Trace, Chapters 22, 23, 24, & 25

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TWENTY TWO

The riot didn't stop. Without the Riders, and with most of the guards hiding in the central hub, men raced for the walls or attacked each other viciously, resentment surging up with the rage, gang alliances not more than excuses to vent some of the fury that had been building. Colm, finally shaking off the men restraining him, looked for Joseph and found him backed against a wall, mace held against his hip in one hand, baton in the other. He swung at Colm when he approached, until he saw who it was.

"This place is going up," Colm said, grasping his wrist and pulling.

"You think?" Joseph snarled, bringing the baton up sharply against a prisoner, audibly cracking his ribs. "National Guard's coming. I heard over the radio."

"You want to be in the yard when they come in?" Colm demanded. He felt someone grab his shoulder and jerked around to find it was Laney, a scalpel clutched in his other hand.

"We'll bring you through," he said, and beyond him Gutierrez was bellowing down any man who came near, light crackling off his skin, wiry muscles tense. Colm didn't question; he pulled Joseph up against him and stumbled along, led blindly, trusting Laney and Gutierrez to get them out of the yard, at least.

In the cell block, at least in this cell block, the halls and cells were empty. They could hear shouts and crashes from the other blocks, the closer they came to the center, and once they passed a man collapsed on one of the cell beds, whimpering and clutching a broken arm.

"Send someone back for him later," Colm urged, when Joseph turned towards the cell.

"But he's – "

"In a cell, safer than we are," Gutierrez called. They passed through the gate between blocks, into the outer hall of the command center, and Gutierrez led them along until they came to a thick, steel-reinforced door. Joseph scanned his ID card and the lock clicked back, but the heavy manual riot bolts on the other side had been thrown. He pounded on the door, furious.

"GUARD COMING IN!" he yelled. "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, OPEN THE DOOR!"

A loudspeaker overhead crackled. "Inmates, step away from the correctional officer."

"You've got to be shitting me," Joseph yelled back. "They brought me here and they're injured, open the god damned door!"

"Inmates, return to your cells."

Colm looked back and forth from Laney and Gutierrez to Joseph, who was venting his frustration on the steel door. They couldn't get through steel, none of them had ever been able to do that, and anyone walking through a door on a night like tonight was likely to get shot by nervous, trapped guards.

Joseph finally stopped beating on the door, leaning his back against it and sliding down to a crouch.

"How long you think we have before…?" Laney jerked his thumb at the screams outside. Before the prisoners came for the guards, before the military was called in? Before people started shooting again?

"You're hurt," Joseph said suddenly, and Colm followed his gaze to the linoleum floor – flecks of blood and dirt formed a sort of mottled footprint leading back the way they'd come, and he became aware again of how his feet throbbed, of the spikes of pain where glass was still embedded in the soles. Joseph looked up at him, and then at Laney (blood on his shirt, his eyes not quite completely focused) and Gutierrez, who was breathing hard, covered in dried blood.

"Can't go back to the infirmary," Gutierrez said. "They'll already be there. Drugs and weapons," he added, nodding at the scalpel in Laney's hand.

"We should just go," Colm said. "This riot, it's – it's going to be really bad, maybe not as bad as it could have, but – we should go. You can get us through the checkpoints. We can fight our way through."

"I'm not abandoning Railburg to…whatever that was," Joseph said.

"Noel," Gutierrez said softly. Colm glanced at him. "We can't leave here. There's Noel. And a thousand other guys who don't deserve that."

"So what do we do?" Laney asked. "Bout to go back out there and fight, man."

"You have no use here, now," Gutierrez said to Joseph, who looked like he would have objected if he had the energy. "Take Colin. Go. Laney and I can hide until it's done."

"Oh wait for real?" Laney asked, looking at him. "That's your solution?"

"Mijo, it comes when you need it, but it goes if you don't use it," Gutierrez told him. "Colin, go."

"Leonel – " Colm said, unsure what to say. Gutierrez laughed.

"It's okay. I know."

Joseph was rising, watching the little drama play out, one hand still on his baton now sheathed in his belt.

"Tell Noel I said goodbye," Colm said.

"Ah man, he knew he wouldn't see you again. He said to tell you he'd find you on the outside."

"Good," Colin said. "You two be okay?"

"Oh yeah. We duck fast," Gutierrez said. "All this is over, it's prison reform time. Love reform time. New beds, better food."

"Laney, keep an eye on Noel for me," Colm said.

"Yeah," Laney waved him off.

Colm looked at Joseph, who rattled his baton against the door one last time, then sighed.

