by Marni Mann
Had she spotted a mark?
“Wynter, what’s wrong?”
“Can I help you?” she snapped.
She wasn’t speaking to me but glaring at someone behind me. I twirled again, meeting the faces of two men, both standing fairly close to us. The grins on their mouths told me they liked what they saw.
Wynter gripped my arm and pulled me next to her.
“Looks like you could use some refills,” one of the guys said.
“We’ll get them for you, just tell us what you want,” the other added.
I couldn’t believe how hot they were. Both were at least six feet tall with styled hair spiked in the front, shaven faces, and charming smiles. And they had money. Their clothes hinted at that, but their watches screamed it. I knew the designers, how much in retail they were worth, and the amount they would sell for at The Auction.
“We’re good,” Wynter said.
I glanced down at my empty glass that had only a few ice cubes left. “I could use a refill. I don’t know the name of the drink, but—”
“We’re good,” Wynter repeated, this time a little louder.
My head tilted toward her. “Are you sure?”
Her lids narrowed. “I’m sure.”
She had suddenly turned grumpy, and I didn’t understand why. These cuties just wanted to buy us drinks. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. If she didn’t want one, that was fine, but it didn’t mean I had to turn down their offer, too.
“How about something sweet?” I said to the guys. “Like a—”
“She doesn’t want anything from you,” Wynter barked, interrupting me.
The guys looked at each other. Then, one of them said, “Listen, if your friend wants a drink, I’ll go get her one. You don’t need to speak for her.”
Wynter stood taller, squeezing my arm so tightly, I knew it was going to leave a bruise. “You listen, asshole. I told you, we’re good, so stop pushing. There are hundreds of other girls in this club, so go harass some of them, and leave us the fuck alone.”
“Wow,” one of the guys said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Your girl really needs to relax.”
Wynter’s lip curled like she was about to snarl. “Get your hands off her before my four-inch heel stabs one of your balls.”
He lifted his hand and put both palms in the air. “Psycho fucking bitch,” he said as he and his friend backed away.
Whatever buzz had been flowing through me now completely disappeared.
What the hell just happened?
I’d never seen this side of Wynter. I couldn’t even recall a time when she had raised her voice. She was the happiest person I knew. So, to see that kind of venom in her eyes and hear the fury in her tone shocked me.
Once the guys were out of sight, she released my arm and started dancing. She was smiling again. Laughing. Acting as though nothing had just gone down.
“Wynter?”
She reached for my fingers and held them in the air, pumping her body to the beat.
“Wynter, stop.” I pulled my hand away and rested both palms on her shoulders to get her attention. “What the hell was that about?”
“What do you mean?”
My brows pushed together, as I was astounded by her question. “I don’t recognize the person you just turned into. All they wanted was to buy us drinks, and you flipped out. Why?”
“We’re not the kinda girls guys can buy drinks for.”
That made no sense.
And, no matter how hard I pushed on her shoulders, I couldn’t get her to stop moving and keep her eyes on me. So, I cinched her fingers between mine and dragged her over the bridge, leading her into a corner where the music was quieter and we were alone.
“I’m not letting you go back out there until you explain this to me.”
“I like this side of you,” she said, grinning. “All rough and demanding.”
I cleared my throat. “Stop playing around. I’m serious.” My expression matched my words.
“How do you not know by now?”
I searched her eyes. They told me nothing.
“Know what?”
“That we’re not allowed to date. We’re not even allowed to have friends outside The Achurdy. The only reason I was allowed to be friends with you was because Mina was using me to recruit you.”
We weren’t allowed to date?
Or be friends with anyone who wasn’t in the organization?
“They’re afraid we’ll get too comfortable, all lovey-dovey, forget about all the things we promised, all the vows we took, and spill all their secrets,” she continued.
My eyes dropped to the floor. “But…”
“You’ve never wondered why there aren’t any boys around us? Why I always bring you to places where it’s just us or the girls? Why you’ve never heard me say that I’m going out on a date?”
How had I not picked up on that?
“I’ve been so busy…” My voice trailed off.
“You haven’t even had time to think about it. I know.”
I crossed my arms around my stomach. The cocktails weren’t sitting well, and my belly was starting to ache. “You’re saying, we can’t date? Not ever?”
“Not outsiders.” Her face was so serious, it caused me to quiver. “We can date the guys who work at The Auction—the deer, I mean. Or the women animals onstage—whatever you’re into.”
The deer?
That was our only option?
“I wish Mina had told the girls this when she hired them. She conveniently leaves that information out. I just figured you had caught on by now.”
“You can’t tell anyone what you do, and you can’t ever talk about us to anyone outside The Achurdy. That makes it real hard to get close to anyone who’s not in the club,” Nix had said.
“But you’re not telling me I can’t, right?” I had asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Mina had said.
I was at the fucking bridge.
“Wynter,” I said, squeezing her shoulders, trying to find my breath, “are you really saying I can never date? Never get married? Never have kids? Unless it’s with one of the deer from The Auction?”
