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represent an insurance company. He was a dual citizen of the USA and Canada, which allowed him to set up some dummy corporations on either side of the border. Suckers were more likely to believe you if you had international credentials. He had been arrested twice for insurance fraud, and a few times for smaller crimes. The majority of his prison time, though, was on charges of escape and attempted escape.
    Once upon a time, Josh was an electrical engineering student, and he could usually figure his way around the guts of an electric lock. Little tricks like picking locks and faking ID’s were picked up over the years in his line of work, and those skills had broken him out of three prisons so far. Of course, the most important skill was the ability to talk. Every one of Josh’s escapes had hinged on bribery and deception, which were by far his most effective skills.
    Josh did have one complaint about being stuck in ad seg. Daily life in a prison means a lot of scheduled, supervised activities, which means getting ordered around by guards. Josh needed those little daily interactions to sort out the guards. There were guards that would talk and joke, guards that would beat him and scream, guards that were OK until you crossed them. And every prison, no matter what, had at least one guard who’d agree to bust Josh Farewell out. He just had to find that guard, and then find the right way to ask.
     
    *****
     
    A day after he arrived, Leo Jimenez was still alive.
    Santos didn’t want to go to the hole. It was hell. He couldn’t take it. Santos was a social animal, he needed camaraderie, someone to talk to. The problem was that the warden knew it. More than a week in administrative segregation and Santos ended up breaking his fingernails off on the walls. A full year? He’d probably kill himself. Santos was a tough, hard man; a murderer and a thug, but the hole was too much for him.
    The warden was dangling justice in front of him. He had exactly what he wanted, and then Quinn tells him that the price is a year in the hole. It’s a price they both knew Santos wouldn’t pay. Not even for the heart of that snake, Leo.
    It was a day since he first saw Leo, and Santos and his crew were hanging out in the yard. There was Charlie, a shaved-headed wiry little guy who was good with a knife; Carlos, who was the biggest and probably smartest of the crew; Delman, a black guy who had been assigned as Santos’s cellmate and eventually crossed racial lines to join the group; Eli, one of Santos’s oldest advisors and friends, and a small number of other men that Santos could trust. They were all well aware of the threat that they’d all be punished if Leo was killed.
    “Fuck it, do him anyway,” said Charlie.
    “We can’t just get him anyway,” Carlos was usually the cool headed one. Despite his bulging muscles, he had neither ‘roids nor rage.
    “We can’t kill him.” Santos said, “But nobody said we can’t kick the shit out of him, did they Eli?”
    “We could leave him something to remember us by,” added Delman, “something permanent.” Eli put his hand in his chin and thought about it.
    “Man who walks with a cane remembers how he got it,” said Carlos, stubbing out a cigarette against a fencepost.
    “But Leo’s crazy enough he’d just come back at us first chance he got. Even if he has to wait fifteen years.” Santos knew his former apprentice well. “Am I right or what, Eli?”
    Eli was still thinking it over. “You know he’ll carry the grudge. Anything we do, he’ll escalate. We throw punches, he’ll come back with a blade. If we do hit him, it would have to kill him. Otherwise, he’d take someone out. But we can’t do that. Warden’s got us cold.” Santos nodded.
    “What if he has an accident? Not murder if he slips and falls,” offered Delman.
    “In the same week that I swore he’d end up dead?” Santos said, accepting what Eli had said. The warden had found his weakness and exploited it.