1

      Six years later

      Gatesville Unit, Texas Department of Corrections

      Gatesville, Texas

      Wednesday, May 9, 2001

      “Butler! Shut it down, you have a visitor.”

      About to drop her hood to weld the rest of a handrail, Bay Butler hesitated and glanced over at Sergeant Draper scowling at her from the doorway. At first she thought she must be hearing things, then the woman squeezed into a size-sixteen prison guard uniform aimed her baton. Bay shut down the machine.

      What the hell…?

      She couldn’t imagine who wanted to see her. She had no family, so-called friends had abandoned her ages ago, and the most rabid reporter had long lost interest in her. Nevertheless, she knew better than to question when a prison guard gave a directive, particularly this one. Bay got along well enough with most of the staff—they left her alone, while she pretended they were part of the concrete and steel surrounding her—but Draper had made it clear from day one that she thought Bay belonged on Death Row.

      Setting her hood on top of the welding machine, Bay approached the woman whose face would make a plastic surgeon think, “Windfall.” Keeping her own expression passive, she dealt with an unwelcome rush of adrenaline. Why hope? Hope, she’d learned the hard way, was for babies, brides and fools. Yet Draper knew something. Suspicion and trouble were unpleasant scents to season Bay’s memory as she struggled to remember what she might have done wrong in the last six days, never mind six years. It had to be a trick of some kind; no one on the outside cared whether she lived or rotted here and she had no assets, therefore, no need for a beneficiary to encourage her early demise. Her life had been reduced to its lowest common denominator.

      Six years…in another six weeks. Any more sixes, she mused, and she was going to start wondering if the Bible-thumpers—whom she avoided as diligently as she did prison troublemakers—were right about the antichrist already being present on earth. That, too, said bad things about her state of mind.

      Wary, Bay followed the surly guard’s directives down the hall. She knew better than to ask questions. As far as Draper was concerned, if you were at Gatesville, you were guilty and should serve your full term, and the guard did her best to make sure Bay understood that went doubly for her.

      The cloudless Texas sky blinded Bay as she crossed the prison yard, and the packed clay tested her bones and joints as much as the concrete floors of the prison did. Gatesville was the state’s main women’s facility, located about an hour west of Waco, hard country that fooled you. Gently rolling terrain let you believe over the next slope was a lake, a stream, maybe an oasis of woods when the only break from the incessant sun was the scrub brush and rain-starved cedars. For as far as she could see the dusty, heat-scorched vegetation littered the land like storm debris. Bay never yearned for the soothing shade of the piney woods more than when she was ordered outside to fulfill state requirements for “fresh air and exercise.”

      The plant-bare yard was speckled with a number of women cloistered in a corner like chickens without feed and unionizing in protest. Several called to her, whistled and blew taunting kisses. Bay had a certain reputation among the inmates, not for any unpredictability or violent tendencies, but for her refusal to make group alliances. It wasn’t a focused intent, she simply wasn’t and never had been tribal, didn’t join clubs and other variations of so-called support groups as a means of feeling secure. An only child raised in what any first-year psych student would recognize as an unorthodox manner, her social skills weren’t only untapped, they remained buried rootstock, or worse, like invisible seeds on Mars.

      Unfortunately for her, Bay resembled the very people who came from various ministries to attend to the needs of her soul. Slim to the point of gaunt, having saved her sanity by plunging herself in relentless work, she was as pale as a chronic anemic. What color she did have was welding burns. Add her artist’s feverish, unblinking stare and she could pass for a seer, or someone in need of a white jacket with sleeves that tied, which explained why all but the most fearless inmates avoided her, as one would any unknown commodity. It was those predators, the ones who traveled in the strongest packs that refused to be permanently thwarted. Bay carried a few scars from them—the chronic ache of cracked ribs, a broken finger and damaged spleen.

      It was her skill with metal that had kept her alive, that and the fact that the new warden, after a visit to the infirmary, had done her homework. Upon reading Bay’s file, the woman assigned her to the prison mechanic shop. Ever since, Bay worked at repaying her by methodically cutting down on the list of repairs and improvements needed at the facility, those frequently put off due to budget constraints. The move hadn’t stopped the diehards from their taunts, though. As she crossed the yard they stuttered, “B-b-b,” or called, “Hey, Baby Butt Butler!” or “Yo! Bitch Bonnie Bay.” But, as always, unless someone addressed her as “Bay” or “Butler,” she tuned them out.

      After the debilitating heat it was a relief to enter the visitors building, although the air-conditioning sounded as though it was ready to go at any second. Either that or souls from previous inmates were haunting the ventilation system. Still, it was a good twenty degrees cooler than outside, almost thirty better than at the shop. But what caused Bay to shiver was the reminder that she hadn’t been in here since her first month at Gatesville and that she’d forgotten procedure. Hesitating once too often after a directive earned her Draper’s scorn.

      “Hell, Butler, has inhaling those gas fumes numbed your brain?” the guard snapped as they stood outside the last set of gates. “I said pass through.”

      Bay intended to…but she’d spotted whom she was being handed off to, a great hulk of flesh with a face that made Draper a beauty queen. Would he insist on a body search, too, before she was allowed to see if any of this was worth it?

      Bay clenched her teeth and stepped into the cell-like corridor. Then she stood staring through the bars at the door of mystery while the WWF reject attempted to get his jollies, only to discover he was wasting his time, since she was flat going and coming.

      Muttering in disappointment or disgust, he directed her to the visitation room. “Cubicle six,” he recited in a voice that Disney Studios might contract to play a drowning grouper. “Stay seated, use the phones, no passing anything over the partition. No body contact whatsoever. Any infraction and the meeting’s over. You give me any lip and the meeting’s over. You try something stupid and you go into Solitary. Clear?”

      “Yes, sir.” Bay’s automatic reply hid her consternation. Sixth cubicle. Six-six-six.

      Her trepidation didn’t ease once she arrived at the designated spot. Not only was the man waiting for her a total stranger, he had all of the markings