“We’ll have everything set up for you. We’ll have what you need for the job waiting for you. We’ve got all that handled. Once you’re in there, we’ll text you and give you the details of the hit, what you need to do. It’s simple, Joey. I know you like things nice and simple, right? No photos needed this time. All you’ll need to do is answer my text, Joey, and follow the instructions. We’re doing the rest.”

The courthouse? Inside the courthouse? He doesn’t understand.

“So you keep that cell phone with you the whole time, you got that, Joey?”

“Yeah…”

“So you always have it when we need to reach you, right?”

“Yessir…”

“Good. And you’ll have a way to call us if you need to. Good talking to you, Joey. I don’t know what’ll happen with the new trial, Joey, don’t know how it’s gonna go down, nobody does, but this’ll put you even with us.”

Click.

Joey sits in the dark, stunned, confused, processing it, imagining it.

It was a pretty clever way to do a last hit.

Do it right where he was gonna be anyway.

He gets it, from their point of view. He’s going to prison anyway. This is the last work they can get out of him. A job he’s uniquely qualified for and will be uniquely positioned to pull off.

He doesn’t get it yet about not having his gun. Could they somehow hide a weapon for him inside the courtroom? But it’s clear they don’t want him to know anything about that yet, to risk his blabbing about it to the cops who’ll be all around him. But he’ll bet they have everything worked out pretty neatly, particularly with Will involved.

A courtroom. Armed court officers. Dozens of cops waiting to testify. Plenty of law enforcement hanging around. The belly of the beast…

He still has that initial feeling, overriding everything else. Even though he doesn’t have the details of the plan yet. The same feeling he had when he first was taken to Karloff:

The unmistakable sense he’s going to die in that courtroom.

That this is the plan.

Maybe that’s just the feeling everybody gets being near Karloff. Joey has no one else to ask about that.

See, he doesn’t necessarily mind jail again…

And if he got the death penalty, well, it would probably never be carried out in New York State, and if it was, it would be years from now, when appeals had all run out, when he was an old man.

See, everyone’s going to die eventually. He can accept that.

But he doesn’t want to die next week. Violently. Needlessly. Thoughtlessly.

He had felt in his profession a certain freedom. Choice. Independence. This is the opposite. This is trapped. This is no choice.