HL 04-The Final Hour by Andrew Klavan Read Free Book Online Page A

Talk to my mom. Don’t let my mom lose hope. There’s an appeal in the works. It’s going to take a month or two, but it could get me out.”
    “Do you really think so?” she said. Her voice cracked. When I heard it, my heart cracked too.
    “We’ll see,” I said. “They’re working on it. We’ll see.”
    Her eyes went over my face again. “A month or two. You’ll miss Christmas.”
    “I know,” I said. “It’s gonna be all right, Beth. Don’t worry.”
    “Okay.”
    “That was really unconvincing.”
    “I’m so scared for you, Charlie. Look at you. Why don’t they keep you safe?”
    I tried to smile. “Think of it as a chance for me to practice my karate.”
    It wasn’t much of a joke, but she tried to smile back all the same. “That reminds me,” she said. “Sensei Mike says hello. You weren’t allowed any more visitors this week so he said he’d wait till there was an opening, then he’d come see you. Josh, too, and Miler and Rick. They want to come too.” Her voice caught a little again and again I could feel it inside me. But she swallowed her tears. “Sorry,” she said. “It just seems kind of awful, you know. When I think about it. It seems kind of awful that they can keep you in here when you haven’t done anything. It seems awful they can tell you who you can see or who can visit you.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “They can tell you just about everything. Where to go, what to do, when to eat . . .”
    I had to stop talking then. I bit my lip. I just sat there, looking out at her through the window. Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
    When the guard came to tell us visiting hours were over, I felt something plummet inside me, going down, down, down very fast. It would be another week before I saw anyone I loved again. A week in here, surrounded by walls and guns and angry men.
    I watched Beth go down the hall with the other visitors. Just before she went out the door, she turned back and waved. It’s hard to describe what it was like to see her go, to see my parents go. There was that plummeting feeling, but also—well, in some ways, I was almost glad they were gone. I hated to have them see me here. In this gray uniform with a number on it. With guards pushing me around and telling me what I could and couldn’t do. An animal in a cage.
    I’ll get out, I told myself. Rose’ll get me out. Two months, maybe three. I just need courage. I just have to survive .
    That’s what I told myself.
    But I was way wrong.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Desperate Measures
     
    Dinnertime.
    The cafeteria was a big room with green cinder-block walls and a metal ceiling. There were long shiny metal tables with benches bolted to the floor on either side. The prisoners moved in a line past the service counter. A gray line of gray men. Staff servers scooped some kind of meat onto our plates. Some kind of vegetables and potatoes too. Guards stood against the wall and watched us, sharp-eyed.
    I thought back to the cafeteria in my high school. I thought about clowning around there with Josh and Miler and Rick. I thought about the first time I talked to Beth, how she wrote her phone number on my arm. It was only a little more than a year ago. It might as well have been a lifetime.
    I carried my tray to a spot near the wall and sat down. I had to eat and keep watch at the same time. If someone was going to try to kill me again, this would be a good place to do it, guards or no.
    So I ate and I watched. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a relaxing meal. There were no relaxing meals in Abingdon.
    After a couple of minutes had gone by, I noticed something strange. No one else was sitting down at my table. The benches around me were empty, as if the other prisoners were avoiding me. That made my adrenaline start flowing. It wasn’t normal. It meant something was going on. Something was about to happen.
    What did happen took me by surprise. My table started to fill up—and all the prisoners who were sitting down around