Hit List by Jack Heath Page B

meth.
As the supposed murderer of a celebrity, he was used to being stared at – but it was harder to remain calm while he was in leg irons and his observers weren’t.
    The guards led him out of the cell block and into an exercise yard with featureless cement walls that were five metres high and almost as thick. There was a steel grille above, separating him
from the starless sky. He suddenly wondered if he had a visitor at all. Maybe the guards intended to beat him to death with their batons, here and now. Maybe they were working for the federal
agents who’d originally hired him. Or, perhaps, for Buckland himself.
    Peachey figured he could knock down one of the guards with a headbutt, then jump onto his chest and stop his heart, or at least snap his sternum so he couldn’t get back up. But he
couldn’t see a way to stop the other one from cracking his skull with the baton. If they were here to kill him, he was going to die.
    He was led through the exercise yard, all the way to the door at the other end, without incident.
    The visiting room was a dull, sterile hall, with two doors. One was marked Visitors , the other Remandees . There were eight small tables evenly spaced around the room, with four
chairs bolted to the floor around each one. Three were brown, one was grey. The brown chairs were for visitors. The grey chairs were harder, with straighter backs.
    When Peachey shuffled in, Detective Wright was sitting in a brown chair. He raised his paper coffee cup by way of greeting.
    What the hell? Peachey thought. What’s he doing here, at this time of night?
    One of the guards pushed Peachey down into the chair opposite Wright. Wright sipped his coffee while Peachey stared at him.
    Peachey was the first to speak. “You’ve found Buckland,” he guessed.
    “Not yet,” Wright said. “But we will. Tell me where he is, and I’ll get five years taken off your sentence.”
    “You don’t have the authority to do that.”
    “Don’t I? Maybe I know something you don’t. Maybe some evidence was overlooked in your trial. Maybe enough to open it up to appeal, if someone were to bring it to the judge.
But that won’t happen, unless you help me find the body.”
    “There is no body. He’s not dead.”
    Wright’s face was inscrutable. “Serve the full thirty – see if I care.”
    Buckland can’t stay underground for ever, Peachey thought. Someone will find him, sooner or later, and when it goes public, the government will have to let me out of here.
    Wright wouldn’t have come here just to offer Peachey deals he’d already rejected. Peachey said, “So what do you want?”
    “I’ve found your accomplice,” Wright said.
    Peachey raised an eyebrow. “My accomplice?”
    “Don’t insult me. She kept my team distracted while you were hunting Buckland, and then she was with you when you killed him, standing nice and close so my sniper couldn’t drop
you. Plus, I saw you say something to her on your way out.”
    Peachey clenched his hands into fists behind his back. Buckland’s puppet, he thought. The one who knocked me out, and ran me over in a stolen car. Wright thinks she was working for me.
    “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.
    “No?” Wright didn’t look convinced. “Brunette, young, hell of a liar. Calls herself Ashley. Ring any bells?”
    Ashley . Peachey smiled. Now I know your name. When I get out of here, I’ll get you. I’ll make you lead me to Buckland, and then I’ll kill you both.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t think I know her. Did you get a last name?”
    “Tell me where she is,” Wright said, “and I’ll get them to take off ten years. With good behaviour, you could be out of here by the time you’re
fifty.”
    “I thought you said you’d found her.”
    Wright flung his coffee into Peachey’s face so fast he didn’t have time to blink. He gasped as the fluid stung his skin – not hot, but ice-cold. Wright had been drinking a
frappuccino.
    “Last