Chapter 54 - The Cell Block Queen
Five days before her bail release, Eleanor had already established complete dominion over Cell Block B at Cumberland County.
The prison guards did not intimidate her; she owned their mortgages through three blind holding companies in Delaware.
Inmate Sarah Jenkins, serving twenty years for armed robbery, had tried to corner Eleanor on the laundry deck during recreation.
Eleanor had not raised a hand, nor had she raised her voice above a refined whisper.
She had simply recited the names, schools, and bus stops of Jenkins’s two young daughters living in Bangor.
By nightfall, Jenkins was cleaning Eleanor’s bunk with her own toothbrush and acting as her permanent personal guard.
The prison infirmary was where Eleanor held her most crucial meetings during those brief days of confinement.
Dr. Marcus Davenport, the chief medical officer, owed six hundred thousand dollars to an illegal gambling ring in Boston.
Eleanor had cleared the doctor’s ledger with a single encrypted phone call from the prison chapel.
In exchange, Davenport had provided her with concentrated digitalis, sterile syringes, and the exact floor plans of Arthur’s hospital wing.
The night the anonymous bail was posted, Davenport met her behind the receiving dock with a civilian winter coat and a loaded Glock.
Eleanor checked the magazine with the practiced efficiency of a trained operative, sliding the slide back with a sharp click.
She looked at Davenport and asked if the tracking signal from Arthur’s chest implant was still broadcasting to the encrypted server.
The doctor nodded nervously, pulling up the live pulse-wave app on his modified smartphone.
He told her that Vance had moved Arthur from the general hospital to a remote state police safe house in the Kennebunk woods.
Eleanor adjusted the collar of her wool coat against the biting wind that signaled an incoming blizzard.
She remarked that snow had always been her favorite accomplice because it buried tracks and muffled gunshots.
May you like
She ordered Davenport into the driver’s seat of the unmarked black SUV idling in the shadows.
Behind them, the iron gates of Cumberland County closed forever, but the real hunt was only beginning.
