Nightrise

into the room. The woman stood up.
    "Mr. Banes has come to see you now," she explained. "I wish I could stay with you and keep him away.
    But until you're ready for me, until you're mine, I can't. I'm so sorry, my dear. But I will come back. I promise."
    The bald man had sat down in her place. Scott squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, deep inside himself.
    He heard the door close softly and the two of them were left alone.
    TEN
    Silent Creek
    Jamie had been in court once before, so there were no surprises here: not the smallness of the room, the few people in it, the speed at which everything took place. There were two tables facing the judge — a middle-aged woman dressed in black, sitting on a high-backed chair between the flag of Nevada and the Stars and Stripes. Jamie was at one table with his lawyer. His probation officer and a woman from the district attorney's office were at the other. A clerk took notes and a security man stood by with a seen-it-all-before look on his face. There were two rows of chairs at the back of the room. No press or public were allowed into a juvenile court, but Alicia was sitting there on her own, an anxious look on her face.
    She had come as a family friend.
    Jamie's hands and feet were shackled. That had alarmed him because it hadn't happened the last time he had been taken into custody. But this time the offense was more serious. He had been arrested, supposedly, for selling drugs at school…a crime which would guarantee him jail time. It was all fake, of course. The probation officer and the lawyer were both part of the setup, somehow connected to John Trelawny, who had arranged the whole thing. They had even given Jamie a false name: Jeremy Rabb, case number J83157. Somehow they had slotted him into the Nevada juvenile justice system, and as far as Jamie knew, the judge was the only person in the room who didn't know what was really going on.
    It was all fake — and yet the plastic strips binding his wrists and the chains around his ankles were horribly real. Free movement, the most basic of all human rights, had been taken from him. He felt the horror of having his identity stripped away, of belonging to a system that would now do with him as it pleased. Worse still, he remembered what the senator, John Trelawny, had told Alicia on the telephone.
    "I can get him in, Alicia, but there's something you have to appreciate: I can't get him out again, not once he's been sent to Silent Creek. Too many people would know. What we're doing here is necessary and I can justify it in my own mind, but it's borderline illegal. Do you understand what I'm saying? Once Jamie's inside the system, I cannot intervene."
    Alicia had explained it to Jamie, who understood. The senator was already sticking his neck out for him and couldn't risk a scandal if it all went wrong. At the same time, Jamie wasn't too concerned. He had his power and he could use it to walk out of prison at any time. And he thought about Scott. Finding his brother was all that mattered to him, and there was no other way. It was only now, unable to separate his hands, unable to walk without shuffling, that he had second thoughts. He was about to be sentenced, processed, swallowed up. When that happened, he would be completely on his own.
    In the last twenty-four hours, his hair had been cut short and he had been given a pair of thick, black plastic glasses to wear. He was surprised how much his appearance had changed. The danger was that anyone who had met Scott would recognize him as an almost identical twin. Now there seemed little chance of that. Looking in the mirror, he could barely recognize himself.
    "…The sentence set down by this court is twelve months in a detention facility…" The judge was talking. Jamie had missed the first part of what she was saying. She turned to the probation officer. "I've looked through the case files and I think Summit View would be appropriate."
    Jamie had heard of Summit View. It was a youth correctional center on the edge of Las Vegas. But the probation officer was shaking his head. "With respect, Your Honor, I was going to recommend Silent Creek."
    The judge was surprised. "It's pretty tough out there," she remarked. "The boy is only fourteen and this is a first offense."
    ''Yes, Your Honor. But he was selling crystal meth to kids as young as twelve. Some of them are now in rehab programs, out of school. Rabb has shown no remorse. In fact, he's been pretty pleased with