<div style="background-color:#050505; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><div style="background-color:#101010; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><img alt="" src="http://i.imgur.com/YqoWFWw.jpg?2" style="float:right; padding:6px;"/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7b2424"><span style="font-size: 200%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="font-family: Pristina;"><span style="font-weight: bold">I A N</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #6b1f1f"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="font-family: Pristina;"></span></span></span><span style="color: #101010">____________________</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #d6d6d6">Ian rubbed the areas of his wrists that had been chaffing from the handcuffs and set about making himself at home. Well, as much at home as he could possibly be in a small solitary cell. Prisons didn't even refer to those cells as 'solitary confinement' anymore. They thought it was too <span style="font-style: italic">extreme</span>, which seemed kind of humorous considering they saw nothing wrong in total and absolute isolation. But no, they called them 'segregation units' now. Calling them something more flowery didn't change the fact that he was still in a cramped 6x8 room, hardly big enough for his bed let alone the combination of that, the toilet, the desk, and the television. Ian was thankful that claustrophobia had never been prevalent in his life, because if it had been, he would have been having a very, very bad time.<br/><br/>Despite having a television, there wasn't really anything Ian found himself wanting to do. The desk saw more use than the television. He wrote. Mostly letters to his sister and his father, neither of whom seemed eager to write him back, but occasionally he wrote other things, too. His writing range varied greatly between simple revelations about life in prison, to heavier subjects like the current presidential election and the dangers of the populace seeking Utopia. He really just wrote whatever was on his mind that day, and found himself more often than not sitting at his desk and organizing whatever papers he had strewn about the actually relatively nice wooden two-tier desk, much like he was doing now. <br/><br/>The straight-back wooden chair to accompany the desk was less than comfortable, especially after hours of sitting in that interrogation room chained to an equally-if-not-more uncomfortable chair, but he dealt with it. The papers on his desk had already been organized when he woke up at six this morning as he generally did and he hadn't written anything in the time between now and then, so he just sat there, idly straightening the three neat stacks of paper and pushing them all the way back to the edge of the desk that ran adjacent with the wall. He was about to search for his remote - because there were <span style="font-style: italic">so</span> many places for it to hide in a small six by eight cell - when someone outside pounded just twice on the door. <br/><br/>Ian looked up abruptly from his perpetual search for the remote just in time to see a small postcard-sized pink envelope flutter through the glassless window at the center of the thick steel door. He hoisted himself up from his seat and wandered over to the two inches of glass that stretched the majority of the way across the door, cupping his hands around his eyes to see better, but there was no one down either length of hall that he could see. Whatever guard had slipped that through his door was <span style="font-style: italic">supposed</span> to watch him open it. Not that he was complaining, though; it was nice to have a bit of privacy in a place where such a thing was next to nonexistent. Normally they at least announced the reason for the visit, instead of just throwing it through the door. Whoever it was was either in a huge hurry - evidenced by the fact that they had taken off so quickly - or just didn't want to talk to him.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Probably the short one,</span> Ian concluded to himself, bending down to snatch up the fallen letter. The pink envelope made him think of his sister Abigail. He turned it over to read the front of the envelope. The first thing that stuck in his mind was the chicken-scratch penmanship. Abby's handwriting was always neat, precise cursive and he found himself slightly disappointed that his name wasn't written in her over-exaggerated swirls and curves, but rather a haphazard mesh of lines that just so happened to spell a name.<br/><br/>Ian Allen Baird, 463387 <br/>Dade Correctional Facility<br/>19000 SW 377th St #100, Florida City, FL 33034<br/><br/>There was no return address. <br/><br/>Ian flipped the letter over and back again to make sure he wasn't missing anything, then peered out the two inches of glass again to see if there was anyone coming back down the hall. Not a soul. He backed away from the door slowly, like moving too fast would somehow activate some guard's security senses and send someone bounding his way to prevent him from opening a letter unsupervised. The backs of his knees hit the chair again and he lowered himself down to sit, laying the envelope flat on the desk. He felt around it with his fingers, pushing around some loose, thin object. Someone had sent him a gift, it seemed. <br/><br/>He tore the top off of the envelope as quietly as he could manage. Not that it would have particularly mattered, now that he looked at the clock. He had managed to get the guard's patrols down to an exact science. There wasn't anyone due to come for another ten minutes, and if he was quick about this, it wouldn't be an issue. The top was off the envelope, shriveling up and curling around itself on the desk, as torn paper was so want to do, and he peered down in the envelope. There was indeed a postcard in there, but there was also something else. He pulled the small card out of its confines to reveal a small, jagged shiv constructed from a fork. There was duct tape wrapped around the prongs to make a solid grip, and the end of it had been painstakingly sharpened to a fine point, and the edges of it all the way down to the makeshift tape handle had been sharpened enough to at least give it an edge. <br/><br/>Ian pulled it out of the envelope, looked it over a few times, then softly placed it at the very back of his desk next to the papers to focus more on the postcard, examining the writing on the back of it. There was no elaborate letter, there was no signature, no watermark. All there was, was a note that read so eloquently: <span style="font-style: italic">Up for a game of cat and mouse?