Futile the Winds || s.reid

6. There Came a Wind Like a Bugle

 "All prisoners in ADX are kept in near-total solitary. Boucher has never had contact with any other inmate, and only with a small rotation of guards handpicked by Cortez and me—" Preston cut himself off and said your name.

Your gaze snapped up from your phone screen.

Preston's eyes were soft, but his lips were pressed tight together. "You with me?"

"Yeah. Sorry," you said, clearing your throat and putting your phone back into your purse. "I'm listening."

But even as Preston continued, your mind drifted back to what you'd been looking at: a photo of Hope, half-asleep, mid-bite with a spoonful of cereal with cut berries, sitting at the dining room table. She wore lavender overalls with daisies and honeybees embroidered onto them and a pale blue t-shirt. Spencer had pulled the wavy mess of her hair into two low pigtails. One was slightly higher than the other, and despite where you were, it made the corners of your lips twitch upwards.

His accompanying text just said, "Good luck today. We love you."

You didn't even know Spencer knew how to text, let alone text pictures, too. It was a welcomed surprise. At the very least, it gave you something to smile at.

You'd never been to Colorado before, but after this, you knew that you would never, ever come back. The sprawling campus of ADX Florence loomed in front of you, but once you and Preston entered, it seemed far too small. The twisting narrow hallways, the full security detail that walked in a diamond around you both, and the low ceilings all made the hair on the back of your neck raise.

But you swallowed your discomfort and willed the goosebumps breaking out across your skin to dissipate.

You had to do this. For you. For Spencer. For your daughter.

You had to see him, know that he was here and locked away and unable to touch your family.

Finally, you arrived at an interrogation cell.

A security guard opened the door for you and Preston, and only the two of you entered the observation room.

Your heart stuttered in your chest as you looked through the one-way glass.

The interrogation cell had a single table bolted to the floor with a chair on each side. Fluorescents flickered overhead. The walls were the ugly gray of concrete, interrupted by the occasional nondescript stain or chip. And sitting on the far chair was Samuel Boucher.

You grimaced. Prison had aged him, and not kindly. He looked terrible—gaunt and sallow. You'd almost call him fragile if you didn't know the extent of his depravity. His brown hair had gone all but gray, and his chin was speckled with overgrown stubble.

But still, a man supposedly stripped of his dignity could still preen if he chose to.

Samuel sat languidly in his chair, an ankle crossed over his other knee, trying to convey the aloof and composed demeanor he'd always had. It didn't matter that he was in an orange jumpsuit another inmate had previously died in. He still carried himself like he was important, like he mattered.

It was almost funny, really.

This man—former director of the FBI, former friend of yours, now rotting in the same place as some of the most evil terrorists the United States has ever known. Here he was, among the leagues of the Unibomber, the former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, other FBI agents found guilty of espionage and what used to be the worst US intelligence leak disasters in history.

Until Samuel, of course.

What would your parents have made of this? Did it matter?

Your father had been in league with Samuel, after all. Your mother, a passive bystander who opted to look the other way. You tried to imagine him here, too, but you found the precise details of his face muddling together in your mind.