"Can you get out of here, or do I carry you?" he asked, looking down at Colm's bleeding feet. They did hurt, and he'd probably messed them up in a serious way, running onto the yard, but he could walk long enough to leave.

"Let's go," he said.

Joseph took him by the arm, digging his cellphone out of his pocket with his other hand. Colm stumbled along, listening as Joseph called for a car to meet them at the gatehouse. He could hear protests on the other end of the line, someone saying that Railburg was locked down and roadblocks were up half a mile from the gates. He stumbled when Joseph shouted into the phone, and Joseph managed to sling Colm's arm over his shoulders and order an emergency police extraction without breaking stride.

"They're on their way," he said, as he carded them out of the hub hallway and checked both directions carefully before helping Colm down the short corridor to the exit door. They stopped at the door so Colm could catch his breath and rest his feet, leaning back into the recess in case anyone came by. "What happened here?" Joseph asked softly, leaning his head against Colm's.

"You really want to know that?" Colm asked. Joseph seemed to think about it, then turned and waved his access card in front of the entry door's reader, keying in an override code to get them out.

"Maybe not," he agreed, as the door swung open. He started easing Colm down the steps slowly.

"You get what you came for?" Colm asked, to distract himself from the pain.

"Yep. Photos of the ledger and a list of names. It'll be enough," Joseph answered, his hand warm on Colm's hip, shoulders steady under his arm. "Especially if there's a Department of Corrections investigation over…" he jerked his head at the prison. Colm couldn't see any running figures in the dark – couldn't tell how many men, if any, had escaped in the confusion.

The walk from the prison to the gatehouse was agonizing, but when they got there Joseph's shouting was rewarded – a dark transport car and two police cruisers were sitting on the far side of the barrier. Joseph helped Colin into the back of the car and then tore off his stab vest, tossing it into the front seat. "I'm riding with the prisoner," he told the driver. "Get us the fuck out of here. Railburg municipal hospital."

Colin heard the man reply You got it even as Joseph was climbing into the back and pulling the door shut after him. With a rumble and a couple of uneven bumps, they were underway, the cruisers leading and following.

Before long they could see the lights from the roadblocks, the spinning red-and-blue flash of more police cars. Floodlights covered the road, propped jury-rig on hoods or hanging from tree branches. They pulled past slowly, and Colm saw orange jumpsuits among the police uniforms – recaptured inmates, handcuffed against cars or locked in the back of them. There were already film cameras too, journalists doing soundbites on the Riot at Railburg.

As they passed under the floodlights he felt a tightness in his chest and coughed hard into his hands, once, twice, something rising in his throat. He coughed a third time and could feel it in his mouth – spat, and saw a small folded crane in his palms.

Colm smiled and slipped away. Colin sat up a little straighter, now that they were past the cops and the reporters, and offered the crane to Joseph, who flattened it carefully and tucked it into his pocket. Colin watched, eyelids drooping; he was so tired.

Joseph took out his phone and made another call; Colin, head on his shoulder, could hear Joseph's precinct answer on the other end.

"This is Joseph Wright," he said, giving his badge number quickly. "I need an unmarked car and a driver at Railburg municipal hospital to pick up myself and my case consultant. We'll also need someone to retrieve my car -- it's parked in the bus lot in town."

"Dispatching now," the voice said. "Anything else I can do for you, Detective Wright?"

"Do you know if my Captain's there?" Joseph asked. "I need to make sure the photos I emailed made it through."

"Hold please, I'll check," the voice told him. Colin turned his face, yawning into Joseph's shoulder. "No one's picking up, Detective, but I checked with Evidence and they say they know what you're talking about. Have you removed Mr. Byrne from custody?"

"Only mostly," Joseph replied. "He needs medical attention."

"Sir, can I ask what happened?"

Joseph sighed. "A lot. Anything else you need from me?"

"No, Detective. We'll have that car out for you, should be arriving in about an hour."

"Thanks. I'll check in," Joseph said, and hung up. Joseph was handling things; he was good at handling things.

The bright floodlights on the road receded behind them, eventually, and sleep ran over him like a shadow.

---

TWENTY THREE

The emergency room triage nurse took one look at Colin's prison uniform and his bleeding, filthy feet, and moved him to the head of the line. Colin suspected it was as much so that she could insist he be handcuffed to the bed as because his feet were obviously in need of swift treatment.

"You're lucky," said the orderly who was rinsing Colin's feet free of dirt and glass, water flowing down into a basin where the filth swirled and settled. The local they'd given him had hurt worse than his injuries, but now he couldn't feel a thing, which was both frightening and a relief.

