“I’m not going to do this. I can’t.”

“You can’t? Are you joking? Surely you must be. You strike me as a reasonably intelligent girl, and I don’t see an intelligent woman  doing a thing like this.”

“I disagree. In fact, I think a really intelligent girl would have done it already. A really intelligent girl wouldn’t have ever had to come back here and bow out. That’s something I can’t change, you know, something that’s definitely on me, but I won’t make that kind of mistake again. I’m not ever going to make a decision out of selfishness or fear again if I can help it.”

Clara’s heart was pounding so wildly in her chest as she spoke that she was sure she would have a heart attack or something. She wondered vaguely to herself if she would be the youngest person to do something like that in this awful prison, and decided that it didn’t really matter. A place could only take so many terrible things before it became saturated, and this stupid state prison was definitely long past that point. Come to think of it, it was a wonder that each and every one of the prisoners there hadn’t gone completely insane, that was if they weren’t there already. The trauma and sadness of the place were so thick, it was like a physical thing. It was like it was living in the walls, this sadness, and waiting to cleave onto anyone who wasn't strong enough to push it away. It seemed to Clara that people in prison weren’t exactly of the most healthy, most stable mentalities, which meant that these people, these prisoners, weren’t exactly prepared to defend themselves from the psychological barrage. And maybe that was part of the point, in the end. Maybe that was part of the punishment of them being locked up there in the first place. For her part, she certainly felt as though she was not strong enough to defend herself against the accumulated pain and anger and suffering of the place. She needed to say what she had to say and get out as quickly as possible, and for more reasons than one.

“So you’re telling me that you’d rather just take your chances then, is that it? It feels like an impossible thing for you to be saying, but I feel that I must make sure that I understand you. This isn’t something to mess around me, am I right? After all, you’ve met my associate. I would hate to send him after you over nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I can’t do it, Marlin. They’re my friends. I care about them.”

“It’s the cop, isn’t it?” Marlin Grant asked incredulously, his face beginning to flush in that way she knew from before meant he was starting to get well and truly pissed off. “It’s that suave, movie-star-looking cop!”

“Hold it down, will you?” Clara asked desperately, looking around her quickly to see if Marlin’s raised voice had caused any kind of commotion amongst the cops on duty. “What are you trying to do, get them all looking at us? Trying to get them all to pay attention? Somehow I don’t think they would be too thrilled to hear what you’ve been up to.”

Marlin smiled at her, and Clara felt her skin begin to crawl. It was the kind of smile that made it unmistakably clear that this man was a bad, bad person. She’d always known that, really, seeing as he was in prison for trying to rob his brother blind and then for trying to kill Elsie for meddling, but seeing the danger in his eyes now was still chilling nonetheless. It was the kind of look that told her that this man would have no qualms about destroying her and everything else around him if he thought it would get him what he wanted.

“So then that’s it, then? No interest in discovering the news I’ve got for you? No concern for your own wellbeing? Maybe even for the wellbeing of your friends? Because make no mistake, my dear. My associate knows everything about them, too. He knows where they live, where they like to spend their time. He knows plenty, and that should be more than enough for you to comply with my wishes.”

Again, Clara looked around her, the broken plastic of her visitor’s chair digging into her skin in such an intense way that she would later have deep purple bruises on the backs of her upper thighs. At the moment, however, she didn’t notice any pain from it at all. All she noticed was the cops milling around her, all of them security guards who were presumably trained to notice when anything was amiss in their midst. Looking at them, she was terrified, absolutely terrified that they would somehow know who she was and that she probably wasn’t supposed to be there at all. It was probably a stupid thing to think, that she could somehow be important enough to garner that kind of attention, but she couldn’t help feel that way anyway. She had come back to the prison without telling Weston where she was going, instead making an excuse that she had to go and see Elsie about some kind of tiff she and Caleb had just had. She felt terrible about lying to him, especially after everything that had happened in Hawaii. At the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what she’d agreed to before they’d left for the trip. She couldn’t tell him that she’d agreed to spy on her own friends; she couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t even safety she’d been thinking about when she’d made the agreement. It had been the chance that whatever information Marlin was claiming to have was real and the idea that if she missed something that might change her life somehow, she would go insane. She couldn’t tell him these things but, as it turned out, she couldn’t go through with the thing she’d agreed to do. It was a gut-wrenching decision to come to, but she couldn’t do it, and so here she was, sitting in front of a convict that was looking at her like she had lost her mind. That expression was almost enough to make her laugh out loud, something she only managed to avoid because she knew it would only make it more likely that somebody would take notice of her and then possibly go back to Weston and mention that she’d been there visiting Marlin.

“There’s no point threatening me, Mr. Grant. I’ve made my decision, and I’m not going to change my mind. I just...I can’t, okay? I can’t do it.”

“That’s not what we agreed upon!” Marlin slammed his fist down on the counter just beneath the plexiglass separating the two of them, his eyes shining with a level of anger bordering on psychosis. “That’s not what we agreed upon, young lady! I don’t appreciate duplicity in a person, let me make that very, very clear.”

“What’s the point of all of this, anyhow? What the hell are you trying to do this for?”

“Are you telling me that you don’t understand the nature of our agreement? Because if that’s the only thing causing problems here, then I’ll be happy to outline it for you again.”

“No, Marlin, that’s not it. I understand what you want from me, and it’s not going to happen. Here’s what I don’t get though. What good do you think any of this information is going to be to you? You’re in prison, for God’s sake. What good is it going to do you to have dirt on Elsie and Caleb? What good is it going to do you to have information on anyone, for that matter? That’s what I totally don’t get. Now that you’re in here, can’t you just let it go? Just serve out your time, Marlin. Serve out your time and maybe get out early for good behavior so you can keep going with your life. Let it go and move on with your life.”

