Most people have to die to get to hell. I took a shortcut.

I was in Abingdon State Prison. Locked away for a murder I didn’t commit. Waiting for the men who were coming to kill me. With nowhere to run.

It was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

I’d been there for two weeks. Two weeks of smothering boredom and strangling fear. When I was locked in my cell, the minutes seemed to lie like dead men, to decay like dead men-so slowly you could barely tell it was happening. When I was out in the exercise yard or in the cafeteria or in the showers, there was just the fear, the waiting. Waiting for the killers to make good their threat, the words one of them had whispered in my ear as I stood in the dinner line one night:

You’re already dead, West. You just don’t know it yet.

Alone in my cell, I stared at the tan wall. I felt a black despair surrounding me, closing in on me. I did everything I could to fight it. I did push-ups. I read my Bible. I prayed. The prayer gave me some comfort, some relief.

But then the buzzer would sound, loud and startling. The cell door would slide open. A guard would shout from the end of the tier:

“Yard time!”

Then the waiting and the fear would begin again.

Where was Detective Rose? I wondered desperately. I hadn’t seen him since he’d arrested me, since he’d rescued me from the terrorist cell called the Homelanders and led me away in handcuffs. Rose was the one official who knew who I was. He knew I’d been planted in the Homelanders by Waterman and his agents. He knew I’d let myself be framed for the murder of my friend Alex Hauser so the Homelanders would believe I was bitter and could be recruited. Rose was one of Waterman’s agents too-at least, I thought he was. I told myself he must be working behind the scenes to clear my name, to win my release. I told myself he would come for me. Any day now. Any day.