rolled upright, she saw the tiny mark inside Lucie's wrist: four dark points beneath a broken circle. Thomas had drawn it on a napkin, promising his last messenger would wear it.
Valérie stopped breathing for a moment.
"Where did you get that?" she whispered.
Lucie pulled down her sleeve. "From the man you left outside the burning warehouse."
Raines grabbed her elbow. "Both of you. Segregation. Now."
Valérie looked toward the guard tower, where a man in a dark coat stood behind the glass. He lifted a phone to his ear.
May you like
For the first time, the queen of the yard looked afraid.
And Lucie realized the man in the tower had been waiting for her.
