“Too chickenshit to respond?” he badgers, wrestling his way through the continuous crowd of men. “What’s a matter? Pussy done got your tongue?”
His beer belly bounces into me. I feel contaminated and unclean from the mere brush against him. Giving a look that could kill, I sidestep around him, but his hand grabs my shoulder.
With all of my force, I kick the back of his knee and send his legs out from under him. I charge on top of his skanky self and press my forearm against his windpipe. “If you do not leave me alone, pussy going to slit your tongue out of your throat and carve you up finer than a turkey on Thanksgiving.”
He’s gasping for air, and I know I could end his life—right here, right now. This could be over and done. The crowd builds around us, and my mind decides against it. I will kill him. But now is not the time or place. I will do it in private, take my time, and watch him suffer. Hopping off the floor, I strut out like it’s just another day at the office.
I am a killer.
And I am not a good guy.
We’re gathered in the yard by nine in the morning. They’ve brought out bleachers for us to praise the fantastic feats of Martinez.
Fucker.
I’m wedged in, hip to hip, between Moses and Tiny when the official ceremony begins. I glance around, spotting Handcock and Violet and searching for Lily Miller-Armstrong. She is nowhere to be found, and neither is Warden Jolly.
Alarms whine in my head.
“I gotta go,” I mutter to Moses. “Be careful, white boy.”
Our code for bringing it. He blinks once to me before patting my knee. I get up, moving quickly down the steps, and dash inside. The entire prison is eerily empty as I rush through the mess hall and over to the offices. I peer into Ronnie’s office. She’s out, but it doesn’t surprise me. Everyone is outside, including the SWAT team.
In the Warden’s office, I spot her secretary in a fetal position on the ground. I check for a pulse, roll her over, and see the bullet wound in the middle of her forehead.
“Holy fuck…no, no, no…” Fearing the worst, I pick up the phone, but the lines are dead. “Shit.” I don’t bother to knock as I bust into the Warden’s office. “Kit…”
She’s bound to her chair with duct tape covering her mouth. Mascara trails run over her cheeks, and the wound on her arm is profusely bleeding. I slowly approach and see the bomb attached at the back of her chair.
Immediately, I grab her keys to lock the door from the inside. If we’re going down, we’re going together. I strip off my shirt and rip it into two long pieces.
“I’m pulling the duct tape off,” I calmly say, tossing her keys on the desk. Her eyes rapidly blink; she is in shock. “Trust me.”
Making my way around her desk, I notice the commotion in the yard from her window. People are running wild as chaos takes control. I see the smoke bombs go off and the armed guards running with their shields. In my peripheral, I catch sight of the timer hooked onto Kit.
Fuck.
4:53
I yank the duct tape from her mouth. “What the hell? Oh, my God…Oh, my God…” she yammers out as I tuck my shirt around her arm and tighten it up to stop the bleed. “Hurry up!”
“Calm down,” I whisper, eyeing the clock—3:57. “We’ve got plenty of time. Who did this?”
“Just get me out of this, Sal…”
“Who did it?” I ask again, watching the seconds dwindle. “Don’t make me take this to the edge, Kit.”
Her lips form a line as she peers up at me. “Martinez’s guys from Cinco.”
“And you’ve known they were here and did nothing about it?”
The guilt shows in her eyes. “What was I going to do? We’re down on officers, low on funding, and shit happens. Do we have to discuss the problems of the penitentiary system right now? We’re about to die! Can you please get the bomb off of my body?”
“Since you said please,” I snicker, crouching behind her and finding the power source. My hands work smoothly under the pressure as I give a gentle tug to disconnect the cord. “You need to calm down.”
“Hurry! Oh, my God! We’re going to blow up!”
The lights fade on the clock. “Done.”
“… That’s it?” she asks, disappointed.
“Ya, that’s it.” Sitting on the edge of her desk, I leave her tied up for a minute longer. “No real trick to that one.” I cross my arms over my chest and stroke my scruff. “What exactly do you want to do at Juliet?”
