Alpha Kill - 03 Read Online Free PDF Page A

the wardens and guards in the numerous prisons he’d found himself locked up in, far more. None of them treated him like a fascinating case study, or even an object of curiosity. None of them appeared to give a rat’s ass about why he was the way he was, why he’d lived his life the way he had.
    They saw him simply as bad news. A highly dangerous beast, who would always be a threat to society, and who therefore needed to be removed from society and kept as far away as possible.
    Drake, on the other hand, viewed them merely as obstacles to his freedom. And they knew it.
    They had clear, unambiguous views about Drake, and he had the same about them. And he liked that. As far as he was concerned, relations between people ought to be simple. That way, you knew where you stood.
    Drake recalled one group counseling session he’d been forced to attend, early on in his incarceration at Horn Creek. He and five other inmates had trooped into a room that looked like a kid’s nursery. Brightly patterned wallpaper. Stinky pink flowers in a vase on a desk. There was even a box of toys – toys , for Chrissakes – against one wall.
    The counsellor, Luke, must have been forty years old, but dressed like he was in kindergarten, with funky yellow jeans and sneakers and a Tee-shirt. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail, leaving his balding forehead even more exposed, and a tiny diamond winked in one earlobe. He sat with his feet apart and his knees pressed together, as if he was trying to hide the fact that he had no balls.
    He talked to Drake and his fellow inmates about the need to love yourself before you could love other people. He suspected the six prisoners were, deep down, unhappy people who’d done things that were very wrong, yes, but who hadn’t in the end chosen to do those things. The past couldn’t be undone, Luke said, but if every man in that room looked inside himself, he could discover who he truly was, and learn to make peace with that person, and make the future a better place for himself and for society.
    Drake’s first urge was to launch himself across the room and knock the guy out of his chair. But the guards were just beyond the door, armed with batons and prods, and they’d be well aware of the potential for violence in this kind of situation. One suspicious move from Drake or any of his fellow inmates, and the guards would be on them and beating them into submission.
    Instead, Drake and the other five played a little ‘joke’.
    They attended the weekly sessions and actually paid attention to what Luke was saying. At first they were sullen, but gradually as the sessions went on they began to show an interest, to ask questions, to go along with the exercises the counselor set for them. Drake recalled sitting on the floor at one point with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, his eyes shut, murmuring over and over again, “Come out. Don’t be scared. Come out. Don’t be scared,” to his inner being. He’d never fought so hard before to keep a straight face.
    Luke was delighted at their progress. At the end of each session he summed up what they’d achieved, with the help of a whiteboard on which he charted their collective ‘journey of discovery’. The journey was a rocky, hazardous one, with mountains and rivers and ravines along the way, all of them drawn by Luke in loving detail. But Drake and his peers had built bridges along the way, developed ‘creative solutions’ to overcome the numerous obstacles, and were proving themselves stronger for it.
    Luke never mentioned anything about their sentences. He didn’t have to. They all knew good behavior during these sessions would have no bearing on how quickly they got out. The authorities weren’t dumb, even if Luke was. The criminal justice system wasn’t looking to rehabilitate any of them, just to keep them away from decent folks for as long as possible, in some cases for life.
    So Drake and the other five cons had no obvious vested