Alcatraz! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  More from Dakota Chase

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  Copyright

  Alcatraz!

  By Dakota Chase

  Repeating History: Book Four

  When Ash and Grant set fire to Merlin’s office, lots of items of historical significance burned up—all of which Merlin tasks the boys to replace. This time, they’ll visit the 1930s and one of the most dangerous places of the period: Alcatraz Prison.

  Grant and Ash have always worked together, but this time, they’re literally on opposing sides, with Ash posing as a prisoner while Grant is a guard. Their objective is to retrieve a piece of jewelry belonging to one of the Rock’s most notorious residents—mobster Al Capone. The criminal sees potential in Ash and strikes up a friendship with him. But will it help the two prevent a jailbreak, expose a corrupt guard, and get the item that will activate the magic to take them home?

  Prologue

  RAINDROPS POUNDED the window like a million tiny hammers, while brilliant flashes of lightning split open the gray sky. Ash directed a fierce glare out the window at the sheets of rain as if he could change the weather by the sheer power of his will. He blew out a long, drawn-out sigh when, of course, the rain continued to batter the window. On a day like this, he wanted nothing more than to sit in the dorm room playing video games and eating cold leftover pizza with Grant, but it was not to be, no matter how hard he wished for it. Not after seeing the handwritten note that appeared on his desk that morning.

  History classroom. 10 a.m. sharp.

  The handwriting was unmistakable, and the directive, unavoidable. Professor Ambrosius obviously wouldn’t care if they drowned trying to cross the campus to the building housing the classrooms at the Stanton School for Boys. Which they probably would—the storm was dumping bucketfuls of water outside.

  “Complaining about it isn’t going to change anything. We have to go.” Grant didn’t look any happier about it than he did, but unlike Ash, Grant wasn’t prone to grumbling under his breath.

  “I’ll complain if I want to. Makes me feel better.” It didn’t really make him feel better, but he wasn’t going to admit it to Grant. Well, anyway, maybe it did, a little—in a mean, nasty little way, but still.

  “Well, complain while you get dressed. It’s almost twenty to ten. We’re going to have to hurry. You know Ambrosius hates it when we’re late.” Grant was stuffing his feet into his sneakers. He was already dressed, while Ash was still sitting in his boxers and stocking feet.

  He rolled his eyes and pointed a finger at Grant. “You are a kiss-up. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “And you’re an ass. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Many times. The insult is getting old. You need to work on your creativity, dude.”

  “Just shut up and get dressed. I’m not going to live my life out as a freaking mouse or whatever else Ambrosius might choose to turn me into because I was late waiting for you to get your buns in gear.”

  Ambrosius, their history professor, was also known as Merlin, the famous, powerful wizard of the King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table legend, and he had a notoriously short temper. When he summoned you to his classroom, no matter what day of the week or time of day, you made sure you were there when expected, or you risked whatever punishment he was inclined to mete out. If he turned you into a mouse, Ash figured you should count yourself lucky. There were worse things Merlin could turn a guy into. A pile of mouse droppings, for instance.

  He pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt, then threw on a hoodie. It wasn’t going to do much to keep the rain off, though. In fact, it was probably going to turn into the fabric equivalent of a water balloon.

  As it turned out, he was right. They hadn’t run outside for twenty feet before he was soaked to the skin, and the hoodie felt less like a jacket and more like a saturated sponge. With his luck, he’d develop pneumonia and Merlin would send him back to a time before antibiotics, where he’d die an ugly, painful death.

  When they finally stepped inside the building housing their history classroom, water continued to sluice off them in a steady curtain, pooling at their feet. The room was upstairs, and although they tried to wring themselves out as best they could, they still left a drippy trail in their wake as they climbed to the second floor. Their sneakers made squidgy sounds on the linoleum tiles as they hurried down the hall.

  When they reached the classroom, they knocked, then opened the door and let themselves inside. The room was empty. Merlin’s desk was, as usual, neat as a pin. There were no notes addressed to them on it that they could see, and no messages written on the white board at the head of the classroom.

  Ash growled and swore under his breath. “Huh. He’s not here. Well, isn’t that just perfect. We got soaked running here so we wouldn’t be late, and he’s not even on time!”

  “Of course I’m here. And quite punctual as always, might I add.”

  Ash and Grant both yelped, jumped, and spun around. Merlin stood behind them dressed in slacks, a collared shirt, pullover sweater vest, and a sports jacket. If not for his long, bushy white beard and flowing white hair, he might’ve been any high school teacher they’d ever met. Ash and Grant, however, had learned differently soon upon arriving at the Stanton School for Boys.

  For one thing Merlin was older than dirt, being practically immortal. Then there was the magic, such as his ability to send Ash and Grant back in time.

  Ever since they accidentally started a fire in his office and inadvertently burned up his collection of priceless historical artifacts, Merlin had been sending Ash and Grant back in time to retrieve each and every item they’d destroyed.

  Plus, Ash noticed, Merlin was bone dry, an impossibility for mere mortals given the deluge going on outside. Unless he’d been hiding out in the janitor’s closet, Merlin had used his magic to keep himself from getting wet.