“… To get out of here?” Her eyes drip with tears. “I figured I’d get a position at the police department, write speeding tickets, and help little old ladies who lost their cars in parking lots.”
I lift my brows high. “You do realize I’m Sal Raniero. And Juliet has long-established ties back to…some unsavory criminal activity.”
“I’m well aware,” she mutters, glancing at me. “And I want to help you and Dom. I’m a good girl, Sal. I don’t fuck around, but I cannot handle the continuing gang war going on under my nose and not be able to do squat about it.”
“If you want to help us, you need to calm down,” I say, grabbing the keys and swiping her gun from the bottom drawer on the right. “And you must learn to listen. Do you have your vest on?” Her eyes skim down from my face to my crotch. “Ya, that’s what I thought. You can learn to listen, or this is never going to work.”
“Where are you going?” she asks as I make a beeline for the door.
“To end this once and for all.”
“You can’t just leave me here tied up!”
I repeatedly flick my brows and offer a devious grin. “Oh, yes! I can.”
I lock her in the office and creep back through the block. All of the prisoners are belly down in the yard. The bomb squad is sending in robots when I decide to make myself known. I lift my hands.
“Get on the ground! Drop your weapon and get on the ground!”
“It’s over,” I yell to Ronnie as the SWAT team wrestles me down. The keys and gun are swiped up fast. My hands are zip-tied behind my back. “I’m done.”
“Stay down!”
Trudging over, Ronnie asks, “What happened?”
“I defused a bomb. It’s on the back of Warden Jolly’s chair, and she has a puncture wound to her right arm.”
“Violet Hendrix is dead, Sal.” I can’t say I’m surprised. “And Lily Miller-Armstrong was shot. They’re rushing her to the emergency room now.”
“Anyone else?”
She shakes her head as one of the SWAT members checks on me. “Ma’am, you need to move away from the prisoner.”
Proving how great she is under pressure, she says, “He’s not who you think.”
“I’m Agent Sal Raniero, federal contract operative under CIA Agent Kary Vega.”
I hear the SWAT officer whisper, “He’s a sleeper. Black ops.”
“116G7027F472L71869,” I spout off my agent number and give them Vega’s direct line.
My time in prison is over.
Taking up a brief residency in one of the empty main offices away from the block, I blankly stare at the television. The ashtray is filled with butts, and my feet are perched on the edge of the coffee table.
“And word tonight from L. Botham Wiggs Correctional Facility, the prison escapee has yet to be detained,” the reporter says, flashing a mugshot on the screen. “Timothy Handcock is considered armed and dangerous. If you know of his whereabouts…” His babble continues as the news focuses their attention on the perpetrator instead of the victims. “And Judge Lily Miller-Armstrong has died after being shot three times during the Siege on Wiggs.”
I know all of the things they don’t say. Deputy Malcolm Martinez is missing, Cinco is taking the blame for the attack, and the interim warden is now, Warden Ronnie Rousseau, but we don’t talk about those things. We don’t mention the bomb strapped to Warden Kit.
We don’t want to cause widespread fear.
Megan Folly has been warned that her brother is on the loose
, and according to Dom, she has opted to stay at Boudreaux’s, which I think is a stupid idea.
I honestly don’t know if Cinco did it or not. It was a bit too noisy for their kind, but it’s a lot easier to blame the motorcycle gang in South Texas than explain the Russian bratva infiltrating in Arkansas.
As for me, I’m in a holding pattern.
Vega is working on getting me released, but it could be up to three weeks for all the paperwork to be filed. My one outside contact – Lily Miller-Armstrong – is dead. I can’t stay in the actual prison system, but I cannot leave, either. I’m caught up in red tape. Bureaucratic bullshit, if you ask me. I knew it would happen when I started this. I’m hard to find in the system for a reason and even more challenging to verify.
Every day people do sleeper work.
