Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas

Tucker was on Nick's bed, feeling with his fingertips under the mattress frame for anything Nick might have hidden. He was working quickly, and hoping that to an observer below he might appear to be Stokes, either sleeping or maybe having one off.

"Stokes?" The whisper came from below. Tucker froze.

"It's me, but don't turn around." Tucker knew that voice. One of the guards? But which one?

"Our contact wanted me to tell you, good news. Looks like your sister is gonna make it, maybe she'll be home when we get you outta here."

There was a soft rustling, and Tucker, slipped carefully back down to his own bunk, watching the guard retreating down the cellblock. So, Nick Stokes had a guard looking out for him, and thinking he was going home? Tucker whistled tunelessly as he pondered this bit of news.

- - -

Franklin Building, 204th Court, Dallas, Texas

"Your Honor? This was just delivered to the courthouse."

"Thank you, Earl." Judge Matt Stokes took a look at the contents of the envelope, and nodded to his assistant. He had been expecting something like this.

He sat at his desk, with a picture of the current president over one shoulder, and his degree from UTEP over the other. Despite his expectations, the reality was a little overwhelming.

He blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief, and settled his reading glasses on the end of his nose. He'd had LASIK to correct the far-sightedness but he still needed the glasses for newsprint.

The Dallas Morning News headline was simple: "Disgraced Cop Dead in Prison."

The article was straightforward.

"Huntsville, TX-

Nicholas Stokes, 34, formerly of the Dallas Police Department, was found dead in his cell in the maximum-security wing of the state penitentiary early this morning. The body was discovered during a routine search when Stokes did not report for a scheduled exercise period. Preliminary cause of death appears to be asphyxiation due to hanging, but the investigation is ongoing.

"Mr. Stokes was discovered hanging from the bed frame by a noose constructed from torn clothing," says Detective Tony Zuiker. "We may never know for certain the events of the last few hours of his life."

Stokes, imprisoned after a plea bargain on conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, was the son of Judge Matthew Stokes, 204th Court, Dallas. He is survived by his parents and six siblings…"

The article was dated for the following week. Underneath were a phone number and a printed message: "It doesn't have to end this way."

Judge Stokes folded the paper carefully and set it on his desk. He put his reading glasses back in his shirt pocket. He dialed the phone number.

"Yes?"

The voice was muffled, unrecognizable.

"This is Judge Stokes. I got your message."

There was a pause, perhaps of gloating.

"So, you understand, when it comes to your son, Judge Stokes-"

Stokes interrupted the speaker. "My son is already dead to me. Goodbye."

He hung up the phone, and stared at it for a long while. He took his cell out of his desk drawer, where he kept his phone and keys while wearing his robes or working around the office. He dialed from memory.

"This is Judge Stokes. It's started."

He hung up the phone. He went to the small sink in what used to be the wet bar in his office. He didn't drink, hadn't for years, but he still stocked the sink with a few odds and ends. He took a small bottle of mouthwash out of the cabinet and took a pull straight from the bottle. The medicinal mint flavor burned his gums but not his tongue, scorched by too many jalapeño peppers over the years.

He spit a mixture of bile and mouthwash into the sink, and blotted at his mouth with his handkerchief. The tears in his eyes refused to fall, so he ignored them. He went back to work.

- - -

Exercise yard, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas

Nick stood, stripped to the waist, with sweat sliding off his body like rain off the hood of a finely engineered German sports car. When it got this hot out, there is no real difference between workout sweat and lying around sweat, so you might as well workout. Nick rolled his head and heard the tension crackling. He raised his gloves again, chomped his mouthpiece and leaned into the heavy bag.

He'd never gone in much for boxing. Nick's shoulders were too broad and his arms too short, relative to the ideal fighter's build, to make a great boxer. Still, there was something very satisfying about working a series of jabs into the heavy bag, feeling the pop when he connected just right, with a snap at the end of the jab.

He flexed his knees and varied his angle and distance, but he didn't have any real footwork to speak of. He didn't have a killer instinct, or a naturally dangerous air about him. But he was young, and very fit, and surrounded by murderers and rapists and pedophiles, so he was managing to look like God's own killing machine, if that's what it took.

Across the yard, a heavyset Hispanic man with elaborate tattoos covering his torso and arms was slowly curling free weights. As the most feared, and most respected member of the Latino population in Unit 5, Pablo Hinojosa was given plenty of room. He watched the slow white boy, trying to look tough at the heavy bag.

He thought about what he had learned that morning, and he watched the white boy. They said he had Aryan ink and had met with Otto. Pablo knew better than to screw with Otto. There just wasn't any profit in it. Pablo watched, and lifted the weights in either hand and thought.

He thought about the judge who had put him in Huntsville. He thought about the years he had been marking time, waiting for the chance to make things right. And now, here was this boy, this slow white boy with a decent jab but no right hand at all.

Tonight, it would be time to make things right.

- - -

Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas

"Hey, Nick, I got a question for you," Tucker started in before Stokes had even entered the cell. "You got friends, right? Connections, family, right?"

"Not really," Nick said flatly. He was tired and his shoulders were sore from the workout. Dinner had been plain but edible, and he was fighting the combination of fatigue and stress. "I mean, I wound up here, right?"

"Listen man," Tucker whined, "I know you have connections. Your old man, he's a judge, your mom's some hot shit Public Defender?"

"Let it go, Tucker," Nick warned, clambering up onto his bed.

