That afternoon, I go to work. One of the deputy warden’s computers is acting up, and the guard set to watch me knows as much about computers as a squirrel. I hack into the cop’s computer and make it look like he is the head of a huge kiddie porn distribution center. I even set up a bank account with hundreds of small deposits from around the world.

By the time Amador is sentenced and brought to the pen, the cop is facing several decades behind bars. Mostly because I decided to pad his résumé with a little drug trafficking and few nifty extortion charges.

18

I get Amador assigned to my cell with a few simple clicks, and we spend four blissful years together before he is paroled. It’s a good thing. He has a beautiful wife and a gorgeous daughter waiting for him.

He leaves the state pen knowing everything. I’ve left nothing to chance. But it was hard to tell him at first. He takes it really well, though. He suggests I seek counseling and get on some kind of drug therapy program. But it doesn’t take long for him to see the truth for himself.

He’s there when a war is about to break out in the yard. When I walk through the crowd, touch the shoulders of the gang members about to fight. When they drop, one by one, crumpling to the ground like dominoes until I’m standing by the shot callers.

He’s there when I seize because Dutch has decided to join the Peace Corps after she graduates from college and plants her ass right in the middle of a war zone between two tribes in Uganda.

He’s there when she moves back to Albuquerque after a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. She has opened up an investigations business. Because how much trouble can she get into there? She gets drunk one night and tumbles down the stairs in her apartment building. I think she drunk-dials me. Her life isn’t in danger, but the pull is strong enough to yank me out of a deep sleep. I find her sprawled on the second-floor landing, where she orders me to take off my cloak. She wants to see what’s underneath. She wants to see what she’s been so afraid of. To face her demons.

I lift her off the floor and lean her against me, but before I realize what she’s doing, she reaches up pushes back the hood. I go still. She stills. I reach to put it back on, but she stops me. She touches my face. Brushes a stand of hair out of my eyes. Draws the outline of my mouth with her fingertips. Then she rolls onto her toes and presses her mouth to mine.

I don’t kiss back. Not at first. But she tilts her head to the side. Opens her mouth. Invites me in.

With a growl of frustration, I wrap my arms around her and deepen the kiss. She melts into me. Dives her fingers into my hair with one hand. Reaches for my ass with the other. Just as I’m about to give in and take her right there, she goes completely limp in my arms. I continue to hold her. Struggling to get my breathing under control. Fighting the erection that wants to bury itself inside her.

I hear someone on the stairs above us, so I lay her gently against the wall. She tilts over to sleep it off on the stairs. Her neck is going to kill her tomorrow. I wait around. Make sure the guys who find her help her to her bed and not to theirs.

She was drunk off her ass. Literally. I doubt she will remember any of it.

Amador’s there every time she summons me. Has my back. It’s kind of sad, though. There’s nothing like waking up to a shiv sliding between my ribs. He’s also there when the shot caller of the most notorious gang in prison asks for protection from his own men. They’ve turned on him and he is about to die a horrible death, until I step in. They leave him alone. He’s out of the gang. Out from under their protection. Yet no one bothers him.

That, above all things, is the most startling to Amador. Apparently, the parting of the sea of gang members didn’t do the trick. But I’m glad he’s getting out. They have put their lives on hold long enough. She’s been waiting tables and taking night classes and raising her daughter with her mother’s help. Amador is almost salivating to be a dad. To actually live with his wife. They got married the night before he had to report to jail. It was not the best honeymoon.

The good news is, he knows what I’m capable of now. And we come up with a plan. I need to do some more groundwork, but in the next few years, he will be set for life. I promise him that much.

19

Amador comes to see me a lot. He wants to come more often. I tell him not to. He has a family now. He and Bianca even bring the kids to see me. Ashlee and their baby, Stephen. Ashlee is as beautiful as her mother, and I tease Amador that I’m going to steal them from him when I get out. He isn’t too worried. Probably a good thing. Bianca is absolutely in love with him. She is one of the few people attracted to men who don’t fall into a state of crippling desire when they look at me. She has eyes for Amador and only Amador. That kind of devotion is rare. He probably had a witch put a spell on her.

When he comes, he reports on Kim with every visit, making sure not to mention her name. She is doing well. Our plan is unfolding perfectly.

One of the advantages of being able to leave my body and go anywhere I want is something I like to call insider trading. I know things long before the public does. I know when companies are going to fold. When they are about to go public. I learn about stocks and bonds and mutual funds.

Because Amador and Bianca have followed my instructions to the letter, both they and Kim become millionaires overnight. I do as well, but I can’t touch my money until I’m paroled. That could be another decade or two.

“Has she touched it?” I ask him, wondering if Kim is using any of the funds she has.

He shakes his head. “She refuses. Says she’s saving it for you.”

I grind my teeth. The whole point of this was to get her set up so she never has to work again. Instead, she’s working odd jobs and barely scraping by when she could live anywhere in style.

I go to see her sometimes. She’s not like Dutch. She can’t see me, but when I move a picture or knock over a vase, she knows I’m there. She talks to me for hours. I’m beginning to think I’m more hindrance than help. She lost her last job because she sat and talked to me instead of going to work.

“She needs to move on,” I tell Amador. “Tell her—” I breathe in to strengthen my resolve. “Tell her I’m not going to go see her anymore. Tell her it’s too dangerous for me. Tell her to take the money and see the world.”

I know she won’t. She’s waiting for me. She’ll die waiting for me if I can’t figure out how to get her to detach.

Instead of dwelling on Kim, I focus on Dutch. On Amador, Bianca, and the kids. We invest in several companies that skyrocket the minute they go public, and soon we are all millionaires dozens of times over.

Amador keeps pouring money into Kim’s account. An offshore account that’s not actually in her name, but one she has access to 24/7.

It does little good. She barely takes out enough to live on, but at least she’s dipping into it now. At least there’s that.

20

My eighth year of incarceration turns out to be one of the more exciting. There is a riot. Almost. More like the beginnings of a riot, but it could’ve ended as badly as the one from the ’80s if the inmates had commandeered a control room like they planned. New Mexico has a history of violence that few states can rival, and the energy in the old prison was volatile because of it. Toxic. Too much had happened there over the centuries. Too many deaths. Too many massacres.