By now he had clasped both hands into her hair and pressed her head against his loins in ever faster rhythm. Sam struggled to suppress the rising gag reflex and resist the urge to bite his teeth hard. Lapuente kept gasping harder and after a few endless minutes it was all over. He left Sam on the floor with his head bowed and closed his pants as he stepped behind the desk.

He pressed a button and a tinny voice sounded. "Yes Boss?" Lapuente leaned over a thin microphone whose narrow staff hovered over the desk like a warning finger. "Get our new entry and prepare everything for the reception." Then he sank into his leather chair and smirked at Sam.

Sam got up. "Can I ask you a question?"

Lapuente leaned forward expectantly in his chair. "Not really, but since you did your job really well, go ahead."

Sam threw her long hair back. "You just called me a peacemaker, why?"

Lapuente bared two rows of bright white horse teeth. "Ah, peacemaker, has not escaped your attention, has he?" He rested his elbows on the armrests of his chair and tapped the fingertips of his hands against each other.

"I was at a very interesting congress last year." Lapuente turned the chair and looked out of the window. "The referendum prison psychologist reported good sex experiences as a stress relieving factor for prisoners, and once a month the detainees were allowed to make sex visits, and since then, the male inmate's violence rate has dropped more than 70% since we've had female inmates for half a year I'm in the lucky situation of not having to waste taxpayers' money on professional ladies, by the way, the quack was right, and I've been able to substantially reduce the violence rate in my facility since we let our two inmate groups go once a week really appreciate that, the women ... "

He spread his hands. "It is her service to the society that has broken her."

Sam stared at him incredulously. The office door opened and two prison guards entered the room. Lapuente gave them a short nod and told them to take Sam through the entrance exam.

Miguel's tips worked. The insults and personalities were limited and the silver tube disappeared undetected into the pocket of her dark gray prison attire. After four hours of entrance examination, she was taken to a solitary cell. As the door slammed shut and the guards moved away, Sam enjoyed her loneliness. By now it was 19:00. She had strangled the prison jail offered between two medical examinations.

Sam sat down on the rusty cot. No one had told her how long she had to stay here. She estimated that, since there had never been an official trial, Rodriguez's life expectancy. Sam remembered Anita's words, a maximum of six months, persevering.

With shaky fingers she fished the silver tube out of her trouser pocket and quickly stowed it in her pillowcase. She looked around her cell, so she would spend the next few months here. With outstretched arms, she could almost touch the walls on the left and right. Next to the rusty cot was a disgusting stained toilet, a sink and above it a mirror foil - no glass - to the luxurious interior.

She had been told that she was free from today's program.

Sam stowed her sanitary products on the shelf under the reflective sheeting. It had a crack extending across the entire surface from the upper right corner. The film hit waves and wrinkles. The tear split her face into two slanted halves and she thought anxiously of Lapuentes words.

God and devil. Like on her face except that both halves now belonged to the director. She braced herself at the edge of the wax basin and silently began to cry. When their tears finally dried up, Sam sank exhausted on the cot and fell asleep. Again she dreamed of Jessica and Jo with the hedge trimmer.

The next morning, Sam was awakened by the shrill, short sounds of a loud siren. She had slept surprisingly well and hoped that she would master the coming months quite well. After all, she had survived the first day without **** or beatings. So it could go on.

Also in Summersby's cellar it went on. Sam cut the last fibers with the blade, slowly rose from her chair and stretched his stiff limbs.

At the thought of her exhilaration on the first morning of her prison stay, Sam laughed bitterly.

How unsuspecting she had been.

Sam shook off the shadows of her past. Her eyes fell on the door. The next hurdle. She stalked forward with stiff steps and put her hand on the doorknob. Maybe her old friend's fate was in a good mood. She pushed the latch down. The door was locked. Sam sighed, would have been too nice. She looked at the castle in more detail. It was a security lock of a German company, called Dom. German quality work, damn.

Sam got the chair and put it in front of the door. She sat down and pulled the black cowboy boot from her right foot. Frowning, she looked at the heel of the boot and pushed the rubber cap aside. In the cavity below was Sam's key-set, two thin metal pins, each with a tiny hinge in the middle, so that they could be folded up and tucked into the heel cavity. One end was flattened like a small spatula, the other ends were in filigree hooks over.

Sam took her tool and put the boot back on. She straddled the chair and began, with a concentrated expression, to explore the internal mechanism of the door lock. How lucky that in Mexico she had met enough specialists whose dubious talents she had acquired in hard-earned instruction lessons. She had been apprenticed to well-known Mexican burglars, contract killers and tricksters.

Sam had been a zealous and inquisitive student. Wistfully, she thought back to that time. Although it had been hard months, it had not been Sam's worst time. After all, she had learned a lot. Sam closed her eyes to focus all her senses on the feel of the locking mechanism.