</span> He looked up at the shiv for a split second, narrowing his eyes and trying to process what that meant. It was that moment that something unsettling overtook him, and he flipped the postcard over in his hand, and his stomach sank. This wasn't a postcard. It was a photograph of the house he grew up in - the one his father and sister now shared, and a thick, black Sharpie'd X crossing it out. <br/><br/>"Fuck," he whispered to himself, eyes trailing over every centimeter of the picture. He dragged his free hand through his hair, pulling just slightly to vent some sort of frustration that he was feeling, before bolting to his feet and grabbing the shiv and the torn envelope and throwing everything but the shiv onto his bed. He pulled up one of the back corners of his mattress and stabbed the knife deep down inside of it, cutting just a few inches and wiggling it around to make some room before shoving the homemade weapon in there fully, and folding up both envelope and photo and putting them in hiding with it. Once he was satisfied that everything was secure and wouldn't fall out when he was in bed at night, he tossed himself over to lay down and stared blankly at the ceiling. With a just slightly louder hint of agitation, he repeated himself once more. "Fuck."<br/><br/></span></div></div><div style="background-color:#101010; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><img alt="" src="http://i.imgur.com/Y01yBm8.jpg?1" style="float:right; padding:6px;"/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #7b2424"><span style="font-size: 200%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="font-family: Pristina;"><span style="font-weight: bold">T R A C E</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: #6b1f1f"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="font-family: Pristina;"></span></span></span><span style="color: #101010">____________________</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #d6d6d6">The engine roared to life and Trace threw his car in reverse. He wasn't in as much of a hurry to get to the station as he was to get the hell out of here. This was by no means his first visit to Dade Correctional, and he was pretty sure it wasn't Jo's first either. He was used to the place, most of the people, but he could never get used to the feeling it gave him. It creeped him out, for no rational reason other than it was chock full of Miami's finest criminals and hardasses. His daughter would have laughed at him. She was only eight, but she found jails and psychiatric hospitals and murderers and all manner of weird shit fascinating, just like her mother did. He briefly wondered what she would think of Ian Baird, wondered about it some more, and then decided it would be best to just not imagine that at all. The last thing he needed was to get her interested in some horrible piece of trash like Ian fucking Baird.<br/><br/>"We can't even get him to give us the time of day on recording, let alone giving us a name that might actually <span style="font-style: italic">help</span> us," Trace ranted, exasperated. "If he's not protecting any sort of accomplice, like he <span style="font-style: italic">insists</span> that he's not, then he should have no problem throwing us a bone." His mind immediately flashed to some of the evidence photos of the partially decomposed bodies of Ian's victims, and then thought maybe a play on bones was in bad taste and decided to change the subject. "Wonder what's so important Lieutenant Ross had to call an entire meeting about it. In the middle of an interview that might have actually gotten somewhere if you could have talking to him."<br/><br/>Not that any of it would have mattered, in the long run. Like he had said, Ian was careful. There was no recording anything he said unless they sent someone in there wired. Ian's family seemed to hate him just as much as the rest of the state did, so maybe one of them? A friend from high school? Did Ian Baird even <span style="font-style: italic">have</span> friends? Unlikely. Well, there went that idea.<br/><br/>The drive to the station from the prison was a short and sweet one since you could take the turnpike all the way there. It also helped that Trace was never one for 'defensive driving.' For someone who was supposed to uphold the law, he had a habit of breaking the speed limit. Twenty minutes later and he was merging over into the leftmost turn lane at the last light they had to sit through, patiently waiting for cars to pass before he could swoop into the very narrow entrance to the station's parking lot. Parking was always a chore whenever he actually had something that he needed to do, but he found a spot eventually and slid in as carefully as he could between an even bigger SUV and some dipshit Prius that didn't know how to park.<br/><br/>Once he was parked straight, or as straight as he was going to get considering that Prius was crooked and coming over into his spot, he turned the key and withdrew it, and the gentle hum of the engine died out. He shoved the keys back in his pocket and went to unbuckle his seatbelt that he just realized he had never buckled in the first place, and set about buttoning up his suit jacket. He looked over at Jo with a vague sense of resignation. "Well, let's go break the news that Ian Baird isn't helping us."<br/><br/><br/></span></div></div><br/><div style="background-color:#101010; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><ul></ul></div></div>