A Knife in the Heart. William W. Johnstone

prompts a laugh from the leader.

      “You think a cup is a match for a blade?” the big faceless man asks.

      The killer closest to the cell laughs. But that stops when Fallon steps forward and smashes the man in the face with the hard, cold tin cup.

      Fallon quickly steps back, taking it all in, seeing the man, his nose gushing crimson, his lips flattened and bloody, spitting out teeth and saliva, and stumbling in a wild spin. An arm hits the man nearest him and pushes him against the leader, who steps back against the fourth man, who jolts the fifth killer to the railing. And now that man is screaming, screaming out for mercy from God, but God cannot hear any prayer in a prison, especially with cups grinding cell doors after cell doors, and just like that, the fifth killer has gone over the edge, plummeting like a rocket, but he can scream, and his cries overcome the drone of metal on iron, until a sickening crunch below silences him.

      But not the sound of cups.

      The fourth man catches the railing, looks over, and mouths, “Oh, my, God,” before turning to Fallon, and charging.

      Fallon feels the blade as it cuts into his side, but his right hand rams the cup into the man’s temple, and the man falls to his knees. The knife comes up, just as Fallon jabs his kneecap into the man’s jaw. The blade sticks in up to its makeshift handle of hardened lye soap, deep in Fallon’s thigh, and then the man goes down, tries to come up, and Fallon kicks him over the railing.

      “Get him!” one of the men calls.

      Fallon turns, blinks, confused and angry. Three men have been hurtled to the floor five stories below. There should be only three more inmates outside of their cells, but somehow the doors must have opened, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds. It’s as though every prisoner in this whole cell block has been turned loose on the alley. Fallon rips the knife out of his leg with his left hand. Blood sprays the striped trousers of the men as they cover the few feet separating them from him. He has a short blade and a tin cup. They have knives and clubs and rocks.

      He has no chance, and soon they have him, his cup and knife thrown to the floor. He smells their sweat, feeling blows against his arms, back, head, neck. Cursing them as they curse him, he tries to free his arms, his hands, his legs, but there is nothing for him to do.

      A moment later, he is at the iron railing. Now he glances through the opening in the slit of the door, and he sees the faces of the guards, and the guards are laughing, too, shouting.

      “Toss him overboard, boys!”

      Which they do.

      Fallon looks below as the stone floor rushes up to greet him. He sees the bloody, crushed, lifeless bodies of the three men he has killed on this day. Their eyes remain open, as well as their mouths, and he can hear these dead men laughing at him. One says, “Join us, Fallon . . . in hell.”

      And the stones are there to greet him and send him to the fiery pit.

      Where Harry Fallon knows he belongs.

      He screams.

      CHAPTER TWO

      His own scream woke him up.

      Fallon tried to catch his breath, feeling suddenly freezing, and realized sweat drenched his night robe. While trying desperately to catch his breath, he noticed his right arm was up, crooked, and his clenched fist trembled. He held a pair of scissors. Fallon stared as early morning light seeped through the curtains of the parlor of his home. He waited until he stopped shaking, could breathe normally, and stared at the scissors.

      Sobs came somewhere down the foyer beyond the formal parlor.

      A woman’s voice soon whispered, “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. Papa just had another bad dream.”

      He lowered his hand, swung his bare feet over the chaise. Feet on the rug, he managed to swallow and gently laid the scissors down on the side table. How he had managed to find them was beyond him, but thank God, he prayed, he was sleeping in the parlor.

      Sleeping in the parlor. One more time. Instead of in the bedroom with his wife.

      Fallon planted his elbows on his thighs, buried his face in his hands, and waited until he stopped shaking, bits and pieces of the nightmare returning to him, but only in fragments. He didn’t need to remember every single detail. It was the same damned nightmare he always had. A few things might change: the location, the number of inmates, how men were trying to kill him, or execute him. Sometimes he knew the men, the crazed killer named Monk from Yuma; the leader of the riot from Joliet; the Mole from Jefferson City; even John Wesley Hardin from Huntsville. Mostly though, they were cretins and monsters and blurs of men, often without faces, but always trying to kill him. In the worst of the dreams, they were about to succeed before he woke up. On the good nights, he woke up quickly before his own shouts awakened his family . . . one more time.

      This, he knew, was no way to live. Not so much for his sake, but for Christina and the five-year-old girl, Rachel Renee.

      He managed to stand, ran his fingers through his soaking hair, looked at the chaise, and tossed a blanket on it, hoping the wool would soak up the sweat. The chaise had belonged to Christina’s grandmother. He would hate to ruin it, like the leather-covered sofa he had slept on one night that he had ripped apart with a paper opener he happened to find in his sleep.

      As long as he didn’t start sleepwalking. God, wouldn’t that be awful.

      He moved out of the parlor and into the hallway, stopped in the indoor bathroom to dry his face, comb his hair, drink a cup of water, and maybe make himself look halfway presentable, with luck mostly human, and then to the girl’s bedroom. It was empty, her covers thrown off the little bed. Which is what usually happened.

      Fallon took a few more steps before pushing open the door at the end of the hallway.

      Christina Whitney Fallon sat in the four-poster bed, hugging Rachel Renee tightly, kissing the top of her dark hair. Dark hair like Fallon’s, not the soft blond of his wife’s.

      Both stared at him in silence.

      “Good morning,” Fallon said, realized the absurdity of such a greeting, and sighed. “Sorry.”

      “It’s all right, Papa.” Rachel Renee’s voice trembled.

      “Are you all right?” Christina asked. Her voice was noncommittal, professional, like she was interviewing a witness or a suspect from her days just a few years back as an operative for the American Detective Agency in Chicago.

      “Bad dream.” He shrugged. “The usual.”

      “Were there monsters?” Rachel Renee asked.

      By then, he had managed to cross the room and sat at the end of the bed. “Yeah,” he said. “Daisies and licorice.”

      Rachel Renee laughed, and that made Fallon breathe a little easier, if not quite relax. He even thought he saw a twinkle in Christina’s eyes.

      “Daisies and licorice aren’t monsters, Papa,” the girl said with bemusement. “Those are nice things. My favorite flower. And my favorite breakfast.”

      “Breakfast?” Christina now laughed.

      The day might be all right, Fallon thought.

      The precious little girl, one of the two loves of Fallon’s life these past few years, crawled from her mother and leaned against Fallon, still in the robe.

      She quickly pulled away. “Oh, Papa, you stink.”

      Fallon tried to laugh.

      “And you’re all sweaty.”

      “That’s what boys and men do, baby,” Christina said.

      “They’re gross.”

      “Yes,” her mother agreed. “Very much so.”

      “But I love you anyway, Papa.” She came back and tried