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    I got back in my car and drove down to the county jail, a building just as squat and ugly as it sounds. I didn’t know much about women’s incarceration, apart from what I had learned in academic treatises like Caged Heat . I was fairly certain that the pillow fights would be kept to the bare minimum and the showers were probably not as soft-focusy. I didn’t want to think about what jail was really like, so I had to try to drown out the worry for Mina. I’d get her out of there. Fast as I could.
    On the stereo: “What’s My Scene” by the Hoodoo Gurus.
    A little on the nose, if you ask me, since it was the lament of a double agent working for the Office of Naval Intelligence. Sorry, ONI, no one is buying what you’re selling.
    Bordered by the 101 freeway to the south and railroad tracks to the east, the county lockup was the kind of place where hope was shot in the back of the head and buried in an unmarked grave. It almost could have been an office park, if not for the larger, intimidating structure with barred windows growing behind it, like the big scary goon looming behind the little mastermind. I parked a block away, because I’m not a total idiot. No reason to lock your car behind another layer of security when you can just have it on the street.
    I popped the trunk and opened up my bag, sifting through the IDs. Who was I today? I squinted over at the jail like it would tell me something. Who ran the jails these days? It was one of those institutions that passed through a lot of hands because there was a lot of really obvious power in controlling how people were incarcerated. Before I left, LA’s jails were squarely in New Camelot hands, but I’d been gone for a year. No telling who ran the place now, or how happy they’d be to find an errand boy suddenly back from the dead.
    I decided to play it more or less safe and grabbed my LAPD ID, slipping it into my wallet and putting the badge wallet in my other pocket. I approached the jail confidently. A lot can be said for simple confidence, and I’d gotten into a ton of places just by playing it Bogart. Most people don’t want trouble, and if you look like you belong, they’re not going to challenge you.
    The front of the jail was almost the exact foyer you’d see in an office. Floor-to-ceiling windows with some stencils on the glass. But just inside, instead of a pretty receptionist, there was a metal detector and large men with guns on their hips. The glass was probably bulletproof, but that wasn’t something I planned on testing. I went up to the detector, emptied my pockets into the plastic tray, and went right through.
    It’s times like this I’m glad I don’t have a plate in my head or an adamantium-laced skeleton. The guard gave me a look, but I could tell he couldn’t see much past the white duckbill on my face.
    “Boating accident,” I said to him.
    “Uh-huh.”
    As I gathered my stuff up from the tray and put it back in my pockets, I glanced around and met the eyes of another guard. She was staring at me hard and speaking into a walkie-talkie. Probably a coincidence. Could have been talking about anything, right? I gave her a thin smile and started down the hallway, fighting the urge to walk too fast.
    The hallway took a turn up ahead. I figured I could get my bearings in a little while. My steps echoed off the sterile walls and floors and I tried to pretend that this was just another day in my life as an LAPD officer. I had been here lots of times before, and not as a prisoner. I fit in here. I belong here, on this side of the cage.
    Two guards came around the corner ahead of me, looking like they were trying to stare me down into the floor. One said something into his radio, but all I could hear was a mutter and a click. Maybe I should leave talking to Mina to her lawyer and get the hell out. I turned, only to find two more of the guards from the security checkpoint coming up quick, blocking the path to the exit. I was trapped in