***
“You’re going to have to tell the guards what’s going on, or I’m going to get the hell beat out of me,” I said, pressing my fingers to my jaw and checking out my new shiner in the shower of the infirmary.
“You need to stop fucking with them, and maybe we wouldn’t have to have them apprised,” Kelly countered.
I glanced at him in the mirror.
“True,” I agreed. “But I can’t stand self-righteous pricks who think they’re better than me. They’re not. And they don’t need to treat me like a criminal.”
“They think you are a criminal,” Kelly pointed out.
I shrugged. “Don’t give a fuck. That doesn’t give them the right to fuck with me day and night. I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep since I got here thanks to them.”
Kelly sighed dramatically.
“Fuck. Fine,” he said, getting up and walking to the infirmary’s door.
“You’re supposed to be my guard. If you leave, I’ll have to leave with you,” I said helpfully.
Kelly glared at me, then snatched the door open and walked away, I presumed, to speak with the guards.
My phone dinged, alerting me to a text message.
I got them a lot now, and to tell the truth, I looked forward to them, too.
Freya never seemed to disappoint me with her words.
It’d been two weeks now since she’d realized that it was me, and she’d yet to make me feel like I was cheating on Aerie.
If I even considered a relationship with any woman, other than the very rare occasions I’d had casual sex, I would immediately feel like I’d done Aerie’s memory a disservice. As if I didn’t love her as much as I thought I did.
Because if I needed another woman’s companionship that meant that maybe Aerie didn’t mean as much to me as I thought she did.
Now, though, with Freya, it didn’t feel wrong.
When I spoke to her, it didn’t feel like I was betraying Aerie’s memory.
It just felt right.
Which hadn’t happened since she’d died well over five years ago.
The door to the infirmary slammed as the first guard showed.
This one was Cruz.
He was actually one of the better ones.
He was smart as a whip, six foot one inches of pissed off Mexican American, and was fair to his core. He felt that the system was true, and never ever made a mistake.
Which was why when he saw me unattended, kicked back against the bed, he froze.
“Where,” he asked, voice tightening, “is your guard?”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Kelly said as he came in the door, four more guards behind him.
Five guards meant there were only eight on shift, which left the entire prison at a disadvantage if a prison break decided to happen while we were having our come-to-Jesus meeting.
It wouldn’t. However, every man felt antsy as they shifted from foot to foot to stare at Kelly and me.
“Why are we here?” Cruz finally asked, miffed at having been brought here.
“We’re here to tell you that Mr. Walker isn’t the man you think he is,” Kelly said evasively.
I sighed.
“What he’s pussyfooting around about is that I’m actually undercover and would appreciate you breaking up the fights a little faster than you have been, or I’ll have to beat the shit out of you,” I replied bluntly, tossing an annoyed glance at Kelly as I did.
I still wasn’t happy that I was here, and most assuredly wasn’t happy with the fact that the guards were being assholes, testing me like they did every new inmate.
They wanted to see what I was made of and, normally, I was all for that. But, in this instance, I wasn’t.
They were impeding my ability to work, and making it so that I was going to have to be here longer than I ever intended to be.
It’d been two freakin’ weeks and I was no closer to finding out any of the information I was here to get than I was the day I’d entered this fine facility.
There was silence after my declaration, and Cruz’s face started to turn a ruddy red as his anger became palpable. “Bull fucking shit,” he said, starting forward.
Surprisingly, it was the one I’d been calling ‘Bull’ that stopped him from coming.
“I knew you weren’t the same little fucker who was here before you,” he said. “I saw what you did to that kid, Mendes,” Bull said.
His name wasn’t actually Bull. In fact, it was nothing close to Bull.
I thought it was Jeffries, but Bull fit the man to a T, seeing as his shoulders were as wide as Texas was across.
And his fists were the size of hams.
I shrugged.
He was right.
I’d saved the little kid, Mendes.
Mendes had been convicted of dealing thanks to his brother.
I’d actually been the one to book him and try his case.
The short of it was that Mendes wanted to fit in so badly with his older brother that he was willing to do just about anything. Even transport ten pounds of weed across county lines.
Not that he’d known that what he was transporting was weed.
His brother had told him it was a friend’s gym clothes that he’d left in his truck.
Mendes, only wanting to get his brother to notice him, had taken the bag to the ‘friend.’
Only the ‘friend’ was actually an undercover cop who’d been just as surprised to see Mendes as Mendes was when he was arrested for distribution, and his brother was arrested for possession.
Mendes had finally realized that his brother was a piece of shit. He took the plea bargain, but he still had to serve time, and he’d always have a record.
The kid had been dealt a bad hand in life.
He was smart as fuck, though.
And I knew exactly who I was going to offer a job with Peek the minute he got out.
Mendes was a whiz with computers.
In fact, he’d gone so far as to hack into the oldest computer in the world, which just happened to be in the prison’s library, giving me access to the Internet while I was in this hellhole.
I didn’t know how he did it, and I was pretty sure that what he did wasn’t illegal, but the kid had ingenuity, and I found that I kind of liked that about him.
I shrugged. “Kid wasn’t harming that fucker.”
Bull nodded.
“No, he wasn’t, and that’s why I try to keep my eye on him. Which is also why I caught you sticking up for him. Your brother wouldn’t have done that,” Bull observed.
My brows rose.
“How do you know he’s my brother?” I asked.
He gave me a look that clearly said, ‘how stupid do you think I am?’
I smiled.
“Yeah, he’s my brother,” I confirmed.
“That’s starting to make a lot more sense. I heard your brother lost half his hand, and then suddenly you show up with a perfectly working hand and not even a scar on it,” Anon, another guard that I didn’t mind, said.
