“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.
Chapter 4
I think we’re all trying to find that certain someone that’ll love us for the awesome fucking disaster that we really are.
-Fact of Life
Freya
I was stupid.
Really stupid.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
But it was Christmas, and I didn’t have anything else to do.
The old guard with the harsh eyes took in my outfit, and I looked down at my ensemble once again, scared there was some weird stain.
There wasn’t.
Just like there hadn’t been the last time I’d looked.
I’d painstakingly chosen my outfit, trying on purpose to look more dressed down than I would usually be if I was going out for Christmas dinner.
Sure, this one wasn’t so much a Christmas dinner as a visit to a prison, but I was still meeting Ridley not at my job.
I was wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt, black cowboy boots with silver swirls on them, and my hair was up and out of my face.
I’d read the rules.
I couldn’t wear a dress. I couldn’t wear open toed shoes. I couldn’t wear revealing clothing. My hair couldn’t be down. No jewe
lry.
That one I was breaking.
You couldn’t tell, though.
I’d tucked the pendant Corey had given me three years ago for my birthday in between my breasts, making it quite impossible to see unless you actually went digging for it.
It was made of leather, too, so it wouldn’t show up on a metal scanner.
Which was what I was doing right then.
The old man waved for me to turn around and I did, presenting him with my back.
The handheld metal scanner squawked once and then went silent as he went over my belt.
“You can move on,” he said, handing me back my purse.
I smiled at him.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
His eyes took me in, studying me from head to toe, then dismissed me.
I laughed softly under my breath as I went to the next guard.
He was standing behind a big counter, and he held out his hand to me.
“Driver’s license,” he said.
I sifted through my purse, pulling out my wallet, and painstakingly worked my license out.
“Sorry,” I said, putting a little muscle behind it. “I haven’t removed it in two years.”
He didn’t look as understanding as I thought he would be, and the woman behind me sighed.
“Maybe you can get it out,” I said, offering him my wallet.
He removed it within two seconds, swiped it into his computer, and then handed the wallet back to me with the license back where it went.
“You’ll sign in and out,” he ordered. “No touching the inmate; a brief embrace in greeting and another before you leave. No sudden moves. If we tell you to get to the back wall, you immediately get to the back wall or your privileges will be revoked. Understand?”
I nodded emphatically.
“Yes, Sir,” I said, nervous now.
Why would I need to get to the back wall?
Were there prison breaks often?
Would one of them try to beat the shit out of me? Choke me with their handcuffs?
My overactive brain ran away from me as I walked to the next station.
“Who are you here to see?” the guard asked.
This one had a clipboard in his hand, and he never once glanced up as he asked the question.
“Ummm, last name of Walker,” I said, looking around the room where the tables quickly started to fill up.
So I’d done a no-no.
I’d literally coerced information out of everyone and everything until I could piece together what was going on with Ridley.
And I’d done a damn fine job of it thanks to a couple of friends who’d felt bad for me.
They, of course, didn’t know why I was asking. They just gave me the info and told me not to do anything stupid.
Visiting him wasn’t stupid, was it?
The guard looked up then, his eyes surprised and wide as he took me in.
“No can do.” The guard shook his head and stepped back. “Walker is in the…”
The guard next to him that was checking in another woman cleared his throat.
“Let her in. Family,” he ordered.
The guard studied the new guard, and I bit my lip, hoping they wouldn’t send me away again.
“You can go to the extended family visit room,” he said, pointing to the door on the right side of the room. “I’ll bring him to you shortly.”
I looked where he was pointing, then back at him with confusion in my eyes.
“But…” I started to say, but the guard held up his hand.
“Just go,” he ordered.
I was confused.
I’d studied all the rules on the website for hours last night, just as I had the previous couple of times I’d tried to come.
I knew for a fact that to get into an extended visit family room, the prisoner was being rewarded for something, and I couldn’t figure out what Ridley, aka Connor, was doing getting rewarded for something already.
From our texting back and forth, I knew he wasn’t being a ‘model’ anything.
From what I’d been able to gather from his very cryptic messages, he’d had to fight constantly. He’d not only been having to prove himself, but he’d also been trying to get his foot into the door with a man who he’d refused to tell me about.
