Chapter 15

Here’s a tissue. There’s bullshit spewing from your lips.

-Lark’s secret thoughts

Lark

I was getting fingerprinted.

I. Was. Getting. Fingerprinted.

I was also freaking way the fuck out.

I’d been fingerprinted before.

It’d take Sal an hour, max, for this to show up in his system.

He had a program on me and had since the very beginning.

It didn’t matter that the men of Free had wiped the system clean of me and any mention of me. Sal was just as smart with computers. The man could do almost anything, and finding a match on his wife’s fingerprints was a cakewalk to him.

See, what I didn’t know when I met Sal the first time, was that it was me who didn’t know anything about him, but not the other way around.

Sal knew everything about me from the day he’d seen me walk out of my college dorm room. He’d followed me for weeks, watching…waiting.

Then, the day I graduated college, he’d made his move.

Only I hadn’t realized he’d made a move. I’d just thought he was a blood donor.

Turns out, Sal had never donated blood before in his life.

He’d come to the donation center to ask me on the date, but I had no doubt in my mind that had I said no to his offer of a date, he’d have gotten me to go out with him some other way.

“Other hand.”

I started at the snapped demand and turned my gaze up to the woman taking my fingerprints.

“Turn around.”

I did, stepping off of the platform completely like I’d seen the woman ahead of me do.

“Hands up.”

I did as I was told and moved my hands until they were over my head. Then, with methodical slowness, the woman ran her hands over my body as she searched me for anything that may be harmful to myself or others.

When she didn’t find anything, she gestured to the guard that was about five feet away.

“Rule, please take her to her new accommodations.”

Rule, the guard, grinned.

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

I shivered at the eagerness in his voice. I couldn’t tell if he was happy that he was asked to take care of me or excited to see a fresh face around here.

Whatever his reason for being happy, I did not want to be around him. It was more than obvious he was a bully, and I wasn’t sure that I had the power to stand up to him.

His eyes were a little too curious, and I had no doubt in my mind that had this been a dark alley, this man would’ve done a whole lot worse than the leer he shot me.

“Please keep your hands to yourself until we reach the room you’ll be sleeping in.”

I bit my lip and kept my hands folded in front of me while I searched my surroundings.

There wasn’t anyone in the hallways, and I couldn’t say that I was upset about that.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone for that matter.

This was all quite embarrassing, and I was ready to be out of here forty-five minutes ago.

“Dinner is in ten minutes. That’ll be served in the common room.” The guard pointed to a room that was on my left. It had bars on the walls. Bars on the two windows I could see, and there were already women crowding around the room, waiting.

I swallowed thickly, feeling way out of place.

I’d never once been in a jail before.

I was a good girl. I got good grades. I didn’t sneak out. I’d also never done anything illegal—for the most part.

I’d stolen a pack of watermelon gum when I was in fourth grade, and I’d cheated off my classmate’s test accidentally during college. But it’d only been because she refused to sit where I couldn’t see her paper, and I’d glanced at her almost out of habit, and seen her answers on the last page of the test. The same page that I’d been struggling with.

“In. Now.”

I winced at the guard’s angry voice and realized that I’d been standing there, frozen in shock, as I stared at the room beyond.

There were no bars like I’d expected. There was only one large room.

The room was quite spacious, and as I stared at the beds against the walls, I realized that there was a reason it was spacious.

There were no cells to be found, and instead, everyone was shoved into the one room.

I guess I should be happy that they didn’t eat in the same room where they shit.

They did it behind a wall. There was a corner of the room where there were five toilets lining one wall. The toilets were partially shielded by a mini wall that only reached far enough that when one was sitting on said toilet, they couldn’t see anything but the wall. I could see the top of one woman’s head, however.

Embarrassment started to flood through me.

Oh, God. I was now living in a real-life hell, and all because I didn’t pay my parking tickets.

My eyes connected with the woman standing up after finishing the bathroom, and I looked down. Not quick enough, however.

Thirty seconds later, she was standing beside me.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

I shook my head frantically. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“I really should be.”

“What are you in for?” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared.

I licked my dry lips. “Unpaid parking tickets.”

Her mouth quirked up into a small semblance of a grin. “I shot my boyfriend in the dick because he was fucking the babysitter.”

My mouth fell open.

“Is his dick…okay?”

She shook her head. “Shot him with a forty-five hollow point. His favorite gun ever. Not only doesn’t he have a dick anymore, but they also had no way to reattach it—so I hear.”

My eyes were wide.

“That’s kind of prolific…karma is a bitch and all.”

Her grin was more pronounced this time.

“I like you.”

“I l-like you, too,” I managed to say.

After all, one needed a friend in the slammer, right?

However, before I could so much as tell this woman who I was, my name was called, and I was being led to a room that was known as the ‘holding room’ for the delinquents like me who had to meet with the judge.

Twenty minutes later, I was standing where I never thought I’d be.

***

“You have a parking ticket from last year for the amount of one hundred dollars,” the judge said, tilting up his glasses so he could read the papers in his hand. “You have one from four weeks ago, for another hundred dollars.”