I just happen to have some special associations.
So, I’m sitting here with ice in my water, more take-out than the office mini-fridge can store, and dressed in casual clothes—gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt. It sucks because Moses Hollister has already been cleared for release, but he has validation I do not. He left yesterday and checked into a nearby motel. He refuses to leave town until I’m out.
Outside my door, I requested Jamichael Tucker to be my personal armed guard, and Warden Ronnie humored me. There are no guarantees of my safety, but the nearby towns have sent in extra officers and patrols. I want to believe it’s over because I don’t think the hit was ever intended to be me.
Someone wanted Violet out of the picture, and Lily Miller-Armstrong was bonus points to be paid on her death. I’ve considered almost every possibility with LMA, but I have no proof, only speculation. My best guess is she was about to allow formal charges to be filed against Malcolm Martinez for his prostitution ring inside of the prison.
I talked to Mierne about continuing our sessions. She says I need in-patient treatment for a few weeks, which I shunned. I called Dr. Looper and scheduled an appointment with him at the end of October because Mierne is probably right about everything, and I just can’t see it.
All in all, things are looking up.
And with my history that can only mean one thing.
I should hunker down for the impending explosion.
47
I Don’t Know Much About Owls
The nightlight in her office glows. It’s one of those nice ones, shaped like an owl with big eyes. I feel like someone is watching me. I flip him—or her, I don’t know much about owls—off and rollover.
It’s my fourth restless night on the uncomfortable sofa. There are two dips on either end where asses sit. No one wants the middle spot, ever. They want the arms for the security and something to cling to, like a safety belt harnessing the human in for the ride.
I need a five-point strap, securing my body down. I’m not prepared for the journey ahead. I mean I am—I have all the tactical and intellectual skills. This body I reside in is ready. I’m trained, practiced, and worked over.
But my mind is fucked.
And I am not prepared.
I want to scream and shout for an attendant. “Come get me off this ride! Help! I don’t want to be flipped around 360˚! I give! I give!” I want to stomp my feet like a little kid and throw a tantrum. “No, I won’t go into adulthood! I won’t do it! Fuck you! No!”
Mama will comfort me. She’ll cradle my head against her bosom where everything is safe, warm, and loving. And when I least expect it, I’ll get kicked out of the nest.
“Fly, you bastard!”
And then, of course, I’ll scream for the safety belt, the training wheels, or the net beneath my flight. We’ve spent a lot of time together – you and I – and I hate it when my mind thinks about how eager everyone is to watch my ass splat. Cause rubbernecking is fun, gossiping is grand, and I’m just foolish enough to believe I don’t need a lap belt. A lap dance…maybe…but only if she’ll put her tits in my face.
I got this, brain. I do.
Call me a fucking idiot later.
A cleaning crew came to remove the furniture from the secretarial space today. They bleached—or whatever godawful professional substance they used to remove the blood—and applied a fresh coat of sealer to the cement floors. The office reeks of a chemistry experiment gone very wrong.
Ronnie is fiercely determined to make this work, though after witnessing Kit—who is by all accounts, a highly trained, professional woman—have a breakdown, I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Ronnie is a good woman, a strong woman, and a woman barging into her office in the middle of the night. So much for being trustworthy enough to not scare the crap out of me.
Thankfully, I don’t easily flinch.
I peer over my shoulder at the clock—1:12 AM on September 15.
Ronnie doesn’t turn on the lights as she tiptoes her way over to me. Sitting down on the coffee table, she says, “I need you to roll over, face me, and hear everything I’m about to say to you.”
Sitting up, I land in the middle seat with no lap belt or guardian angel protecting my ass, and reply, “Yes, Ma’am.”
“You’re going to need to hold on,” she warns, breaking through my space and laying her hands on top of mine. “You’re going to need to breathe.”