“Move on with my life, huh? That’s cute. You really don’t understand the way the world looks, do you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully, for the first time since her days in the orphanage really not sure that she did. “I think I used to.”

“Well I think you’re a moron if you think somebody in my position would ever just let those things go. They ruined my life, Clara. Does a person just turn his back on a thing like that? Does a person just turn and walk away from it, let it go as if it meant nothing at all? Would you?”

“Don’t you think I’ve done that already?”

“Please,” he spat, his face slick with sweat and taut with anger, “how the hell would you have done that? How would you have ever been in a position to need to do that?”

“Because, Mr. Grant, the first thing that ever happened in my life was a betrayal. The very first thing was that the person who bore me, the person who was supposed to love me and take care of me for my life, handed me over to strangers and walked away.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“You don’t think so? Because if you ask me, mine was worse. My family turned its back on me before I was even old enough to have done anything to deserve it. The thing you keep seeming to forget is that you’re the one who put yourself in here. You did a whole series of things that were not only bad in a moral sense, but straight-up illegal. Can’t you just let that be enough?”

“No, you nosey little bitch,” he hissed, his face so distorted by anger now that he hardly even looked human, “I can’t. I need you to do your job, and I need you to stop asking questions about why. I have my reason for wanting to know anything and everything I can get my hands on about those two. I need that information if I’m going to leverage myself, if I’m going to put myself into the ideal position when I get out of here. I need it, and you’re the one who’s going to get it for me or else you’re going to be one very, very sorry little girl.”

“No, Mr. Grant,” Clara said sadly, standing as she did so on legs that were badly shaking, “I’m not. And you can threaten me all you want to, but I think there’s one piece of the puzzle you’re missing.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Of course, you do. You would. It’s in your nature. That, and you don’t understand the kind of protection I have. You don’t understand it because you don’t have it for yourself, but I’ve got a whole lot of people who love me and that goes a hell of a lot further than you might think. There’s nothing you can do to me that they can’t help me out of, nothing you can do that they can’t help undo. And honestly, if you don’t want to ensure that you stay in here for the rest of your life, you’ll call it all off.”

“Oh, why’s that?” he scoffed, leering at her with a level of condescension so intense it made her recoil from the glass between the two of them. “Because the cops were so keen on believing you? Please, do you think I’m an idiot? I may be in prison right now, but I don’t exist in a vacuum. I have plenty of eyes and ears on the outside, more than you could even begin to imagine, and in different kinds of places. If the cops had been on your side, if they’d believed there was anything going on, I would know about it. They think you’re crazy, nothing more and nothing less. The police force in this city is more in my pocket than they are inclined to believe in you.”

“I don’t need the whole force,” she answered with a calm that surprised even her. “I only need the one who believes in me.”

She turned and walked out then, turned her back on Marlin Grant as he began to shriek about all of the terrible things he would have done to her, the things he would do to her himself once he was out of the hell hole Caleb and Elsie had put him in. He screamed at her and beat his fists on the glass as the guards on duty did their best to haul him off and back to his cell. Not only did he yell after her, but he did so using her full name. “Clara Blake!” He kept screaming, snarling, “Clara Blake! You’re a dead bitch!”

Before realizing how much she actually had working in her favor, she would have been mortified, terrified to hear him rail that way, but now? Now she just kept walking, walking with her head held up high and getting into the cab she had asked to remain waiting for her as she completed the task of informing Marlin that she’d come to her senses after her brief foray into the madness of making herself an accomplice. For the first time since this whole thing had begun, maybe for the first time in all of her life, she felt that she understood exactly where she was supposed to be. And as for the idea that Marlin Grant might actually know something about her past that she would wish to know herself? It was entirely possible, and she knew it. Caleb wasn’t the only one with money in the family, and although Marlin had squandered everything he had before committing his desperate crimes, they still had a mother who was richer than sin and there was no logic in a mother’s love. There was no reason to believe that it was completely impossible that Mrs. Grant had been providing her son with funds and keeping it to herself, especially after the fallout she and Caleb had had when he’s chosen to live his life for himself and to make Elsie a permanent part of his life. So yes, it was entirely possible that Marlin had somehow used his connections to learn something about Clara that she would want to know, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t still find it out. She worked with some of the best hackers out there, and between Caleb and Weston, they had plenty of money of their own to play with. She had her friends, and she was completely confident that if she asked them for their help, they would gladly give it.

“Excuse me!”

“No problem, lady, take a seat. You coming from the prison?”

“I am.”

“Family?”

“No, nothing like that. Just putting a demon to rest.”

The man she’d bumped into while getting onto the subway that would take her back to her part of town, the subway she’d had the cab take her to just as quickly as he was comfortable driving, nodded with a crooked smile on his face and then turned his face back to his newspaper. Clara contented herself with looking out the window, watching the world go by as she barreled back towards what she very much hoped was her future. She was barreling back towards Weston, and now that it was finally over with, she was going to tell him everything. She wasn’t willing to let herself be blackmailed anymore, and she would tell him that, too.

She had a great many things she wanted to talk to him about and she was so lost in those things that she didn’t notice the danger approaching her. It wasn’t even that she didn’t notice it until too late, either, but that she didn’t notice it at all. By the time she got off of the subway and made her way up to the street, it was dark outside and still she didn’t bother to look around her and see if she was traveling alone. It was like she’d made the decision that once she told Marlin she was done helping him, he would call of his goon and so she stopped looking for him. She just had time to think as she felt the hand slide from behind her and around her neck that she realized how much of a mistake she’d made, and by that time, it was far too late for her to do a single thing about it.