Cox didn’t move.Tyler took a deep breath and said, “Cox.I’m not in the fucking mood.Assume the goddamned position, or I’ll just let you go hungry and let the warden chew me out.Or better yet, transfer me.I’m sick of this shit.”
Cox tilted his head thoughtfully.“I have seen a horrible thing.”
Tyler rolled his eyes.“Yeah?That sucks.Stand in front of the damned wall.”
“They commit adultery and walk in lies.”
Fear lanced down Tyler’s spine, but he remembered that Cox already knew about Marcy.“Yeah?What does God say about people who help people commit adultery, because I’ve had a nice sixty or seventy afternoons thanks to your help.”
For only the second time since Tyler had known him, emotion flickered across Cox’s face.He didn’t thunder at Tyler like he did when Tyler took God’s name in vain, but the anger in his eyes was just as powerful.Tyler felt a petty rush of joy at affecting Cox like this.
Cox turned to him.“All of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”
Tyler rolled his eyes again.“Cox…”
“Behold!”Cox cried.“I will feed them wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall!”
Tyler flinched and watched, transfixed, as Cox unfolded himself from his bunk and stood.Even though an armored wall lay between him and the Lawgiver, he still backpedaled, as though afraid Cox could reach right through the wall and throttle him to death.
Cox stood in front of his bunk, eyes flashing with rage.Demonic or divine, Tyler couldn’t tell.He wasn’t sure it made a difference.
Then Cox smiled.“For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the Earth.”
Tyler watched, still transfixed, as Cox got to his hands and knees, then to his elbows, then to his belly.The killer shimmied underneath his bunk and covered his head with his hands.
“What the actual f—” Tyler began.
Then it clicked.The maintenance guy.Smith.Probably not his real name.Definitely not his real job.
Realization flashed across his mind like dominos.Cox had asked for things from Tyler.A cell phone.A pen and paper.The delivery of a letter.A candle.He had contacted someone on the outside and arranged to contaminate the ventilation system so the maintenance guy had to come fix it.The moldy toilet paper was a ruse.There was no gap in that ventilation system.Tyler was there the day it was installed.Smith, or whoever he was, opened the panel, stuffed old toilet paper in there, and made up a story that allowed him time to plant an explosive device to break Cox out.
And Tyler was just standing in front of the door like an idiot.
He cried out and turned for the door.Then a heavy hand—the hand of God, perhaps—slammed him into the opposite wall.
He didn’t feel himself hit the ground.He couldn’t feel anything.He couldn’t hear anything either.He could only see.
Haze filled the air.Red alarm lights strobed.A hole allowed him to see inside Cox’s cell.He watched as a man approached.He recognized Smith, but this time, Smith wore the uniform of a guard, not a maintenance worker.He smiled at Cox, who had come up from underneath his bunk and was now approaching the hole in his door.He took Cox’s hand and kissed his fingers, then helped him through the hole.
Cox didn’t so much as glance at Tyler as his companion led him to freedom.Tyler was just another evildoer slipping away to face God’s judgment.
Just another piece of shit.
