Page 54 of Villains Series

FIVE YEARS AGO

WRIGHTON PENITENTIARY

THE third time Mitchell Turner went to jail, his curse followed him.

No matter where he went, or what he did (or didn’t do), people kept dying. He lost two cellmates at the hands of others, one cellmate at the man’s own hands, and a friend, who collapsed in the yard during the exercise period. So when the slim, polished form of Victor Vale appeared at the door of his cell one afternoon, pale in the dark gray prison uniforms, he figured the man was a goner. He was probably in for laundering, maybe a Ponzi scheme. Something heavy enough to make the right people angry and land him in max security, but light enough that he looked thoroughly out of place there. Mitch should have written him off but, still troubled by the death of his last cellmate, he became determined to keep Victor alive.

He assumed he would have his work cut out for him.

Victor didn’t speak to Mitch for three days. Mitch, admittedly, didn’t speak to Victor, either. There was something about the man, something Mitch couldn’t place, but he didn’t like it, in a primal, visceral way, and he found himself leaning vaguely away from Victor when the latter came near. The other inmates did it, too, on the rare occasions that first week when Victor ventured out among them. But even though it made Mitch uncomfortable, he followed the man, flanked him, constantly searching for an attacker, a threat. As far as Mitch could tell, his curse seemed firmly grounded in his proximity to people. When he was near them, they got hurt. But he couldn’t seem to figure out how close was too close, how near he needed to be to doom a life, and he thought that maybe, if for once his proximity could save a person instead of somehow marking them … maybe then, he could break the curse.

Victor didn’t ask him why he stayed so close, but he didn’t tell him not to, either.

Mitch knew the attack would come. It always did. A way for the old to test the new. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, a few punches, a bit of roughing up. But other times, when men had a taste for blood or a bone to pick or even if they were just having a shitty day, it could get out of hand.

He followed Victor to the commons, to the yard, to the lunchroom. Mitch would sit on one side of the table, Victor on the other, picking at his lunch, while Mitch spent the entire time scanning the room. Victor never looked up from his plate. He didn’t look at his plate, either, not exactly. His eyes had an unfocused intensity, as if he were somewhere else, unconcerned with the cage around him or the monsters inside.

Like a predator, Mitch realized one day. He’d seen enough nature specials on the common room set to know that prey had eyes on the sides of their head, were constantly on guard, but predators’ eyes were forward-facing, close together, unafraid. Despite the fact that Victor was half the size of most inmates, and didn’t look like he’d ever been in a fight, let alone won one, everything about him said predator.

And for the first time, Mitch wondered if Victor was really the one who needed protecting.