Free The Death Row Complex by Kristen Elise Page A

pulled down in his sleep, and his pudgy belly was peeking out from beneath a soft flannel pajama top.
    Blinking back tears, Katrina tiptoed toward her only son and pulled the cover over him. Then she crept away and quietly closed the door to his room. She stepped into the hallway bathroom—the only one in their house—and closed the door. She pulled back the auburn hair that fell in thick waves down her back and knotted it quickly into a bun. Then she splashed a few handfuls of cold water on her face and gulped down a few quick breaths of air. The threat of tears gradually subsided. For a long moment, she stared blankly into the mirror, and the blue-gray eyes of the woman staring back reflected sheer exhaustion.
    When she felt calm enough to do so, Katrina fulfilled her promise to her daughter. Sitting on the edge of Alexis’ bed, she gently pulled the sagging bow from the girl’s long hair and brushed it out, beginning at the tips.
    “Is Daddy coming home now?” Alexis asked quietly.
    “I think so,” Katrina said. “He had a problem with his car, but he should be on the way. So go to sleep. I love you.”
    Alexis lay down obediently and allowed Katrina to pull her covers up over her nightgown to her neck. Katrina kissed her forehead, and Lexi kissed her own tiny fingers and then planted them onto her mother’s lips. “I love you more,” Alexis said, giggling.
    After leaving her daughter’s room, Katrina rushed quickly down the hall into the master bedroom, where she locked the door behind her. She finally let herself break down, and she sat down on the bed weeping as quietly as she could.
    Then there was a crash and a breaking of glass. She ran into the living room and screamed.

4:43 P.M. PDT
    Her work history was as impressive as Guofu Wong had said, and it showed in her Homeland Security file. What surprised Sean McMullan was the financial status of the allegedly brilliant young doctor. Katrina Stone was broke and had been for her entire life.
    McMullan had no idea that Ph.D.-level researchers made so little after going to school for so long. Stone had twenty years of education—and education expenses—under her belt. And she made less money than a successful plumber. God, what a rip-off , McMullan thought.
    As he skimmed through the financial record, he found a myriad of odd jobs that she had worked, from bartending while in graduate school back to topless dancing in college. The latter was only a six-month employment, and he noticed it ended when she got married. The FBI agent tried to envision the classy, professional woman he had met earlier that afternoon shaking it in a tittie bar, but couldn’t.
    Then he saw the legal section of the file, and a queer idea began to form in his mind.
    McMullan began reviewing his notes from the prison.
     

     
    At present, San Quentin is home to more than four hundred death row inmates. The majority of dead men walking live in East Block—the largest of three death row areas. While some basic freedoms are granted in East Block, a violation of the rules will land the offender in The Adjustment Center, where the inmate’s phone calls, visitation, and other luxuries are stripped from him.
    The original death row wing of the prison—North Seg—is now the coveted wing among death row inmates. Those who exhibit stellar behavior must actively petition to reside in North Seg, and once there, the slightest infraction will send them back to East Block.
    The anthrax outbreak at San Quentin had been confined exclusively to North Seg—the country club among death row inmates and home of the most well-mannered rapists, murderers, and child molesters in California.
    No other area of the prison had been touched.
     

     
    Sean McMullan had been expecting the legal section of Katrina Stone’s file to be mostly blank. Instead, he found several hundred pages of documentation detailing several years of legal struggle.
    There was a divorce, which revealed nothing unusual. Joint