Read Online The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes - Free Book Online

George removed his shades and stared. Odelle nodded.
    When the applause dwindled and feet started to shuffle, she looked toward the microphone.
    “Thank you, my friends, but I don’t deserve your applause; the man who made this miracle possible does.” Odelle turned to Vinson Duran and clapped her hands.
    Those who had returned to their seats sprang upright again to applaud.
    She reached for Vinson’s arm and dug her nails into his biceps to draw his attention. “Got to go. Back as soon as I can.”
    Careful to keep a blinding smile pasted to her face, Odelle strode past tables full of well-heeled men in tuxedos and high-maintenance women toward the doors where George stood, deadpan.
    “What’s the matter?”
    George leaned over and whispered in her ear. She listened, clenching her hands until her long nails bit into her palms. Then her fingers relaxed as a powerful eddy swirled in the pit of her stomach. Odelle closed her eyes when George finished his report. The fourth point in her closing gimmick wasn’t true anymore, and that small distinction could mean her promotion for life to a posting four inches below the surface of a tank.
    She blinked and locked eyes with Genia. The FBH director could have set the manhunt in motion, sealed the city, and deployed the muscle; it fell within her authority. Instead, she had deferred any decision to Odelle.
Too hot for you to handle, dear? Are you learning, at last, who is in charge?
Odelle turned to face George.
    “Call Nikola Masek.”

chapter 9
     

     
    18:21
    After the first tentative strides, it became obvious that running barefoot along the smooth tunnel would be much more difficult than Shepherd had expected. In the painstaking analysis of every step of the plan, several issues had remained unresolved—one of them their ability to run naked and barefoot through a stainless steel tube. Every proposal—galoshes, flip-flops, or even socks—had crashed against Lukas’s capacity to carry them past scanning X-ray machines and into the hibernation station. Lukas had stolen the pads and syrettes with minimal risk from a low-security store on the same day of the breakout, but there was nothing remotely suitable to improve the grip of their “well-calloused soles.”
    They halted, and Lukas had to give up his canvas trousers and shirt. With teeth and powerful tugs, they tore the garments into strips. Laurel and Raul—sitting against the curved wall and keeping the cocooned Russo between them—wrapped their feet as best they could.
    Laurel ran a hand over the surface of the six-foot stainless steel tube, polished to a faint brushed finish. A few inches to her right, Laurel spotted a seam, welded flush and brushed with the same pattern of tiny scratches as the rest of the tube. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something odd in the homogeneous finish. Laurel leaned over the inert shape of Russo, pressed her fingers into his neck, and held her breath. “Still there. Let’s go.”
    Raul once more hefted the jelly net with Russo inside.
    Laurel stepped forward, plodding awkwardly until she got the hang of the wraps. Then she lengthened her stride. Behind her, his head hunched over, Raul sounded like a charging elephant. Laurel marched point for a while, her tiny flashlight casting a ring of light around the tube, the void before her dark as a pocket.
If there’s an obstacle or a valve in our path, there will be no time to avoid it. I’ll run straight into it
. Then she spotted a dark shape overhead.
    “Utility holes?” She stopped underneath the four-foot opening of a vertical shaft, one side bristling with the rungs of a ladder.
    Raul drew near and straightened, obviously enjoying the respite allowed by the extra headroom. “Looks like it,” he said.
    “How far apart?” Laurel asked.
    Lukas joined them and ran a finger on the edge of the vertical tube. “The sewer authorities class this spur as a secure mainline. There’s an exit like this every