Maddox

 

A week in this place, I think, as Officer Richards runs his nightstick along the bars of the cage. I open my eyes and lean up, my jumpsuit making a crinkling noise. Like it’s made out of paper, like you could tear right down it.

 

Officer Richards is short with a shock of ginger hair, a babyish freckle-covered face, and tiny women’s feet. His uniform is creased, unkempt, and his eyes are constantly watery. “Evening, officer,” I grunt, standing up and stretching my arms from side to side. “Amazing, isn’t it? Almost two weeks now and still no movement. I bet you rarely get that, eh? In and out usually, eh?”

 

Officer Richards’ nose crinkles. He opens his mouth and then seems to think better of it and closes it again. “I know, I know,” I say, walking the length of the cell and standing close to the bars. “It confuses you. Can’t blame you. But it’s amazing what a few greased palms can get done.”

 

The cell is one of those large holding tanks, designed for upwards of eight people. At the moment, two men are stowed away in here with me. One is a big brute, even larger than Markus, with a Swastika tattooed on his neck. When I get up, he backs away to the other side of the cage. Last night, when they brought him in, he thought he was going to prove himself. Now he has a nasty black eye. Like Cassandra’s, I think bitterly. The other man is a thin black man with cornrows and dark brown eyes, the tips of his fingers callused and chipped. When the Nazi motherfucker went for him, I gave him another black eye. I think he’s learned good behavior now.

 

“You have a visitor,” Officer Richards mutters.

 

“Tom, isn’t it?” I ask, as I turn around and slide my hands between the hatch in the cage so he can cuff me. “Tom Richards. Yeah, we’ve met before, haven’t we? Briefly. I think one of my men—”

 

“Shh!” Tom hisses, and I can see his little red face spread in anxiety without even turning to look at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“Bet you don’t.” I smile as he snaps the cuffs on.

 

I walk back into the cage with my hands behind my back. The neo-Nazi prick is giving me the eye, his pupils set deep in the black pits.

 

“Try me.” I grin wolfishly. “Come on, big man. No arms—and you’ll still end up on your fucking back.”

 

He half-stands, looks at me for a moment, and then slumps back down.

 

“Good boy.”

 

I walk to the cage, and Officer Richards opens it. I walk out, and he quickly closes it behind me.

 

“You know,” I say, as he leads me down the hallway to the waiting area, “I’m sure I saw you with my friend, Irish. A problem with your landlord and your wife, wasn’t it?” I look down at his finger, where a gold wedding band sits. “See we did our job right, then. And free of charge, wasn’t it? Or was it in exchange for a favor? I wonder, have we cashed in that favor yet?”

 

Officer Richards leads me to the small waiting room, and then I’m done talking shit.

 

Eden sits on the couch, hugging her knees, watching me with wide eyes.

 

***

 

“Yeah, I’m the coder.”

 

Eden nods slowly. “I couldn’t believe it at first,” she says. “I mean . . .” She reaches for me, but Officer Richards says, “Ma’am,” and she takes her hand away. “I knew you weren’t stupid, of course. But this, Maddox. It’s incredibly impressive. Incredibly. So you went to college?”

 

“Before I was the leader of a band of thugs and killers, yeah.” I smile at her, and she smiles back, and for a moment I can almost imagine we are living that loving life I’ve dreamed of more and more since being in here. That life where I’m no longer an outlaw and Eden can do whatever she likes. She can be a full-time game maker, and I can be her silent partner.

 

But spending time dreaming won’t fix this situation.

 

I glance at Officer Richards, and then lean close to Eden. She leans in. She’s wearing a tank top like when we first met; I can see her pink bra. And she’s wearing denim shorts and big, chunky boots. I wish I could break these cuffs and take her in my arms, but they tend not to let inmates who tool up other inmates out of cuffs.

 

“Listen,” I whisper. “I have a favor to ask you.”

 

“Okay . . .” She nods for me to go on.

 

“I need you to go to my apartment, let yourself in, and find a disc. The key to the apartment is at the club, in the second drawer of my desk, under a red folder. The disc is in my bedroom, under my pillow. Run the disc on my laptop to see what it is.”

 

“When?” she asks.

 

“Now,” I say. “And then come back to me.”

 

“Where is your apartment?” she says with a small laugh. “Everything we’ve been through, and I don’t even know where your apartment is!”

 

“That’s ’cause we’re not so serious, Red.” I smile warmly at her, and she smiles back, a cute smile that makes me want to jump her.

 

I give her the address, and she stands up. “I won’t be long,” she says. “Half an hour.”

 

“Okay.” I turn and face the door. Officer Richards steps aside as Eden walks past her, and then he steps forward with his hand out.

 

“Nope,” I say, and he stops.

 

“What?” he murmurs.

 

“We’re going to wait here until my friend gets back,” I say.

 

“You can’t expect me to—”

 

“You went to a gang of outlaws and begged them to tool up your landlord, pal,” I say. “We have a nice clear recording of your voice: ‘I need him hurt bad enough so he backs off. He’s made too many moves on my wife.’ Or something like that.” Officer Richards’ eyebrows shoot up like they’re set on bursting through the roof.

