Beth
The next day, Beth tried to follow Bib's advice and act normally. But when she drove past the gate to the CO parking lot and saw the huge metal doors slide shut behind her, she was hit by a panic attack so strong and sudden, it felt like her heart was going to blast out of her ribcage and splatter against the steering wheel. Her hands shook violently, and she found herself gasping for air with each breath.
What if they had been watching her place last night? What if they'd seen Bib enter or leave, no matter how careful he'd tried to be? What if they were waiting to confront her inside—to punish her somehow?
What if they didn't know about Bib, but they still decided that today was the day they'd throw some extra torment her way? What if they followed through on their threats to force her into sex?
What if Bib came up with a plan and decided to act on it today, but they saw right through it? What if they took it out on Hank and the Warriors?
What if they were finally able to prod Hank into killing for them, and he got caught and sentenced to life? What if he got the death penalty for it? What if he ratted them out and they had to murder him to shut him up?
What if they...
Beth heard a hysterical screech of laughter, and it took a moment for her to realize it had come from her. There was so much danger from so many sides, she'd mentally lumped them all together into one vague, faceless, terrifying They—Butler, Bull, the White Knights, the Nation of Sinners, the other COs. A huge, gray, impenetrable mass of solid dread closing in on all sides, just like Bluebonnet itself. She felt like a single drop of water trying to fight the rest of the ocean.
She took several deep breaths as she stared at her hands, willing them to stop trembling. After a few minutes, they did. Her heart was still twisting and slithering in her chest like a snake, but at least that was on the inside so no one could see it.
Just remember to keep taking breaths, she thought. Slow and steady, one after the other. Keep your eyes blank. Keep your posture stiff and neutral. Keep everyone thinking that this is just a normal miserable day for you at this job—because if there's one thing the monsters in here are good at, it's sensing weakness and exploiting it.
Beth got out of her car, went to the small side door for the guards, swiped her key card, and stepped inside. She changed into her uniform in the locker room, and then came the familiar ritual of walking through a dozen different doors as they opened for her and clanged shut behind her.
Finally, she arrived in cell block G and checked in with Butler. He eyed her with his usual air of mild contempt, then wrote her name down in the log book as he always did.
So far, so good, Beth thought.
One of the first duties Beth attended to at the start of her shift was transporting prisoners to the shower room. This was done in small groups—usually five convicts at a time—to maintain order and keep things manageable. The same procedure was used when bringing them to the cafeteria, except that three or four guards were used, and the number of prisoners went up to about twenty. The ratio of one guard to every five inmates was strictly maintained at all times.
Too many prisoners plus too few guards could easily equal a riot—a grim equation that too many of the older COs still remembered from what happened fifteen years before.
During her brief time working at Bluebonnet, Beth had largely become indifferent to seeing men naked. Half of the prisoners seemed to walk around the cell block in their underwear most of the time, and she'd seen all of them in the showers at one time or another. With little to do in prison except exercise, many of the men looked like they'd stepped right off the pages of bodybuilding magazines—their pecs, abs, biceps, and glutes bulged and glistened under the running water, and their dicks flopped around as they soaped up their bodies. Some of them tried to provoke Beth by staring at her and pretending to jerk off, and they traded plenty of jokes and idle threats with each other. But for the most part, they just went about the business of cleaning themselves.
The casual nudity shocked Beth a bit when she saw it on her first day, but by her third or fourth, she barely registered it.
The only exception was Hank.
Every time she saw Hank strip down and step into the shower room, she couldn't help but remember how his lithe, muscular body felt pressed against hers. She imagined those powerful arms wrapped around her again, and whenever he turned his back to her, she longed to run her fingernails down his shoulders and kiss the nape of his neck.
But even though it was her favorite part of every shift—the lone bright spot in her day, when she could cherish these memories of being with him—she had to remind herself not to stare, or even appear to look at him casually. Bull may have already known about her prior relationship with Hank, but if any of the other inmates sensed it, they could try to hold it over her. So she had to steal brief glances from the corners of her eyes, and no matter how many times she did, the quick flashes of his nude body just left her hungry for more. Then the shower was over in minutes, Hank let her lead him back to the cell block without a word, and she'd look forward to the next day's shower.
This time, though, before she could start to round up her first five prisoners for the shower, Butler said, “You can skip shower duty today. I'll handle it. The visitors' desk is understaffed, so you can spend the first couple hours of your shift there.”
Beth froze in her tracks. Her initial twinge of disappointment at not being able to see Hank naked that day gave way to something darker within seconds—she'd never seen Butler personally handle a task as menial as shower duty, especially when he could delegate it to the lower-ranking guards instead.
And what did he mean when he said the visitors' desk was “understaffed?” It was the least-demanding job in Bluebonnet, since checking in visitors was fairly mindless work with no real possibility of danger. The same aging CO was assigned to it just about every day—and whenever he called in sick, Butler tended to simply cancel visitation for that day, rather than pulling another guard away from the cell blocks where their skills and training were more urgently needed.
Butler noted her hesitation. “Got a problem with that, D'Amato?”
“No sir,” she replied instantly.
“Good. Then get to it.”
But as she headed toward the exit doors of the cell block, she snuck a peek over her shoulder. Generally, when Beth rounded up five prisoners to take to the showers, she was under standing orders from Bull to make sure that the bikers and Aryans all went together for safety reasons.
So why was Butler leading Hank to the showers with four members of the Nation of Sinners?