Hit List by Jack Heath Page A

Benjamin.
    “Benjamin,” she mumbled, pressing the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry about before, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything, it was just—”
    “Forget it,” Benjamin said. “Buckland wants to do this rescue tomorrow. And we’ll have to be away overnight. Can you do it?”
    “Wait,” Ash said. “What? Away where?”
    “Not sure yet,” Benjamin said. “But Buckland said we’d be flying there, and that it’d take a while.”
    Ash yawned. “The school thinks I’m sick anyway – I can miss one more day. But why? What’s going on? Does Buckland know who Alice is?”
    “He said he’d explain everything on the way. Meet you at my place at eight a.m.?”
    “Okay,” Ash said. “See you then.” The phone slipped out of her fingers as she tried to put it back on the table. She intended to pick it up, but the bed was so soft, and
suddenly she was asleep again.

 
Beneath the Surface
    “Peachey,” the guard said. “You got a visitor.”
    Michael Peachey opened his eyes to see the same yellow concrete ceiling he’d been looking at for five months now. He’d stuck up some drawings of trees and bell towers – who
would have thought prison would have an art programme? – but they only made the cell gloomier by contrast.
    He’d been here for one hundred and fifty-three nights. He still had ten thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven to go.
    His anger had yet to fade. The government had paid him to kill Hammond Buckland to save their failing economy. And now, the same government had locked him up for the murder – even though
it turned out that Buckland wasn’t dead. There was no part of this that made sense.
    Peachey turned his head on the pillow to look at the two guards behind the thick shatterproof glass.
    “Visiting hours are over,” he said. “Get lost.” He shut his eyes again.
    “Visiting hours are when we say they are,” the guard told him. He was a balding man, middle-aged, but had few wrinkles – he looked like the sort of man who didn’t use his
face enough to crease it. “Are you coming out, or am I going to have to come in and get you?”
    Peachey remained still just long enough to worry the guard, then sat up. He swivelled on the mattress so his legs were over the side and then he dropped to the floor.
    The prisoner in the bunk below awoke with a start. “Whoa, man, what are you doing?”
    “Shut up,” Peachey said, “or I’ll tear your nose off your face.”
    The man fell silent. He was Peachey’s third cellmate so far. The first one had attacked Peachey when he refused to vacate the top bunk, and Peachey had broken his jaw. The second had
opened a letter from Peachey’s lawyer; he was currently in a coma.
    The new guy seemed smarter. He understood that Michael Peachey was a violent sociopath, easily provoked, and that the best way to survive a sentence at Hallett State Remand Centre was to stay
out of his way.
    Peachey pulled on his high-visibility orange overalls, turned his back to the guard, and put his hands through the slot in the cell door. The guard tightened manacles around his wrists, while a
second guard watched. Peachey heard the slot at the bottom of the door open, and felt shackles close around his ankles.
    “Step away from the door,” the guard said.
    Peachey did.
    “Thomas, you going to be good?”
    The other prisoner nodded.
    The door was unlocked with a rusty crunch. The balding guard walked into the cell and looped a chain over Peachey’s manacles and under his shackles, tightening it to keep his arms down by
his sides.
    “All right,” the guard said. “Let’s go.”
    He pushed Peachey through the door, followed him out, and locked it behind him. The other guard, a tall man with a thin moustache, prodded Peachey’s back with a baton.
    Peachey could feel the eyes of a hundred other prisoners, watching him from their cells. Gang members, bomb-makers, serial killers. Addicts who would gladly stab him for a single gram of