She waited a few seconds before she answered, “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Her words slapped me in the face. My whole body was now shaking. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t breathe.
I found the nearest couch, and my ass fell against the seat. I bent over my knees, trying to fill my lungs with air, attempting to stop the panic attack threatening to take over my body.
How did I let this happen? How did I not ask more questions before I let them mark me? How could I think this was so perfect? Didn’t I know that, in exchange for all this money, I would have to give something up? Why didn’t I find out what that something was?
Wynter knelt in front of me, her hands on my knees to keep her balance.
I slowly lifted my head and sucked in a breath. “What happens if I do it anyway? If I don’t listen and break that rule?”
“They’ll kill you.”
Whatever I had inhaled was no longer inside me. The air was gone. The cocktails were on their way up. Nothing I did would stop the trembling, the churning, the fear, and the dread shredding my core.
“And, unless you want to die, I wouldn’t ask for an exception.”
Beard
As Inmate #1504 walked to the entrance of the prison, I held his wrist, right above the metal handcuff. After only a few steps, he tripped over a rock, and one of his tennis shoes came off. It caused him to lose his balance, and he started to fall face-first. I caught him right before his chin hit the dirt. Not sure why I’d bothered. Within the next few days, he probably wouldn’t even have a chin left—at least not one that had any skin on it. Skin was usually the first to go. Limbs were second.
Diego had texted me when we landed, telling me #1504 would be getting cell eight. So, I escorted him through the door, down the hallway, and into t
he cell block.
“Where am I?” the inmate cried. “What are you going to do with me?”
He couldn’t see a thing with the blindfold I’d tied over his eyes.
Blocking his vision made this part of the process much easier. In the past, when the prisoners could see where they were going, they would get on the ground and not move, and we’d have to carry them to their cells. Some of them would even pee, and that shit would get all over us.
Fuck that.
“Keep walking,” I spit.
“Who are you? What do you want? I have money. Can I give you money to let me go? How about a house in Bali? Would you like a house and—”
“Keep fucking walking,” I barked.
When we reached cell eight, I stuck my key into the lock, cranked it around in a full circle, and opened the door. A puddle of puke was in the corner, and it smelled like hell in here. Not death. This was actual feces.
Normally, we had the sweepers clean up the cell after the inmate was killed, but being that we were so short-staffed, the guards didn’t have anyone to do it. Not that it mattered. Inmate #1504 would just add more puke to the floor. More shit. And probably a whole lot of piss since prisoners, for some reason, didn’t like to use the toilet.
Dirty fuckers.
“I have money,” he repeated. “I can give you whatever you want. Just name it, and it’s yours.”
I took off his blindfold and handcuffs and kicked him into the cell.
He blinked hard, looking all around the small room, trying to make sense of what he saw. Every prisoner did the same thing. They were so predictable at this point that I knew what they were going to do before they did.
“My God, what is this place? Where are we? Who the hell are you?”
I stuck the cuffs in my pocket and backed out, always keeping my eyes on him in case he was fucking stupid and tried to come at me.
“Answer me, damn it!” He stood in the middle, staring at the tiny window, which he wouldn’t be able to break. Then, he looked at the toilet and sink, his gaze eventually returning to me. “ANSWER ME.”
Ah, there it was. The sound of desperation had finally set in. It was the same for everyone when they reached the point where they were legitimately scared for their life, when the emotions controlling their body caused them to open their mouths and let out just one noise.
My noise.
A perfect scream.
I held the door between my hands and rubbed my beard into the cold steel. Shit, it felt fucking good to be home. “I’m the guy who’s going to kill you.” Then, I locked him in, pausing outside to listen to a few more screams.
Inmate #1504 had a good voice. A higher pitch than I’d originally thought, his lungs holding more air than most.
I’d have to come this way later, so I could listen a little more.
I moved through the cell block and stopped outside the door of The Eyes. Entering my code, I waited for it to open. As it did, I saw Diego at the desk, turning around in his chair when he heard me come in.
He got up to hug me, pounding his fist into my shoulder. “Flight okay?”
“Little bumpy over the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing I couldn’t handle after a few drinks.”
He pulled away and sat back down. “We’re expecting a storm.”
I took the seat next to his and crossed my boots over the desk. “I had a feeling.”
“That means, we’re in for a day of hell.”
Nah, that meant, we were in for a day of screams.
Something about stormy weather made the inmates fucking crazy. We never knew why. We just figured it was the noise of the thunder and the flashes of lightning across their cells. But, when the rain got intense, we knew things would get wild around here.
Diego hated the screams.
Shank didn’t give a shit about them.
And then there was me, wishing they’d get so much louder.
“Where’s Shank at?”
Diego shrugged. “He said he needed a nap.”
That was Shank’s way of saying he wanted to fuck. That meant, he was probably in town and wouldn’t be back for a few hours.
Unless…
“Which sweeper got his stomach pumped?”
I checked the video feed to see what #1504 was up to. He was holding on to the ledge of the window, trying to pull himself up. Poor fucker couldn’t even get his feet off the ground.