"How do you figure?" Colin asked. The orderly nodded at a cart sitting in the hallway, sheet pulled over the face of the body resting on it. Colin swallowed anxiously. "How many?"

"Two guards so far, eight prisoners, is what I heard," the man said. "TV says the National Guard airlifted in. It was a power outage, huh?"

Colin shrugged.

"TV says the power outage started it. If they hadn't got the power back up, they'd probably still be rioting and nobody would know," the orderly continued.

"Lucky them," Colin murmured. So that was Galano's game. Railburg had been spared from oblivion by a couple of volts powering a radio.

"TV says it's under control now, though. Their infirmary is thrashed, they're sending everyone here. Guess you got out early?"

"I was helping the guards," Colin said. "One of them pulled me out. Listen, did they list any names? I have pals – "

"Yeah, man, I don't think anyone cares about your pals tonight," the orderly answered, with a hint of condescension.

"TV say that?" Colin asked, trying to keep his voice light. Yelling at a man picking glass out of your skin wasn't that smart.

"It's fine," came a voice from the doorway, and Colin looked up to see Joseph standing there. In the bright white lights of the hospital, dried blood was shiny on his pants, visible on his baton. Joseph nodded a brief greeting at the orderly, then turned back to Colin. "I checked. Your friends were picked up in a hall sweep."

"Noel – "

"The tattoo guy? Apparently he negotiated the nonviolent surrender of the block he was hiding out in," Joseph said, a faint grin on his face.

"Are we leaving?" Colin asked.

Joseph nodded. "Secure transport's here, as soon as you're done."

"Doctor'll be in soon to stitch you up," the orderly said, shining a penlight around Colin's bleeding feet to make sure all the glass was gone.

"Thanks," Joseph said, as the man left. He gave Colin a don't get into trouble look, pretty undeserved Colin thought, and then followed the orderly out.

Colin sat for a few minutes, waiting for the doctor, blood oozing down onto a towel at the foot of the bed. After a while he got bored and swung himself around so that he was sitting on the edge, wrist still cuffed to the railing, feet hanging over the floor. He flicked an ankle and a spatter of red droplets fell onto the tile below. He smiled down at the spray and decided to title it Jackson Pollock on the Cross.

---

TWENTY FOUR

Morning found Colin released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, aside from his cuts and bruises, back in New York and waking alone in Joseph and Lise's bed. He'd spent the drive from Railburg Township to the city dozing in a drug haze, dreams fragmented and surreal, influenced by the growl of the car's engine and the even rise and fall of Joseph's shoulder under Colin's cheek as he breathed.

He was dimly aware he was wearing a pair of Joseph's pajamas, but mostly he was aware of the pain – the bandages rasping against the sheets, the soles of his feet throbbing along the neat lines of stitches the doctor had put in. He pushed himself upright, groaning. His hand hurt too, but the cuts on his fingers were shallow, bound up by neon green hospital-issue band-aids.

He could hear Joseph moving around outside the bedroom but he couldn't reach out and find him anymore, had no sense of where he was or what he was feeling. He thought he could hear Lise's voice, briefly, but when he turned to try and catch a glimpse of her through the door, he started back.

There was a man standing in the middle of the room, a stranger – not a guard, Joseph probably hadn't even told anyone where Colin was. An intruder, someone who shouldn't be here, and yet –

He was a tall man, skin so dark it was almost blue-black, wearing night camo. There was a rifle slung over his back, but Colin hardly noticed; the man's chest glowed red, and light came off his head like the halo of a renaissance saint.

Not holy light, Colin thought crazily, remembering Natell's correction. Just light.

"You're not one of mine," the man said, surprised. He cocked his head. "How do you see me?"

Colin looked away, down at his knees, pulled up against his chest. "Just lucky, I guess."

"What's your name?" the man asked. "I'm Guye."

"I know," Colin replied, still not looking at him. "I'm Colin."

"You're angry with me."

Colin glanced up. "Where were your soldiers?" he asked. "Railburg needed you."

"What's your name?" Guye repeated, like a teacher correcting a child.

"Don't try to change the subject, we needed you," Colin said. "We fought the Riders with our bare hands."

Guye raised an eyebrow.

"They did, anyway," Colin added, looking at his knees again. "Some of them died."

"But you won," Guye pointed out. "So you can't have needed me so very badly."

"Your soldiers – "

" – protect children, which you are not," Guye said, and then added, "Colm."

"You should have been there," Colm murmured rebelliously. He watched from the corner of his eye as Guye drew close to the bed. He patted Colm's head, almost affectionately.

