“Frank, what the hell are you—” began one of the guards before Manson roughly pushed him away. With an enraged scream he tried to jump over the table at Stone. Only Knox had stood on his foot at that precise moment and his leap turned into an abrupt fall. His chin slammed down on the table in front of where Stone was sitting. As if on cue, Knox stood, blocking the view of the other guards.

“Let me get out of your way so you can deal with the psycho guard,” he said politely.

In that instant, Oliver Stone delivered a crushing blow to the back of Manson’s neck with his elbow. When the guards finally got around Knox, Stone had slipped to the other end of the table and seemed to be innocently watching the events.

Manson was carried off on a gurney unconscious and barely breathing. Even the most comatose con in the room had a smile on his face at the sight.

Later that morning Stone and Knox were standing in the rec yard. No one had come after them about what had happened to Manson, though Stone had been popped once in the head for apparently chewing too loudly.

“How hard did you hit him?” Knox asked.

“Hard enough.”

“I like your style.”

Donny boy smiled at them as he passed by. He gave a stupid thumbs-up to Stone. The guards on the pod towers were making their rounds, eyeballing the gaggle of cons with binoculars and scopes on stationary tripods. And the guns. The guns were always front and center. The power. The deterrent. Stone thought this as he leaned against the cement block wall and wondered how the older guard was going to accomplish it, whatever it was.

Knox kept checking the periphery without seeming to do so as he stood next to Stone.

One inmate was bouncing the ball. He made a layup, caught the rebound and went back for a jumper. Like most of the inmates Stone and Knox had seen, he was black, young, tall and muscular. He seemed to have all his wits about him, so maybe Donny had let out his secret to others about the carrots. He missed the jumper and Stone stiffened as the black guy jogged to get the ball that had rolled past the blue line.

Before he could get there though, another inmate crashed into him, knocking the man across the line where he landed on the ball. The two men got up and faced off. A horn sounded. And the riflemen on the towers took aim. A shot was fired, but it didn’t come from the tower. The guards looked everywhere for the source of the round.