“Toy,” he said.
That figured.
Toy, who’d earned the nickname because he’d do anything Shank asked, couldn’t be older than twenty-two. He was nothing more than a skinny pill head with no front teeth and a tongue that was split in half like a snake’s. Shank had done both—one with a hammer, one with a saw. He’d said it made Toy give better head.
“Is he back from the clinic?”
Diego shook his head. “Never went. Shank did it for him instead. Stuck a long tube down his throat and pumped it full of water.”
“Jesus.”
“I know. Dude, I can handle blood and shit, but projectile vomit ain’t my jam. I had to run down here and jump in the fucking pit just to calm down my stomach.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.
“Toy was in pretty rough shape,” he continued. “Blue lips, bubbling with spit, eyes rolling back in his head. It was ugly.”
“How’s he now?”
He tapped a few buttons on the keyboard, checking the outside of the building. A cat was roaming around the front steps, sniffing the door, rubbing his back across the concrete. Pussies were fine. But, if it were the kind of animal that dug, it would have been shot by now.
We couldn’t have anything burrowing around here, not with what we had going on in the basement.
“He’s upstairs, sleeping it off. And, from what I know, he’s still alive.”
“I’ll go make the prisoners some chow, and then I’ll check on him.”
Diego nodded. “Good deal.”
I left The Eyes and went into the kitchen. Not that I could even call it that. It only had a fridge, a sink, and a few cabinets. There weren’t any appliances to heat up the food.
Unlike most prisons, we didn’t believe in an inmate having their last meal where they got to put in a special order. Nor did I wear a fucking apron and grill up surf and turf. They ate what we fed them, and we didn’t waste our time warming that shit up.
Today’s grub was a few cans of Spam that I dumped into a bowl, mixing it with water so that there’d be more to go around. I then added in some dry oatmeal and some leftover noodles I’d found in the fridge. I spooned it all onto trays—cafeteria-style, like the ones we’d eaten on when we were kids. I added small cartons of milk and a few canned peaches. Then, I stuck all the trays on a cart and delivered them.
Most of the inmates wouldn’t move when I opened their cell. They knew better. I wore a gun on each hip, and I was twice the size of most of them. But they’d look at me, their faces turning red while they held their breath, wondering if I was here to torture them. They wouldn’t start breathing when they saw the tray. I had a feeling that only happened when I shut the door behind me.
The last cell I went to held a female prisoner. We didn’t get too many women, maybe one a month. This chick was new. She must have come in while I was in Miami. She sat with her back pressed into the center of the wall, arms wrapped around her stomach. Black makeup ran down her cheeks, sobs echoing off the walls.
I wished she were screaming.
Crying did nothing for me. Well, maybe something, like pissing me the fuck off.
“Eat up.” I slid her food toward her. Some of the Spam sloshed over the side and spilled onto the floor.
“What if I told you I was pregnant? Would that make a difference?” Slobber wet both lips, strings of it stretching every time she opened them.
She was going to be a mother?
I almost laughed.
That didn’t work on me.
I didn’t respect mothers. Especially not o
nes who had done something that landed them in here.
“I’m four months along. That’s why I’m—”
“I don’t fucking care,” I hissed, “because nothing you say will get you out of here.”
“But my unborn child didn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
She’d located a trigger. I didn’t have many. But it felt like a thousand mosquitoes were all stinging me at the same time. If I didn’t get out of this cell, she’d be dead within seconds.
“Please”—she sobbed as I backed out of the room—“just leave the door unlocked, and I’ll disappear in the middle of the night. You’ll never see me again.”
We were on a goddamn island. She had no identification and no money to get out of the country. She’d have to swim. Within two hundred yards, she’d be swarmed by sharks. The way we’d kill her would hurt less.
Maybe.
“I’m not the one who’s going to let you escape.”
She sat up straighter, looking more excited than she should. “Who should I ask then?”
I shook my head, almost laughing again, the door in my hand just waiting to be slammed. “Nah, you misunderstood.” I took the key out of my pocket, getting ready to use it. “I’m the one who’s going to kill you.”
“You motherfucker.” Her cries turned violent, and she started punching the floor. “You’re going to kill—”
“Shut up!” I shouted, closing the door.
She didn’t even have the responsibility of a baby yet, and she still hadn’t put it first. And she wanted me to have pity on her?
Unfortunately for her, I didn’t have an ounce of sympathy in my body.
She would be a horrible mother.
Just like mine was.
But mine had left me when I was twelve. If Bond and Shank hadn’t taken me in, I would have gone to the state. That was probably where her kid would have ended up had she not been sent here.
“Get out all those tears,” I whispered through the bars, “because, pretty soon, all you’re going to have are screams.”
She picked up the tray and flung it at my face. I walked away, hearing the plastic hit the cement.
“Fuck you!” she shouted. Her voice was louder than before. “Fuuuck you.”
It was close to a scream. Not quite as passionate as I’d wanted. But enough where it calmed me down.