Close Enough

Chapter 3: Close Enough

The door didn't break. It surrendered, hinges tearing free from rotted screws that should have been replaced a decade ago, and a man in guard's fatigues stumbled through the gap with a crowbar raised over his shoulder.

Samuel didn't hesitate.

He crossed the distance in two strides and drove his forearm into the man's throat, slamming him back into the doorframe before the crowbar could finish its swing. The weapon clattered uselessly to the floor. Ryan stayed exactly where he'd been told, crouched behind the desk, watching Samuel disarm a fully grown man with the kind of controlled violence that came from years of practice, not adrenaline.

"Who sent you?" Samuel's voice had dropped into something Ryan hadn't heard from him before, flat and merciless.

The guard choked out something unintelligible. Samuel eased his grip a fraction, just enough to let him speak.

"Orders," the man rasped. "Just orders. Get the prisoner. That's all I know."

"Whose orders?"

"I don't ask questions, Warden, I just—"

Samuel's arm pressed harder, cutting him off. "Try again."

"Voss's office," the man gasped. "The call came from Voss's office. Said the prisoner Carter needed to be relocated during the lockdown. Said it was authorized."

Ryan's pulse spiked. Adrian Voss. He'd heard the name whispered in the yard, always followed by silence, always followed by men lowering their eyes like the mention alone could get them killed. He'd never once imagined that name attached directly to him.

"Authorized by whom?" Samuel demanded.

"I don't know! I swear, I don't—"

Samuel released him without warning, letting him crumple to the floor gasping, and turned toward Ryan with an expression that made the hair on Ryan's arms stand up. Not anger. Calculation. The look of a man rearranging every plan he had in the space of five seconds.

"Get up," Samuel said. "We're leaving."

"Leaving where? You just heard him. Voss wants me relocated, and I'm guessing relocated doesn't mean a nicer cell."

"No." Samuel hauled the guard up by his collar and shoved him toward the door with a warning that needed no words attached to it, sending him stumbling back into the chaos of the corridor. Then he turned the lock behind him, the one working lock left in the entire wing, apparently, and faced Ryan directly. "It means you disappear the way Preston disappeared. The way Delgado and Reyes disappeared."

Hearing Samuel say those names out loud, unprompted, hit Ryan harder than the guard's attempted attack had.

"You know about them."

"I know more than you'd like." Samuel's jaw tightened. "And right now, that knowledge is the only reason you're still breathing."

"Then tell me."

"Not here." Samuel moved to the window, checked something outside Ryan couldn't see, then crossed back with the urgency of a man whose timeline had just collapsed. "Every second we stay in this room, the odds of another one of Voss's men finding us doubles. I need you to trust me for exactly as long as it takes to get you somewhere safe."

Ryan almost laughed. "Trust you. The man who's spent months making my life hell."

"The man who just put a guard on the floor to keep Voss's people off you." Samuel's voice sharpened, impatient, dangerous. "You can hate me after we're both still alive to argue about it. Right now, that's not guaranteed for either of us."

Something in the way he said it, the flicker of exhaustion beneath the control, told Ryan this wasn't performance. Samuel wasn't protecting an asset or following procedure. He looked like a man who'd been carrying something heavy and alone for a very long time, and the weight had just gotten unbearable.

"Fine," Ryan said. "But I want answers. Real ones. Not warden answers."

"You'll get them. Later." Samuel moved to the door, listening before he opened it a crack. The corridor beyond had gone eerily quiet, the alarm still wailing somewhere distant but the immediate hallway empty, too empty for a facility mid-riot. "That's wrong."

"What is?"

"This corridor should be swarming with guards responding to the lockdown. It's not." Samuel's hand found his weapon again. "Which means someone cleared it."

"Cleared it for what?"

Samuel didn't answer. He didn't need to. Ryan understood a second later, when the lights along the corridor ceiling shut off in a slow, deliberate sequence, one after another, moving toward them like something walking closer in the dark.

"Move," Samuel snapped, pulling Ryan through the door and down the corridor in the opposite direction, away from the dying lights, boots pounding against tile as the alarm's wail seemed to swell louder behind them, chasing them through a hallway that felt like it was folding in on itself with every step.

They rounded a corner into a stairwell, and Samuel shoved him against the wall, breathing hard, listening for pursuit that hadn't yet materialized but felt inevitable.

"There's an old maintenance corridor two floors down," Samuel said. "Not on any current blueprint. It'll get us clear of the main wing."

"How do you know about a corridor that's not on the blueprints?"

Samuel's eyes met his, and for the first time, Ryan saw something crack behind the composure, something that looked almost like grief. "Because I spent three years mapping every inch of this prison that Voss's people think doesn't exist. Looking for exactly what they're trying to erase tonight."

"Which is?"

"The truth about your brother."

The words landed like a blow to the chest. Before Ryan could speak, before he could demand what Samuel meant, what he knew, how long he'd known, the stairwell door above them slammed open and heavy boots began descending, fast, deliberate, too many of them for a routine patrol.

Samuel grabbed Ryan's arm and pulled him toward the lower door, toward the corridor that didn't exist, and Ryan went with him because there was nothing else left to do, because the alternative waiting at the top of those stairs had a name he'd only just learned to fear.

They hit the maintenance door together, and it wouldn't open.