Jax had under a minute. Bluey would probably occupy the guard longer, but he couldn’t take the risk. He placed the black plastic electronic key, or fob as Clarke had called it – which had arrived in a package along with an RF scanner and electronic key cutter – in front of the black pad beside his door. His lock snapped back, sounding like a thundercrack in the dead of the night. He pushed the door open, closed it, and then waved the card over the pad at the front of his door. Another crack. Jax winced as his cell snapped shut.

It took him exactly twelve seconds to get to Cell No. 16. He put the black key fob into his pocket and pulled out a second fob, coloured red. Only then did he notice the adjacent cell door. He had casually stopped in front of Cell No. 16 earlier that day and bent down to tie his shoelace. Then he’d pressed the button on the radio frequency scanner in his pocket, the tiny box picking up the nearest device emitting a 315 megahertz signal and copying the code. He’d then gone back to his room and used the same device to transfer the code onto the red FOB key. He’d thought it had all worked perfectly.

But maybe not.

The electronic keypad for Cell No. 16 was mounted directly next to the one for Cell No. 17. There was a significant possibility that the RF scanner had cloned a key for Cell No. 17 instead of 16; he figured he had a fifty-fifty chance of his key working.

He held his breath as he waved the fob in front of the pad. Click.

He exhaled as he entered Cell No. 16 and locked the door behind him.

Adam and Kyle were dead to the world, one of them even snoring loudly. The slow-release sedative he’d slipped into their drinks at dinner had well and truly kicked in. Jax stood still and listened, waiting until he heard the guard return to his office, Bluey having told him it was a false alarm. After he heard the office door close, he waited another five minutes. The guard was back in his box, watching TV. He was clear. Good to go.

Jax dragged the closest set of box shelves from the wall and slid it towards the centre of the cell, the hardwood scraping on the concrete, until it was directly under the light. He then pulled a series of items from his pockets and lined them on the top of the shelving unit: a screwdriver, a torch, a self-tapping screw, and a two-in-one video and sound recording device.

The screwdriver, which had also arrived in the care package, was made entirely of plastic. It looked like something a 3D printer had spat out, but it was as hard as steel, as was the self-tapping screw.