The Ribbon & The Rope

<p>It smelled of wet wool sour breath and the slow rot of hope. Kit had been inside before-not as prisoner but as Mrs. Vale wife of a minor customs official touring the prison's reformed women's wing with a basket of hymnals and a face full of pity. Lies all of it. She'd been mapping escape routes noting guard rotations memorizing which turnkeys took bribes in gin and which in silence.</p>