 

“You’re lying,” he whispers.

 

I shrug. “Try it, if you like.”

 

He takes a few steps backward and then leans against the wall near the door. “Twenty minutes,” he says, “and then I take you back.”

 

“Half an hour,” I reply. “You don’t make the rules, officer, not with me.”

 

Officer Richards’ face gets even redder. “You’re an evil man.”

 

“Evil? How am I evil? You know I didn’t do this. Your bosses know I didn’t do this. Hell, everyone in the goddamn station knows I didn’t do this. And yet you’re keeping me here. You’re letting the world believe I tried to rape a woman. Why?”

 

But Officer Richards doesn’t seem to be in a chatty mood any longer, so I just lean back in the chair, roll my head from side to side, and close my eyes. Did they really think they good get away with it? Really?

 

Did they really have no goddamn idea who they were messing with?

 

***

 

When Eden returns, her face is like a deer’s caught in a headlight factory. Her high cheekbones are somehow higher, her forehead has a clear line creased down the middle, and her mouth is a big O. She holds the disc in her hand as she shuffles past Officer Richards and comes to sit beside me.

 

“Five minutes,” Officer Richards says. “Any longer and I’ll get in trouble.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” I grunt.

 

Eden leans in close to me, so her lips are less than an inch from my ear. When she talks, her breath tickles my skin, warm. And all I want to do is sink into bed with her and feel the tickling breath for the rest of the day.

 

“This is a record of Mason and Cassandra embezzling millions—millions, Maddox!—from investors in Mason’s company! If this got out, they’d go to prison—”

 

“That’s the point,” I whisper back. “There are two files on the disc. Did you only run the—”

 

“Yeah, just the embezzling records,” she says. “I was too stunned after that to run the second one, to be honest. I’ll run it later?”

 

“The second file contains instructions on who to send this to and how to reach them. They’re my hacker friends. That’s why we had to wait a week; they told me they’d be ready for this date, and this date alone. The Cassandra additions are recent. I didn’t even know they were together until just before the party, but there’s enough on her to make her an accomplice.”

 

“Enough to get the heat off of you and onto her,” Eden says, the excitement bubbling beneath her voice. “Yes, Maddox!”

 

“Expose them,” I growl. “Expose them and show the goddamn world what seedy fucks they are.”

 

She flinches at the anger in my voice. “Revenge,” she says, tasting the word.

 

“Revenge,” I agree.

 

She leans back, and I do the same.

 

I smile at her, but her face is suddenly uncertain. She taps her knee with her fingernail with one hand; with the other, she scratches the disc case up and down, leaving faint marks in the plastic.

 

“What is it?” I ask.

 

“Just all those things Cassandra said,” she says. “I know they’re not true, but they go around and around in my head. Why would she say that? Just because you left her? Just out of anger?”

 

“Not just that, no,” I say, wishing these cuffs would turn to sand.

 

“Two minutes,” Officer Richards says.

 

We ignore him.

 

“Why, then?” Eden asks.

 

“Because she wanted me back,” I say. “She’s crazy, Eden. She came up to me at the party and asked me to leave you. She genuinely thought I would drop you in a second and ride off into the sunset with her. Look at me.” Eden raises her bright red-brown eyes to my face. “I have never – never – cheated on, or hit a woman. Never in my life. Once, when I was a kid, a social services woman came by the house to check on me. I’d gone to school with a black eye the week before, and I guess one of the teachers was concerned. So they sent this woman around . . .” I swallow, my tongue dry and stuck to the floor of my mouth. The past can be a painful thing, can’t it? “She was a birdlike woman, all thin and dainty-looking. When she knocked on the door, I watched out of the window. I watched my old bastard of a father grab her, shove her up against the wall, and jab her twice in the belly. Then he whispered some mean shit in her ear. I know it was mean because she never came back. Nobody did.”

 

“He threatened her,” Eden says.

 

“Yeah.” My eyes sting, and for a terrifying moment, I think I might cry. “When I saw that, I went down the stairs, and I threw a pan at the old man’s head. Bounced right off like nothing happened, and he gave me another black eye and a broken finger in the bargain. But even then I knew . . . A man never hits a woman. Never.”

 

“I believe you,” Eden says, and her eyes are watering, too. “I know you’re telling me the truth.”

 

“Cassandra is more than capable of hurting herself to screw me over, anyway.”

 

I blow air through clenched teeth. “Anyway, I can see Officer Richards is about to have a goddamn aneurysm if we don’t finish up. Listen, after you’ve sorted the disc, go somewhere secret. Don’t tell any of my men, and don’t tell me.”

 

“Move again?”

 

“Just for a little while,” I say. “When this thing hits, Cassandra is going to be on the warpath.”

 

Eden shivers. “And Cassandra on the warpath might even be capable of getting to me at the club, or at one of your men’s house?”

 

“Exactly,” I say. “She might play the sweet girlfriend well, but Cassandra Caraway is a vicious creature.”