Cache Money

Chapter 9

It was lunch time the next week that we all got to see each other. Hawk and I were almost at each other's throats the whole time, but we had it under control. When we got to the lunch room, we saw that it was divided in two parts, one for men and one for women. I'll be honest, when I saw what the women were doing to each other, I sure as hell didn't want to leave.

Hawk and I sat at the table in the middle, where Tex, Viper, and Joker all joined us. They sat in separate cells themselves, which must have sucked. We had about half an hour to chat and mingle, and we talked the whole time. There was a moment of silence before Tex decided to pipe us with a joke.

"So, Hawk..." He took a bite. "Are you the man or the woman in your cell?" We all laughed, and Hawk threw out a 'screw you', but we still found it good all the same.

"Alright guys," I started to say. "How the hell are we getting out of here? Jerry can only do so much for us, but we need a way out. Ideas?"

Viper looked at me. "Well, aside from cutting the power, grabbing the keys of a guard, then strolling out the front door, I have none."

I sat and thought for a moment. "You know, we could do that. It'll take us months though. Any others?" There was complete silence. "Screw it, we can make this plan work. Gather some intel, and let me know next week when we all meet up again. Sound good, guys?" Everyone nodded.

———————-

Hawk and I went back to our cell, and we sat for a good few moments before we both agreed that we were getting super bored. We called a guard over and asked if the concession was open. The guy was pretty nice, despite being a prison guard. He told us that it was, but we had to tell him exactly what we wanted and he had to escort us. Hawk said that he wanted some smokes, and I said I could use some cards. The guard let us out of our cell, and lead us down the hall, and took us to the little store.

Luckily, Jerry put a few thousand dollars each in that we could use while we were here. Hawk got his smokes, and I got my cards, but they were used. Some of them had corners taken off, some of them were lightly burned, that kind of stuff. When we got back to our cell, we played a few hands of blackjack and go fish, then fell asleep.

—————-

Before we knew it, another week had passed, and we all got to meet up again. When we sat down, I noticed something was off. Joker was missing. There was a silence for a while, before Tex, with his gruff voice, managed to choke out the words.

"He got shanked in the showers when grabbing the intel. He's in the medical ward, and they said he'd be alright, but then he got tossed in the hole. Poor bastard. He'll be out of it for the next month."

"Sorry to hear it all, guys. We can work for now without him, but that means that whatever we do in the end, it has to wait until Joker gets outs. We won't leave him alone. Not to mention, I've been thinking: this is going to be a five-guy job minimum. Two of us working on the power, one on the keys, and two on grabbing guns. We can always start a riot to get rid of the guards, but until then, we're kind of boned."

"Well," Viper piped up. "When we cut the power, all the cells will open up, so there'll likely be a riot anyway. I found out that the generator is in my wing, but no one knows where the backup is. We'll need that gone too."

Tex poked his head up. "I heard the armory is in your block, Scooter. You and Hawk can grab the guns and shoot your way to us, and I can grab the keys."

"Okay, then. We wait for Joker to get outta the hole, then we move on this. Got it?" Everyone nodded. We were going to get out of jail.