"You got to help a buddy out, right? I got a hearing coming next month, and I figure since we been so cool, you'll help a buddy out, right?"

"Let it go, all right?" Nick's irritation was clear as he snorted dismissively. "Go to sleep."

Tucker squinted at him, and eyed the cell door sidelong. They had about twenty minutes till lockdown and lights out, but a lot of convicts were already sleeping, trying to avoid the heat by reducing their activity. Unlike daytime, at night it was actually possible to cool off by basking reptile-like on their beds, motionless in the gloom.

"Fine, man. Fine. I'm gonna grab a smoke, before light out." He took a last look at his cellmate, and shook his head. "I'll, uh, be back."

As Tucker ducked through the door, he saw the heavyset frame of Jerry DePinto, better known as Segundo, and his goombas, climbing down the metal stairs from the upper gallery. Segundo had four or five guys with him, and they moved like they were listening to their own personal soundtracks, probably something from "Godfather II." They swaggered silently down the steps and onto the walkway that led to Cell 1138.

Tucker smirked. Served him right, he thought, selfish prick. Won't help a buddy out. He turned to head towards the common room, reaching for a cigarette he had in his shirt pocket. As he turned, he felt something hit him almost gently in the chest.

Tucker was eye to eye with Ramon Oliphante, one of the Latin princes, and the King himself, Pablo Hinojosa, was standing behind him. Pablo was shaking his head slowly.

"Not today, vato. Not today." Pablo's voice was quiet and almost sad.

Tucker started to speak, to say something, to find the right line to get him the hell out of whatever was going down here tonight. No sound came, but his lips were wet and he felt the wetness covering his chin. He looked down, and saw Oliphante's hand, with a length of rigid wire wrapped around his wrist. The end of the wire, ground to an elliptical point like a cardiac needle, was somewhere three or four inches inside Tucker's chest.

He had felt the wire shiv driving home, that tap on his chest. He stared at the wire, at Oliphante's hand, at the blood dripping freely from his own lips. He looked up, past Oliphante to Pablo. Oliphante turned his wrist, seeking inside Tucker with the wire, and Tucker's puzzled expression suddenly went slack.

Tucker's body, brain still firing commands to the dying nervous system, slid slowly back, and Oliphante eased him back into the cell. Pablo followed them in and slid the door closed with a subdued clang. Oliphante stepped to the side with bored disinterest.

"Do please get up, Señor Stokes. We need to talk, you and I." Pablo stood, watching Stokes and ignoring Tucker's body shuddering it's last breath on the floor between them. "You can yell for the guards, if you think they will come. But either way, we'll be finished before they arrive."

- - -

Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas

Nick Stokes sat on the edge of his bunk, his feet hanging over the end, watching the body of his cellmate bleeding on the concrete floor. From the small wound, there came surprisingly little blood. He tried to pry his eyes away, tried to look at the man who had killed Tucker, or at the Latino kingpin who was even now talking to him, but his eyes would not leave the man who just minutes ago had been pestering him for help with parole.

"Stokes, your father, he is Judge Stokes, yeah?" Pablo had seen the glazed expression before. He knew that Stokes heard him despite his apparent withdrawal.

"Yes. But there's... I can't make anything," Nick paused to collect himself.

"Your father put me here, Stokes." Pablo stepped forward and Nick finally looked away from Tucker, looking down into the cool dark eyes of Pablo Hinojosa. "So I owe you, Nick Stokes. And I want you to get what you have coming."

Pablo looked at Ramon, his assassin and enforcer. "Let him have it."

Nick dropped down from the bed to his feet, already knowing it was hopeless. Two on one, both hardened cons, in the small cell spelled certain failure. He raised his hands anyway.

"We have information for you," Ramon said in a surprisingly high and soft voice. A man with a voice like that in a place like this would need to be very tough indeed. Nick looked at him, trying to understand.

"One of our boys, he heard Tucker here telling Bobby the Wolf you were working with the guards, maybe with the cops. Bobby's boys were waiting for T to step out so they could punk you, maybe kill you outright."

"So why are you telling me this?" Nick looked from Ramon to Pablo. Pablo grinned, a gesture devoid of warmth, and spread his muscular arms in a shrug.

"Your father, he could have sent me to Death Row, but he knocked out some testimony from a piss-ant perro they tried to say was one of my boys…" He grinned. "So, I got fifteen years instead of the needle. So, I figure I owe you one."

He lost his grin. "Plus, my nephew, Martin, tells me he has a new contact, lots of juice, maybe even a line in to the Aryans and the Italians, who think they are such hot shit. The next morning, my boys tell me Martin is dead. My sister, she cries all day, her little niño shot dead in the street. I got thirteen more years, Stokes. Like I need this shit?"

"Down, down!" The voice boomed into the cell. Nick dropped after a moment of hesitation, falling like a sack of flour. Corrections Officers in full gear were deploying to either side of the cell door, riot guns with rubber bullets deployed at a range that could easily kill.

Pablo lowered himself to the floor like a panther coming to rest, and Ramon seemed to melt to the floor without occupying the intervening space. There was not sign of the wire he had used to kill Tucker. There was no sign of the Italians who moments ago had been cruising towards Stokes' cell with mayhem on their minds.

One of the guards, they never adequately discovered which one, shouted again, "I said down! Freeze!" Moments later, a shot, then quickly another, while the squad leader shouted, "Hold fire! Hold fire!"

The acrid smell of powder and blood and other smells from Tucker's relaxing bowels reached each adjoining cell before they had the mess sorted out.