CHAPTER NINE
3:15 p.m.
Women’s Federal Detention Center – Randal, Maryland
The lockup was unlike other prisons Luke had visited. Luke tended to think of prison as a dreary place. This one wasn’t too bad. He sat at a white table made of heavy molded plastic, bolted to the floor, in a large open waiting area. Two uniformed guards, a man and a woman, both big and burly, stood on either side of the entry door.
There were a dozen tables in the room, with three of them currently occupied, in each case a visitor sitting across the table from a woman in an orange jumpsuit. At one of them, an older women and three young children were visiting the prisoner—probably a young mom seeing her own children.
Eight-foot-high windows, embedded with metal wire, let afternoon sunlight stream in. Luke coul