In the darkness, her voluptuous silhouette shadows over me. I want to believe she will protect me from harm as I chase the light and love with my shade shrouding like a cloak around me. The flames lick at my feet, but I do not burn. I thrive in the fire. I kiss the embers with my lips and tongue; they never scar.
I burn hot; I burn red.
“There was an incident at the safehouse outside of Tallahassee.”
My heart stops as the water laps at my toes. “… Is she okay?”
“She’s in the hospital now,” Ronnie informs as I try and stand. Her hands press onto my thighs. “Mock called.”
The catastrophe washes through me, and I cannot stop from being knocked off of my feet and swept away into the churning seas. “I have to go.”
“You,” Ronnie calmly says. “Cannot go. Your papers haven’t been signed.” I cannot form words as my jaw repeatedly opens and closes. “If you attempt to walk out of my office, I will have no choice but to arrest you.”
“When are my papers going to be ready?”
Her tongue flicks over her lips. “I don’t know that, but for your safety, as well as the safety of others, you need to stay in this office.”
“My girl is in the hospital…”
“Yes,” Ronnie eases. “And she is going to recover. But you need to let her do it without interfering.”
I furrow my brow. “What are you talking about?”
“All I know is what Mock has told me.”
“… You have no grounds to arrest me.”
“No, you’re right,” she fully admits. “I have no right to arrest you other than the gargantuan, male standing right outside this door. If you want to boogie with Jamichael Tucker, I’m not stopping you.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I wasn’t given the details,” she replies, checking her watch. “I was woken up by the phone ringing right after midnight.”
I’ve never felt more disconnected than I do at this moment. “What did he say?”
“He said the asset had been compromised,” she slowly says. “And I asked for her name—he said Sal Raniero’s girlfriend, Rie Ford.”
“Something isn’t right,” I slur out, panicking. “No one would’ve called Rie Ford, my girlfriend.”
“It was Mock on the phone though Sal,” she pleads. “I know his voice.”
My breathing is erratic as I rise and rush towards the phone.
“You don’t need to call anyone,” she says, following me as I pick up the phone. “He assured me of that.”
Shaking my head, I dial the number. “Are you 100% positive that Mock wasn’t being coerced?”
On the phone, I ask, “Where is she?”
“Are you aware of what time it is?” Jaid sle
epily moans. “It’s after two in the morning.”
“… Where…is…she?”
“Hold on a sec, it’s loading,” she whispers. “She’s at Randy Bianchi’s safehouse.”
Gripping the phone tight, I run my fingers through my curls and pull hard. “She isn’t at the hospital?”
“No, why would she be at the hospital?”
“Because we just got a call from Mock that Rie Ford was in the hospital…”
“Why in the hell would he call her Rie Ford?”
“Exactly!” I hear the rustling in the background. “I see who all is in the area…” Her voice pauses with a hitch. “Why in the hell did Mitch Daniels go to Florida?”
“Jaid!” I scream. “Talk to me! Jesus fucking Christ, we gotta get her out of there. You need to file the divorce papers tomorrow! Pull out now! Shit!” I howl, believing Dominic’s got me. “Fuck!”
“I’m pinging his chip,” she assures, sighing. “His tracker isn’t working.”
“Do something!”
“I am,” she declares with determination. “I’m calling 9-1-1 on another line.”
“Yes, I’d like to report an aggravated assault in progress…”
My hands shake. My lip quivers. My world ends.
We’re half-awake, dozing on the sofa at ten in the morning, as we wait on the call from Florida. Cups of tea and coffee line the table like soldiers preparing for battle. We won’t ever win, and I should just walk away. I should leave her and walk away. At least then they might leave her alone.
The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“I was making soup,” she whispers as tears stream over my cheeks. “It was one of those microwavable bowls. Mock was in the garage. We only came here for two days. We only came here to stop over and rest up for Europe.” She stops talking, but I hear her breathing. “I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Mock is in the hospital,” she mutters. “I saw the ambulance take him away. There were so many police cars.”
Famous Last Words (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 2) Page 38