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of your time being invisible and keeping to yourself. You’re adaptable and smart. You just want to do your time and get out of here. Why would you help a bunch of losers and an incognito drug lord with a cockamamie plan like this?”
    He caught Lew off guard with that one. Quinn knew who Mickey really was. Lew wondered if this knowledge was the reason Mickey felt he had a time limit on getting out of here.
    â€œLet’s just say it wasn’t by choice.”
    â€œI thought as much,” Quinn said, flipping more pages. Then something in the file caught his eye. “Excuse me, Major Katchbrow, Army Ranger.” Quinn read some more to himself, then read some aloud, as if Lew hadn’t heard it before. “Recipient of two Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars, and a Medal of Valor. Honorably discharged in 1992.”
    â€œLook, Warden, what does my ser­vice record have to do—­”
    â€œYou declined your flight home from Kuwait. Just wandered off.”
    â€œIt says that in my file?” Lew was suddenly curious.
    â€œNo, I made some phone calls. And the most interesting thing I heard were reports of you doing some bare-­knuckle fighting in Bogotá, Colombia, but then after that . . . poof, nothing. You dropped off the face of the earth until your robbery bust. Where were you for sixteen years?”
    â€œWhat is this about, Quinn?” Lew said a little harsher. He didn’t like someone digging around in his past, especially with what they could find. Quinn looked at him, and then seemed to make some sort of decision, flipping the file closed.
    â€œSimple trade,” Quinn said. “You do something for me; I’ll do something for you.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do for me?” Lew asked.
    â€œYou don’t belong here. It’s obvious. It’s also pretty obvious, today notwithstanding, that for your remaining time you’re not going to be any trouble. In fact,” Quinn said, leaning forward, “it will probably be difficult to tell you’re even here .”
    Lew got the message.
    â€œAre you saying I can walk out the front door? Today?”
    â€œWell, maybe not the front door, but yes, essentially you’re correct.”
    Lew thought about that. He hadn’t let himself think about the idea of being free for even a moment in this place. Thinking like that just made you crazy. But he let himself think about it now and really liked the feeling it gave him. He caught himself before the idea got too heady.
    â€œAnd the price?” he asked, knowing he wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was. Quinn leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and swiveled back and forth.
    â€œMickey King wants to be dead. Let’s give him what he wants.”
    â€œYou want me to kill one of your prisoners?” Lew said. There was no way he was going to trade a year of boredom for someone’s life, no matter how much of a scumbag he was.
    â€œTechnically, he’s not one of my prisoners. Mickey King is my prisoner. But we both know there is no Mickey King. And let’s not overlook the fact that technically he’s already dead,” Quinn said. Lew thought he was rationalizing like hell, but he figured he also now knew where Quinn’s shiny new television had come from.
    â€œYou don’t think I belong here, but you want to make me a murderer. Yeah, that makes sense,” Lew said.
    â€œLet’s stick to the truth, Lewis. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time you’ve killed someone,” Quinn said tapping Lew’s file. “But I’ll guarantee no one deserves killing more than Miguel Colero. Think of all the damage he’s done with his drug trade. The lives he’s destroyed. The families he’s decimated. You could stop all that.”
    â€œDon’t try to sell me with the same shinola they used to sell you. Who the hell do you think wants this done? The