Page 52 of A Cage He Owns

He looked at the corners.

Not obviously. He was talking the whole time, some easy nonsense about the drive out here and the state of the roads. But his eyes went up and around, corner to corner. Then they went to the top of the door frame and to the window before he seemed to relax enough to let his shoulders drop half an inch.

I knew what checking a room out for cameras looked like, as I had done it myself in fifteen towns.

As for the man, he was well dressed and perfectly composed, with an easy manner and the kind of face that had spent a whole career being reasonable with people. Nothing about him was out of place at all. The only thing I found myself watching was the wedding ring he turned around and around on his finger while he talked, and I doubt he even knew that he was doing it.

“Miss Vale.” He sat on the edge of Halloran’s desk rather than behind it, which I think was meant to be friendly. “I wanted to say that you’ve been doing excellent work down here. Better than excellent, as Dr. Halloran speaks very highly of you.” I nearly swallowed my own tongue hearing this.

Dr. Halloran, to my certain knowledge, had never spoken about my work, let alone given me the impression that he thought it was good. However, I didn’t express any of this and instead went with the more polite choice.

“That’s kind of you.”

“I’d like to extend your contract.” He said it warmly, the way you would offer somebody a promotion. “Another six weeks past the end of the current one, with a review after that. Better rate and I can have it through to your agency this afternoon.”

And there it was. I didn’t understand a word of what was happening, but every hair on my arms stood up anyway. Because nobody extends an agency nurse in her second week. You don’t know if she’s any good or can hack the job. So, you extend her at the end of her term, and you do it through the agency, in writing. I knew that much for sure. But as for the warden of a maximum-security prison, I very much doubted he was the man who did it… personally. Hell, I was surprised that he even knew the name of the temp in medical.

“That’s very generous,” I said with my veil firmly in place, presenting it the way I had a thousand times before.

“However, I will have to decline. I’m only here until the placement finishes. I’ve got family things coming up but thank you for the offer.”

I waited after that for the push. There was always a push. Let me put it in writing anyway, sleep on it, think it over, we can talk about money, that type of thing. I’ve had a few instances like this one in the last three years and most of them I would have loved to have accepted.

But not this one.

“Of course,” he said.

That was it. Just a simple acceptance. Then he pushed off from the desk and straightened his jacket. His casual actions told me that he had fully expected me to say no. And that in itself gave me cause to question why he was here asking me something he already knew the answer to.

He walked to the door and opened it for me, and I went to go through it, but then he didn’t step back the way a person does. He stayed exactly where he was, so that going through meant going close to him. Close enough for him to put his head down toward mine and speak so quietly that I felt it more than heard it.

“When your contract is up, go… go far from here.”

I stopped dead.

“I’m sorry?”

“Not another placement in this county.” His face hadn’t changed at all. He was still doing the polite, meaningless smile for anybody in the corridor to see, but his eyes were fixed on mine, and I have never in my life taken a stranger more seriously when he told me,

“Get in your car and drive far away from here, Miss Vale, and don’t tell anyone in this building where you went.”

“Why are you…” He was quick to cut me off.

“You seem like a good person,” he said gently. “There aren’t very many of those in here. That’s all.” And then he stepped away, and the polite warmth came back to the moment we had first started with.

“Well, think about it and let me know,” he said in a much louder voice, as if he knew there would be people listening. Then he walked away down that corridor, past the officers, nodding at them, the casual way a man in charge does when heading back to his office.

As for me, my mind was still processing all he had said. I stood outside Dr. Halloran’s office, frozen on the spot, trying to make sense of it all. To make sense of why the warden of Ashlock had come down to medical to offer me a contract he didn’t want me to take. Why he then warned me to run. To get in my car and drive far away from here without telling a single person at Ashlock where I was going.

Which meant the first part of the conversation had been fake, because why would you offer to extend a job to somebody you hoped wouldn’t take it, unless you had been forced to?

Perhaps forced by a man who seemed to be pulling every string in this prison. The very same man who was going to great lengths to make me stay.

No longer just a ghost but now…

A puppet master.

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