  So, no, Merlin was not like anyone they’d ever met before. Not by a long shot.

  Merlin smirked at them, probably pleased his sudden appearance nearly made them put skid marks in their drawers. He walked around them to his desk, then opened the top drawer and removed a letter-sized piece of paper. He looked up at them and arched an eyebrow. It was enough to make them hurry to his side.

  He showed them the paper. On it was printed a photograph of a rectangular-shaped silver box inscribed with the initials A.C. He tapped the photo with one gnarled forefinger. “Thanks to your fire-making skills, this priceless bit of American history was reduced to a molten lump of metal. Your next task is to go back in time to reclaim it for me.”

  Ash peered at the photo. “What is it?”

  “It looks like a piece of jewelry.” Grant nudged Ash over so he could get a better look. “A locket?”

  “Very good. It is a locket, once owned by a very famous, or shall I say infamous, man with the initials A and C. Alphonse Gabriel Capone. You’ve heard of him, I trust?”

  “Al Capone? Wasn’t he a gangster or something?” Ash looked at Grant.

  Grant shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”


  “Again, your knowledge of history astounds me. Yes, Al Capone was one of the most notorious gangsters of the 1930s. He was… what do you people call them? Ah, yes. A mob boss. Public Enemy Number One, I believe.”

  I nodded. “Okay. And this locket was Capone’s?”

  “Indeed. It’s said he never let it out of his sight, although how he managed to smuggle it into prison is a mystery.”

  I, for one, imagining the few places a person could hide a locket on their anatomy, thought it was one mystery I had no ambition to solve.

  Grant frowned and then cocked his head. “If he never left it lying around, how are we supposed to get our hands on it?”

  Merlin scowled at him. “The how of it is not my concern. You destroyed a priceless historical object; you may figure out how to get it back.”

  Before they could ask another question, thunder clapped, and the room began to spin wildly. Then everything went black.

  Chapter One

  “GET UP, you!”

  Ash was startled awake by a hand grabbing the back of his shirt and roughly hauling him to his feet. A gruff-looking man dressed in a dark blue peacoat scowled at him before turning away.

  The last thing he remembered was being in the history classroom with Grant and Merlin; now he was being manhandled by some burly stranger. The ground under him rose and fell, and it was a little difficult to keep his balance. It took another few moments for it to register in his brain that he was on some sort of a boat. It took only another heartbeat for him to realize it was still raining.

  Not raining, exactly. More like misting. The day was gray, overcast, and the water was choppy. He couldn’t tell if the spray hitting his skin was coming from the waves or the sky. Not that it mattered. Wet was wet.

  He was no longer wearing his jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie-turned-sponge. Now he wore a threadbare button-up shirt missing the last two buttons, and a pair of scratchy, patched pants. His squidgy sneakers were gone, too, replaced by scuffed brown work boots.

  He looked for Grant but didn’t see him, and panic began to brew deep in his gut.

  WTF? Merlin never sent them anywhere alone. They always arrived in the past together. Grant has to be here somewhere. He looked around, trying to spot Grant’s familiar face among the men crowded around him.

  The boat he was on was a small tug boat, so it wasn’t difficult to scan the entire deck with one sweep. He was one of a small group of men, maybe fifteen in all. They were scruffy-looking, and none seemed the slightest bit friendly. Everyone was dressed in old-fashioned clothing, all worn, and most patched in places. Even their haircuts seemed way out-of-date: cropped short on the sides and back, almost too long on top. More than a few had their hair slicked back with some sort of greasy-looking oil. None of the men seemed eager to make eye contact with him, or anyone else. They stared at their shoes or out at the water.

  Ash was confused—not an unusual state of being for him when Merlin sent them back in time, but he’d always had Grant with him before to help figure out where they were and in what time. Being alone threw him off-balance even more than the time travel had. He brought his hands up to rub the wet from his face, and for the first time realized they were weighed down by something heavy.

  Handcuffs. Thick, gray metal handcuffs attached to a heavy chain shackled to his wrists. His ankles were manacled too. He shook them as if they might fall off like some magician’s cheap trick, but all they did was clank noisily and rub painfully on his skin. What the hell was going on?

  He peered around again, trying to at least get some sense of where he was. Through the fog, he spotted a very familiar-looking bridge off in the distance to his left. He’d seen it loads of times: on television, in the movies, in books. There was no mistaking it. It was the Golden Gate Bridge. He was sure of it.

  Which meant the tiny island the boat was fast approaching, the one surrounded by jagged rocks and topped by ominous gray stone buildings, was Alcatraz Island. The Rock.

  And for him, being handcuffed and in leg irons could mean only one thing—he was a prisoner, on his way to being incarcerated in the infamous jail from which it was said no one ever escaped. The same prison where Al Capone was confined. It made sense since they were supposed to nab Capone’s locket for Merlin.

  His lips tilted in a tiny, lopsided grin. What do you know? He’d figured it out all by himself, and with no help from Grant. Go him.

