MISCHA LOOKED AT HER watch: 1:47 a.m. Thirteen minutes before the shift change. And who knew if the replacement guard might come a little early? She might have just a handful of minutes.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfFJfHLlZst
She looked back at her handiwork in the secured room. Her mind was racing. The rush of adrenaline was clouding her thoughts. Had she done everything right? Thought of everything? She knew, in her semi-panicked state, that it was possible she'd made a mistake.
But there was no turning back now.
She closed the door to the secured room behind her. She ran through the main area to the infirmary's exit door. Before, there was no camera on her, so she didn't need to worry about appearances.
But now she did.
She took a breath to calm herself before she opened the door into G wing. She hoped like hell that she was right and that Coralie had cleared out this wing.
She opened the door with both hands. She looked down the corridor at the guard booth by the door leading downstairs to the parking garage. Empty. She looked the other way, at the guard booth near solitary. Also empty.
What she expected, but you never knew.
Very soon, the prison staff getting ready to go home would be coming down this very corridor in G wing to take the stairs down to the parking garage.
She went to the guard booth where Coralie and Josette had conveniently turned off the security monitors. She turned them back on. She looked at the grainy, black-and-white image on the screen that monitored the secured room. It looked okay. It looked as she wanted it to look.
She found a set of keys, presumably Josette's and her key card. Her shift would be ending soon. She'd already visited her locker and picked up her keys. Her plan had been to kill Mischa and then waltz downstairs and drive out of the garage.
She walked to the door leading to the underground parking garage, past the empty guard booth next to it----G-3, she thought they called this booth. Some of the prison staff who would be passing by here soon, when their shift ended, might find the empty guard booth alarming. The regulations were clear, of course, that any possible exit out of this prison, including access to the parking garage, required a guard booth. But their prison was notoriously understaffed, it was the middle of the night, when every prisoner was locked down, and what bleary-eyed staffer leaving work at 2:00 a.m. feels like making waves?
That was her hope, at least.
She swiped Josette's key card and the door handle released. Her heart did a small leap.
She heard voices at the far end of the corridor, two or three women with the frivolous lilt to their voices that came with being happy to be leaving work---and a tad early at that. They were coming her way, to this same staircase.
She took the stairs down quickly. She could taste it now---freedom! When she got to the bottom of the staircase, there was a gray door and another slot for the key cad. She swiped it and the door handle released.
The smell of gasoline greeted her in the underground parking garage. The surface area was large, but it was the overnight shift, and there were only about forty or fifty vehicles down there. Most of them were clustered in the front rows of the parking garage, nearest the door. A few were spread out along the back, separated by several rows from the cluster.
Shit!
The voices behind Mischa would be coming down there soon, so she had to move fast. She had to find Josette's car. Once those women got down there, she'd have a hard time explaining who she was, or why she didn't know which car was hers.
She weighed Josette's car keys in her hand. Why the hell couldn't she have one of those key-fob remotes that made her car beep?
Playing the odds, though not necessarily using logic, she picked the cluster of vehicles closest to the door. She jogged down the first line of cars, looking for Josette's car. She had no idea what kind of car she drove. That information would have been too risky for Donatello to convey to her, even in code, over the telephone.
But she knew her license plate number, which Donatello had discovered just by parking his car outside the prison two nights ago and waiting for Josette to drive out.
As she jogged along, scanning the license plates in the third row, the parking garage door opened and the voices of those staffers echoed through the garage. She crouched down so they wouldn't see her. She peeked through a couple of cars at them.
Three women. All guards, cracking a joke as they walked toward her.
Now what?
Move. She couldn't let them see her. If they did, the jig, as they say, was up.
She stayed in her crouch, moving quickly on the balls of her feet to the far end of the row. The women, without breaking stride and still chatting, sliced through the middle of the parked cards in the front cluster, the stride of their heavy boots echoing on the concrete. She was crouched behind a car on the end, ready to move to stay out of their line of vision.
They all stopped in the fourth row. Carpoolers?
No. Each of them got into a separate car, all within a few spots of one another.
Oh. Oh, sure. They worked the same shift. They arrived at approximately the same time. That made sense. One shift full of cars parks as close as possible to the door. Then the next shift comes in and parks farther back. Then the next shift comes and takes the better spots up close, which were vacated by the two previous shifts. They cycle would repeat itself.
The clump of cars here up front were the cards parked by the 8-to-2 shift, which was just ending.
But Josette worked a double shift today. She started at 2:00 p.m. She wouldn't be parked with this shift. She'd be parked with the 2-to-8 shift.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoCZkaI8RJ9
Mischa looked to her left, to the cars in the back cluster. About ten cars. Fewer than a dozen people had worked double shifts. One of those cars belonged to Josette.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQzp6uSdOfV
She heard two things at the same time: the parking garage door opening again, as other prison staffers snuck out a few minutes early; and the squeal of tires as more cars came into the lot down a curved ramp in the far corner---the overnight shift arriving for duty, entering the prison from the side opposite the exit.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡECPT3qauZL
They were coming at Mischa from both directions now.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ93pswPLtJd
She weighed her options, which included (literally) sliding under a car and. But it was only going to get worse. She looked at her watch: 1:54 A.M. The remainder of this shift was going to be coming down the stairs any minutes. And a number of other employees were going to be arriving, beginning now, and parking in the available spaces in the back, by Josette's car.341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHXeIHhR32E
She was running out of time!341Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9KmCnM4B38