"You should have more faith," he said, and the warm pressure on his head, the shadow of Guye's presence, disappeared.

Sound rushed back, as if Guye had muted the outside world; Joseph yelling something into a phone, and closer the sound of Lise humming to herself as she walked down the hallway. Senses oversharp, heightened by the pain, Colm could smell the tea before he saw the cup in her hands.

"You're up," she said, looking pleased as she arrived in the doorway. "How do you feel?"

"Thank you," he said, accepting the tea. She sat on the edge of the bed while he blew on the surface of the tea to cool it, sipping cautiously. It tasted amazing after the food he'd been trying to stomach for the last week and a half. "I'm okay. Might be a little slow for a while."

"And here I didn't think anything could slow you down," she said, stroking his hair. She seemed troubled, despite her light tone. He set the tea aside and gave her a questioning look.

"Joseph won't talk about it," she said. "The news says there was a riot. He won't say a word about it. He's still trying to work the case. It's like he doesn't think it really happened."

"I can tell you about it, if you want," he answered warily. "But I don't think you want to know."

"Maybe later," she said. She'd been holding a small plastic bowl in her other hand, and now she set it on the blankets, offering it to him. In the bottom was a small pile of white crystals. "This came out of his shoes."

Colin studied it. "Salt."

"I think so." Lise leaned in close. "The second shadow's gone. I don't know what happened, I'm just glad."

"It's okay. It wasn't...bad," Colin said, stirring the salt with a finger. It was cold. "Throw this out. Far from the house. My prison clothes too. Get rid of them. Burn them if you can."

She nodded. "Are you okay? Really?"

"I will be," he said, and then on impulse added, "I need to tell you about my name."

"Your name?" she asked, curiosity in her eyes. They were ordinary eyes; no fortunes in them, no shade. He smiled and let his gaze linger on them for a moment.

"My name's not Colin," he said eventually, lifting one of her hands and tracing his bandaged thumb along her palm. "I mean -- my mother named me Colm. You need to know and tell Joseph. Colm. C-O-L-M."

"Why -- "

"I'll tell you sometime, just, someone needs to know," he said, and shivered. "I'm not going back to prison again. It's too much. Don't let Joseph send me back there, ever."

She stroked his hair with her free hand. "Why do you think we do this?" she asked, gesturing to the room, to the bed, to him. "The point is to keep you out. Besides, I don't think he could. Whatever he knows, it scares him. Not you," she added, because she could obviously see Colin panicking -- wondering how much Joseph knew about the lies he'd told to get to Railburg, about the man whose death he'd orchestrated. "Whatever it did -- to him, to you -- he wouldn't. But I'll make sure," she added, and Colin nodded and let go of her hand. "Joseph said to tell you the ledger is going to blow the ring wide open."

"Good," Colin said. "Does he need me?"

"No. Sleep a little, if you want," she added, and picked up the bowl of salt from the blankets. He eased back down against the pillow, but he didn't close his eyes.

"Colm," he said.

"Colm," she repeated, and kissed him. "Sleep."

He waited until she was gone, listening for a while to the sounds of them going about their lives -- Analise's footsteps, the slam of a door, Joseph's voice on the phone. He closed his eyes against the pain in his hand, the throb in his feet and the sick feeling from the last of the prison food he'd eaten. It would be gone soon. That was all that mattered.

"Goodbye, Grace," he murmured, closing his eyes.

---

TWENTY FIVE

They said a lot of things about Colin Byrne, after he disappeared from Railburg. That his name wasn't really Colin Byrne at all. That he and Crazy Laney and Leonel Gutierrez killed a man during the riot – turned him into a pillar of salt, and the prison guards swept him up and away the next morning.

They said he was more dangerous than you could ever believe. He disappeared, the night Railburg rioted, but nobody looked for him. None of the guards would talk about it -- hell, half of the guards on duty that night had disappeared themselves a few days later. Noel might tell you about it, if you caught him at the right moment, but he wouldn't say much.

They said Colin had come back because of Noel. He'd taught Crazy Laney his magic to protect Noel, and that was why the Aryans gave them both a wide berth. They said he left because he could do real magic, prison magic, but he couldn't control it. They said that on the outside he was an exorcist, or that the priest who owned his shadow made him do it. They said his cop lover carried his freedom in his pocket. They said he had a guardian angel.

Most of it was true.

At the moment, however, Colm Byrne was sitting at the dining room table in the yellow morning light, eating an egg Lise had cooked him, casually stealing extra bacon from Joseph's plate.

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