  Speaking of, where the hell was Grant? Was he already on the island? Why didn’t Merlin drop them both in the same place as usual? Seriously, was it just to make things harder on them? That was pretty stupid. Boy, he was going to have a few choice words to say about Merlin when they got back.

  Not to Merlin’s face, of course. Ash didn’t have a death wish. No, he’d blister Grant’s ears with them when they were alone.

  The boat slowed as it neared the island, and eventually stopped, bumping against the dock and gently rocking. A few more stern-looking men in navy peacoats boarded, all armed with thick black sticks wrapped in leather, which they either brandished or tapped against the palms of their hands. Ash thought the weapons might be called blackjacks. No matter what they were called, each man who held one looked more than ready to smash it into the skull of anyone who pissed them off or even looked at them cross-eyed.

  Ash was definitely not going to invite a skull-bashing. When prodded forward, he went along meekly, his feet shuffling because of the weight of the iron chains around his ankles.

  When he got to the prow of the boat, a guard removed his leg irons and handcuffs. “No funny business, you got it? Go on, follow the rest.”

  After climbing out of the boat and onto the dock, the men were separated into smaller groups. Each group was surrounded by four guards, each guard armed with a rifle, who marched them up a long, steep path leading to the top of the island, where the buildings were located. The side of the path was sheer, and as they climbed higher, he could see unforgiving, jagged rocks below. Falling or trying to jump into the water to escape would be suicide.

  No wonder they were okay with unshackling the prisoners. This was the Rock. There was nowhere for them to run.

  A stern-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a suit, tie, and round-rimmed glasses stood in front of them, blocking the path. On each side of him was an armed guard.

  “Welcome to Alcatraz. I’m Warden Johnston. You men will learn that if you behave, if you follow the rules, you’ll get along fine in here. If not, you’ll find out why some people call this America’s Devil’s Island. We keep order here with strict discipline, and make no mistake—you will be punished for infractions of the rules. If you behave, you will be awarded privileges and points for good behavior.” He waved a hand at the guards, then stepped aside.

  “Step lively. We ain’t got all day. There’s more new fish coming in after you.” A hard stick poked Ash in the back, and he stumbled forward behind the rest of the men. “Go on. Don’t make me tell you again.”

  The path wound up the side of the island in three long hairpin turns. Wind buffeted Ash, whipping his pant legs, growing stronger the higher they climbed. The temperature was dropping, and since he was still damp from the boat ride, he was thoroughly chilled and shaking by the time they reached the top of the hill.

  At the end of the path sat an austere building. It was big, stretching nearly from one end of the island to the other, three stories high, and unrelentingly ugly. It was obviously built as a deterrent to anything even vaguely creative or pleasant. It was uniformly gray from the rock underfoot to the buildings, to the general feel of it. Every window Ash could see was set with thick metal bars.

  They were ushered into the building through a pair of heavy metal double doors. Inside, it wasn’t much warmer than outside—the only difference was a lack of wind. Ash and the rest of his group joined the end of a line of prisoners who’d been marched up the hill before them.

  The smell hit Ash full in the face like a slap. It was the stench of gym class man
y times over, a powerful reek of body odor so thick it was almost a visible cloud. He coughed and held his arm over his nose, trying to block some of it out. He knew he’d get used to it after a while, like any bad smell, but for now it was singeing his nose hairs.

  Ash stood on his tiptoes, trying to look over the heads of taller inmates, searching faces, but Grant was nowhere in sight.

  The line moved slowly, the men in it silent, shuffling forward when prodded by the guards. Eventually, Ash’s group reached an interior room. He could hear the sound of running water coming from an adjacent room.

  A bored-looking guard at the entrance addressed them. “Strip off. Clothes go into the hampers on your left. Pick up your soap and towel at the window on the right. Then, straight into the shower room. Move quick, no talking.”

  Strip off? As in get naked? Here? In front of everybody? Were they insane? He wasn’t doing it. No way. Sure, he’d taken showers at school, but even there they had individual stalls, and anyway, everybody there was basically the same age as he was, not a bunch of middle-aged convicts! Weren’t there laws against making minors do stuff like this? He looked wildly around for someone to ask. He settled on a guard walking nearby.

  “Excuse me, sir? I think I’m in the wrong place. I’m a minor. I’m only seventeen—”

  The guard, his expression crumpling into a frown, brandished his blackjack in a large, rocklike fist. “You speak English, don’t you? You ain’t deaf, right? Didn’t you hear the captain? You get one free, you understand? Next time you question an order, you get a reminder banged into your skull.”

  Ash eyed the weapon and the almost eager look in the guard’s eyes, and forced his mouth shut. The guard didn’t look like he was just trying to scare Ash straight—he looked like he meant business, and the last thing Ash wanted was to start off this adventure with a concussion.

  The other men in the line were already following orders, shucking their clothes and dropping them into one of the canvas laundry bags lined up against the left-hand wall. He reluctantly did the same, cupping his hands over his genitals as he walked behind the man in front of him. He had nothing to cover his rear end and felt both embarrassed and vulnerable. Seriously, when he got back home, he was going to let Merlin have it for forcing him into this situation, even if it meant being turned into a pile of dog shit.