I picked my hand up and looked at it.
“Shit,” I said. “Kelly, what the fuck? Why didn’t you keep that shit under wraps?”
Kelly shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “Guess I will next time I do this, though, won’t I?”
“If we noticed it, chances are some of the inmates probably noticed it, too,” Cruz pointed out reluctantly. “Some of the guards don’t keep their traps shut when they should.”
I pursed my lips and thought about it.
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “I hopefully won’t have to be here that much longer.”
“I’ll be happy to stab you in the hand and make it look more realistic,” Jessup offered.
I glared at the little fucker, then back at the guard I hated most of all.
He was always the first one to accidentally knock my food on the ground.
“You got a problem, little boy?” I asked him.
And he was little.
He had what I called ‘short man’ syndrome.
He was always out to prove he was a bigger badass than the rest of the guards, and with that came a big fucking attitude.
I knew, however, that he was good at what he did.
He’d have to be to still be here.
Which was why I was trusting him with this information.
I’d given Kelly a list of the guards that I thought would take the news and not use it to fuck with me, and these five men were the ones that I knew would keep it to themselves.
Jessup started to come forward, but Bull caught him around the shoulder.
“Do you know who that is, man?” Bull asked.
Jessup’s eyebrows lowered.
“No,” he admitted.
“He’s Ridley Walker,” Bull said it like everyone in the whole fucking state should know who I am.
But, a lot of people did.
My name was definitely known within the law enforcement community.
A lot of it had to do with my work to bring down the Coller Gang.
Then there was the fact that while I was in the midst of pursuing the Coller Gang’s president, that man’s son was murdering my wife.
I’ll be the first to admit that my vendetta against the Coller Gang hadn’t been sane.
There was no way I could perform my duties impartially when I’d gone back to work after two weeks of mandatory bereavement leave following my wife’s murder.
I sat at home stewing the entire two weeks, thinking of all the ways I could fuck over the president of the Coller Gang.
And when I’d returned to work, I hunted the members of that gang tirelessly until I had what I needed to send as many of them to prison as I could.
Now only the president, and a few lower-ranking, pissant members were left.
Every time he tries to build the ranks back up, I turn my focus back to them.
And their president hates me.
Although hates may not be a strong enough word.
Loathes.
Detests.
Abhors.
Those were more like it.
Jessup’s expression changed in an instant, and on his face I now saw awe.
“Holy crap,” he whispered, voice squeaking slightly.
I laughed.
I didn’t know why everyone thought so highly of me.
I was a law enforcement officer, just like every other man in the room.
It’s just that I’d been extremely successful, and a bit lucky, in my reckless quest to bring down one of the most prominent gangs straddling the Louisiana/Texas border.
“Was it true that you…” I held up a hand before Jessup could continue.
“When I get out of here, I’ll gladly have a beer with you, and we can talk all about me and the Coller Gang, ok? But, now’s the time to go back to work and let me do my job,” I said.
A job that I didn’t particularly want to be doing.
“Well then, I’ll go ahead and admit I sent one of your girls away today,” Stanson said, raising his hand guiltily. “I thought you were a real prisoner, and everyone has the same thirty day hold on visitors.”
I blinked.
“What’d she look like?” I asked worriedly.
My sister was the only one that knew I was here.
“Blonde hair down to her waist as white as snow,” he started.
I held my hand up.
“Never mind,” I said. “You can stop right there. I know who it was. And you can keep sending her away.”
His brows rose.
“Well, son,” he said. “I told her your thirty days are up next weekend. What do you want me to tell her?”
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.
There was no way in hell that I wanted Freya here.
Not where all these nasty motherfuckers could lay eyes on her.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Tell her I’m in the hole or something. Why and how does she even know that I’m here?”
The hole was what the guards and prisoners alike called the windowless cells down on the lowest levels. The hole was where you went when you got yourself into hot water, and the guards wanted to punish you.
Some went in for a week. Others only hours.
She never had to know that I wasn’t actually in there.
Stenson nodded his head. “I can do that.”
I hesitated to say what I said next, but some part of me hoped that she’d come back.
“If she persists, bring her to the family room and I’ll fix it. Ask her to stop coming.”
“Alright,” Kelly said. “Then get back to work. And watch his back. I don’t want to explain to his sister and club president how we let him die on our watch.”
I snorted.
Kelly wasn’t actually one of the ‘guards.’ He was only playing a newly hired one so he could watch my back.
“Alright, boss,” Jessup said facetiously.
Kelly flipped the small man off, and Jessup, along with the others, left without another word.
“You ready to go back now?” he asked.
I nodded and picked up my nearly charged phone from the windowsill where I’d placed it when all the guards had arrived, and shoved it down into the waistband of my underwear.
“You know they’ll notice when they see you’re wearing the boxer briefs, right?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “I keep getting sent to the infirmary and come back cleaned of blood. If I can manage it, I’ll just keep showering in here and nobody will have to know my balls aren’t free hanging like theirs.”
The prison issued underwear was disgusting, and I didn’t like wearing boxers.
I liked for my nuts to have a little more protection and support than the boxers offered, and there wasn’t a goddamned thing Kelly could say to get me to take them off and switch them for those pieces of shit.
“You’re not even trying to blend in,” Kelly growled, holding out the handcuffs.
I let him fit them onto my wrists, then glared at him when he tried to put them on too tight.
He sighed and loosened them up.
“See what I mean?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“You knew going in that I wasn’t going to be a regular prisoner,” I pointed out.
He growled in frustration.
“Well, you could at least act like I’m the one in charge here,” he muttered under his breath.
I laughed and led the way out of the infirmary.
He definitely wasn’t the man in charge.
I was.