Chapter 11 - The Blackout
Emergency lights flickered red.
An alarm began screaming.
Mitchell stood.
"Stay here."
Leah grabbed his arm.
"Chloe isn't here, right?"
"No."
"Where is Elena?"
"Death row."
He ran into the corridor.
The blackout affected two cell blocks and the administrative wing.
Backup power should have activated immediately.
It didn't.
Inside Cell 18, Elena woke to darkness.
Then footsteps.
Not the normal measured walk of officers.
Faster.
One set.
Stopping outside her door.
Elena sat up.
"Bell?"
No answer.
Metal clicked.
Her door opened.
A figure stepped inside.
Elena backed against the wall.
"Who's there?"
The man wore a maintenance uniform.
But Elena recognized his voice.
"You should have died yesterday."
Calvin Rusk.
Her body went cold.
"What are you doing here?"
"Fixing a mistake."
He moved toward her.
Elena grabbed the metal cup beside her sink.
Rusk laughed.
"Put that down."
"Come closer."
He did.
Elena threw the cup at his face.
Rusk flinched.
She lunged past him.
He caught her hair.
Elena screamed.
Rusk slammed her into the wall.
"You think that recording saves you?"
Elena clawed his wrist.
The raven tattoo flashed in the emergency light.
She drove her elbow backward.
Rusk grunted.
Then Officer Bell appeared at the doorway.
"Get away from her!"
Rusk turned.
Bell froze.
"Detective?"
Rusk reached toward his waistband.
Bell drew first.
"Hands!"
Rusk stopped.
Other officers rushed in.
Mitchell arrived seconds later.
He stared at Rusk.
"How did you get inside my prison?"
Rusk smiled.
"Ask your security people."
Mitchell saw Elena bleeding from the lip.
"Handcuff him."
Rusk's smile disappeared.
"You don't have jurisdiction to arrest me."
Bell snapped cuffs onto his wrists.
"Tonight I don't care."
Within thirty minutes, power returned.
Investigators discovered the backup generator had been manually disabled.
A temporary prison maintenance worker was missing.
So was his access badge.
Rusk refused to answer questions.
But he had made one mistake.
When Bell searched him, he found a syringe.
The liquid inside was later identified as concentrated potassium chloride.
Enough to kill Elena.
Leah stood outside the medical unit after doctors treated her.
"He was going to kill you."
Elena touched her swollen lip.
"No."
Leah frowned.
"He was going to make it look like I killed myself before the hearing."
Mitchell entered.
"Rusk is being transferred to state custody."
Elena stared at him.
"Don't let Bell County touch him."
"They won't."
Leah's phone vibrated.
Mina Shah.
"Please tell me you have good news."
"I found something in the original crime-scene photos."
"What?"
"The blood on Elena's shirt."
Leah looked at Elena.
"What about it?"
"The prosecution said it was impact spatter from the stabbing."
"Yes."
"It wasn't."
Leah stood straighter.
"How do you know?"
"Because someone photographed the shirt before the blood was on it."
Silence.
Mina continued.
"The timestamp is twenty-three minutes after Nathan's estimated time of death."
Leah's voice dropped.
"And when was the bloody shirt photographed?"
"Forty-six minutes later."
Elena stared at her.
May you like
Mina finished:
"Someone added Nathan's blood while Elena was already in police custody."