And so it went as he continued to read my list of transgressions.

“Is there a reason you think you don’t have to pay when everyone else in the city does?”

I bit my lip, wondering if that was a rhetorical question, or if it was one that he actually expected an answer to. There wasn’t a reason good enough in his eyes.

That much, I knew.

The judge looked mean, unapproachable and unforgiving.

“I don’t have the money,” I told him honestly. “I have enough to pay my rent and gas in my car. Rent is sometimes paid on time, but the majority of the time it is not.” I paused. “And as for the other tickets? Well, those I didn’t know about.”

I pointed to the ones in his left hand.

The one in his right hand I did know about.

“These you did know about?”

I nodded.

“Did you get it registered in your name?”

“The tickets?” I questioned in confusion.

He lifted his eyes to me and glared. “No, the car. It’s possible that some of these are from the previous owner.”

My eyes went wide.

Did Krisney have unpaid parking tickets?

“No,” I said. “The car isn’t mine. I’m only borrowing it until I can afford to buy a car again.”

“What happened to your last car?”

I bit my lip.

“The last time I had a car note, I defaulted and they took it back.” I shrugged like I wasn’t still affected by it.

Which was a total and complete lie. I was affected by it. Immensely.

Baylor had just been doing his job, but I knew he’d seen the need in my eyes. Yet, he’d ignored it.

Which still stung if I was being truthful.

Baylor was a good guy. I loved him—even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself, let alone him. But still, in the back of my mind, I wondered if he hadn’t seen me fighting with Harold, would he even be paying attention to me at this point? He’d looked straight through me when he’d been taking my car. People that were nice didn’t do that, did they?

Because I was shit at picking men, obviously.

Which led me to another problem.

My fingerprints.

They were now in the system in Hostel, Texas.

It’d take Sal less than a day to make arrangements to come get me.

He lived in Dallas. He was a police officer who knew what to do when it came to missing persons.

Seriously, I gave him eighteen hours, tops, before he was here looking for me.

And I’d hopefully be gone before that happened.

“So, these five, totaling five hundred and twenty-two dollars,” he paused, looking at me. “Can you pay for them today?”

I shook my head.

“I have three hundred on me,” I told him honestly.

Three hundred dollars was my entire paycheck from the Taco Shop. That’d take me another week of working to get that again, and that included what little tips I got, plus overtime.

I made even less than that at the grocery store, but since it was my second job, it was to be expected.

That three hundred dollars was going to go to gas and food this week, but I guess that I could raid the grocery store’s ‘old food’ bin. Normally employees only looked through it, taking out a few things of the entire bin that was set to be emptied once a week.

I’d looked in there myself a time or two, and though there were a few things in there that could be useful, most wasn’t.

A smashed tomato, a rotten potato. Milk that expired three days before. A box of Fruit Loops that exploded when it was shipped. Old meat that had expired.

But I could make do for two weeks.

I could do it.

“Will that leave you without any money?”

I shrugged.

“Not really.”

The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but there was no way I was telling this man that.

But then another thought occurred to me.

I didn’t have the possibility to raid the expired bin. I had to leave. Immediately.

I shivered.

“Would two hundred leave you with enough to make your bills?”

Something on my face must’ve conveyed that it wouldn’t because he sighed. “I’m going to charge you a hundred dollars. You’ll serve community service for the rest. Ten hours at a place of your choice. Deal?”

I hated lying to him.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Deal.”

It wasn’t a deal.

I wouldn’t even be here in twenty-four hours.

I smiled and lied, anyway.

I’d do anything not to return to Sal again.

And, as an idea formed in my head, I realized anything included stealing from the man I was starting to fall in love with.

***

“Come on, jailbird. I’m ready to take you home and fuck you.”

I gave him a small smile, but I knew it didn’t reach my eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

I swallowed, wondering if I should tell him everything and decided that he’d done a lot for me.

But that only reinforced the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to do this to him.

Baylor was a good guy. He’d done a lot for me over the short time that I’d known him. He’d fed me, made me laugh, saved me from the crazy vegan who tried to get me fired.

That was why I made the decision to leave. To take off and not say another word to him about it.

“I want to go home and shower,” I said. “I’m…I will talk to you tomorrow.”

I started walking in the opposite direction of where he’d started to his truck.

When I felt his hand curl around my elbow, I flinched.

“Please?”

He looked at me, read my eyes, knew that pushing me might break me at that point.

And he proved to be a smart motherfucker, because he let my hand drop, and backed away.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

I shook my head. “I have to work at the grocery store in the morning.”

Lie.

Well, not totally, anyway.

I did have to work but I wouldn’t be there. Hopefully I’d be halfway across the country at that point.

“Afternoon, then.”

I shook my head again. “I work at the Taco Shop until nine.”

He growled. “Then when you get off.”

I swallowed thickly and then nodded my head.

His eyes narrowed, but he waved me away without another word.

And, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I started to half run/half walk down the road.

Luckily the house where I now lived was fairly centralized in the town because it took me less than twenty-five minutes to get home.

But it wouldn’t have mattered.

I knew I’d get home safely.

Baylor shadowed me the entire way.