The cell was cold. The bench was hard. The fluorescent light in the corridor flickered at irregular intervals, throwing a thin, restless shadow across the floor. Cynthia closed her eyes for a moment, not to sleep, but to rest them, and when she opened them again the clock in her head told her that time was passing in the slow, thick way it passes in holding cells. She counted breaths. She counted the sounds from other cells, a cough, a muttered prayer, a man asking for water and not receiving an answer. She waited, because waiting was part of the plan, and because the plan required her to see how deep the rot went before she cut it out.
At 1:15 in the morning, O'Grady returned to the cell door. He did not come quietly. He smacked the bars with his nightstick, a sharp, metallic crack that echoed down the corridor and made the man in the next cell flinch. The sound was meant to startle, to remind her who was in control of the door, of the light, of the next hour.
"Wake up, Holloway," he said, his voice carrying the coarse satisfaction of a man who enjoyed waking people up. "You get your one phone call, then we're going to have a little chat."
He unlocked the cell and escorted her to a wall-mounted phone at the end of the corridor. The phone was old, its cord twisted and yellowed, its metal casing dented from years of use. O'Grady leaned against the wall ten feet away, arms crossed, smirking, close enough to hear the shape of a conversation but not, he thought, close enough to matter. He wanted her to know he was watching. He wanted her to feel that even her one call belonged to him.
"Make it quick," he said, "and make it a lawyer. You're going to need one."
Cynthia picked up the receiver. It was heavier than she expected, solid in her hand, and for a moment she felt the weight of everything that was about to happen settle into that simple gesture. She dialed a Washington, D.C. area code, a number that bypassed standard switchboards and connected directly to a secure line in the home of James Carter, the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She dialed slowly, deliberately, each digit a decision.
It rang twice.
"Carter." A gravelly voice answered, thick with sleep but already sharpening, already alert in the way that men who have spent their lives waiting for bad news learn to be alert.
"Jim, it's Cynthia." There was a fraction of a second of silence as Carter's brain shifted from sleep to high alert, a silence that contained a whole career of trust.
"Director, where are you?" Carter asked, and now his voice was fully awake, urgent, controlled. "Your security detail has been tearing the city apart for three hours."
Cynthia kept her voice low, her eyes fixed on O'Grady, who was leaning against the wall ten feet away, smirking, confident that he was listening to a frightened woman call a lawyer who could do nothing until morning.
"I'm at the 42nd District Precinct in Oakland," she said. "I've been arrested."
"Arrested? Under what charge?"
"Possession with intent to distribute." She paused, letting the absurdity of the charge hang in the air between Washington and Oakland. "The arresting officer planted the narcotics in my rental car."
Silence on the line. Then, a cold, terrifying fury entered Carter's voice, not loud, not shouting, but the kind of fury that makes a room go quiet.
"Do you want me to send a tactical team through the front door?"
Cynthia felt a sharp smile touch the corners of her mouth for the first time that night. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of a woman who had waited hours to say the next sentence.
"No," she said. "I want to see how deep this rot goes. Send a discreet team to extract the dash and cabin footage from my rental car. It was impounded by the 42nd. Then, I need you to fly to Oakland immediately. You're going to act as my attorney."
"Understood, Director," Carter said, and she could hear him already moving, already reaching for a phone, a coat, a bag. "I'll be on the Bureau's Gulfstream in twenty minutes. ETA to your location is three hours. Do not let them interrogate you."
"Oh, I'm going to let them try," Cynthia said, and her voice was steady, almost gentle, which made it more dangerous. "I'll see you soon, Jim."
She hung up the phone and turned back to O'Grady. The receiver settled into its cradle with a soft click that seemed very loud in the quiet corridor. O'Grady pushed off the wall, his smirk widening, as if he had just watched a woman make a futile gesture.
"My lawyer is on his way," Cynthia said. "He's coming from out of town."
O'Grady laughed. It was a cruel, barking sound that bounced off the concrete walls. "Out of town? Must be expensive. Let's see if he can get you out of ten to fifteen years in state lockup. Come on. We're going to interrogation room four."