Which was why the information I’d been able to get from my cop friends as well as Corey’s friends had to be true.
He hadn’t told me exactly why he was in there.
All I knew was that he was undercover.
“Okay,” I said softly, turning my back on the guard.
I began to weave my way in and out of the tables, surprised to see so many women there.
Sure, I’d known that there would be a lot here seeing as this was an all-male prison, but where were all the fathers and brothers?
My mind was whirling and my stomach was tied in knots as I passed all the tables.
It was when I was at the very last table, the one closest to my destination, when I was stopped by a very angry woman.
“I was supposed to be able to have a family room tonight,” she hissed, getting up and putting her finger into my face.
I stepped back out of reaction.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t ask for one.”
I tried not to look at the woman’s shirt, but reluctantly my eyes were pulled down to the leather vest that covered her body.
In the reflective glass of the family room, I saw that the letters on the back of the vest declared her as ‘Donnie’s Property.’
My eyes went back to her face, and I took in all the lines and wrinkles, then further down to the pointy red, badly in need of a new nail job, finger that was pointing at my face still.
“I don’t really care if you did or not,” she hissed. “You’re going to pay. I’ve been on the waiting list for that room for months.”
I started to sidestep, trying to get out of her way, and she followed me.
Dammit.
I was not a fighter.
In fact, I was a runner.
And if I couldn’t run, I was a curl up into a ball and hope for the best kind of girl.
It drove my brother nuts, but it wasn’t a reaction I could really fix.
It was just that, a reaction.
I was saved from having that reaction, though, by the very man I was going to see.
“Let her through,” Ridley ordered.
I swallowed and looked up, my eyes widening when I saw him.
He wasn’t clean shaven like he had been the last time I’d seen him.
Even in my yard, as he’d helped me with my Christmas lights, he had, at least, a five o’clock shadow.
Now it was a full blown manly, lumberjack type of beard.
And he had a tattoo.
On his hand.
Of a skull.
Was that a prison tattoo?
Holy cow.
Even in orange he was gorgeous.
He’d been hot before, but now…oh man, he was just…devastating.
Those beautiful brown eyes of his seemed to soak up energy from everything surrounding them, and in the fluorescent light of the room we were in, they looked almost the color of warm beer.
But with that color, I could also see a look of fury boiling beneath the depths.
Oh yes, he was pissed.
“Excuse me,” I whispered to the woman.
The woman continued to glare at me, but she didn’t stop me from skirting her and heading in Ridley’s direction.
The guard that’d been escorting Ridley moved, blocking my back from the woman’s piercing eyes, and gestured to the room again.
“In there,” he said, pointing.
I followed Ridley, who’d already started walking into the room without another glance in my direction.
I found that I was somewhat happy about that fact.
It gave me the cha
nce to study him without that unnerving gaze of his making me do and say things that I wouldn’t normally say or do.
He looked bigger than he had four weeks ago. Scarier, too.
Maybe it was the inmate orange.
Or possibly the new look.
I don’t know what it was about him, but my heart started to race the closer I got to him.
“Later, Walker,” the guard said from behind me.
I blinked, turning to see him closing the door to the room, leaving me alone with Ridley.
I was suddenly extremely nervous.
So nervous that I was scared to look back at him.
“You can’t come visit me anymore,” he started. “I can’t be seen with you, and you can’t be seen with me.”
I gasped, looking up at him, forgetting my nervousness.
“And why not?” I challenged. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. I didn’t think anybody would.”
Ridley frowned, then unconsciously slipped the handcuffs from his hand via the key he’d pulled out of his pocket.
My mouth dropped open.
“What the hell,” I said. “They’re just allowing you to do that all willy nilly?”
His mouth quirked. “All willy nilly?”
I frowned at him.
“I can’t help the way I talk,” I crossed my arms over my chest.
His eyes went down to my chest for a few long seconds, then moved back up to my face.
“I’m being serious,” he said. “You can’t come up here anymore.”
“Why?” I asked.
His brows rose.
“Why?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Why?”
“Because this isn’t a normal thing here,” he said. “I’m undercover, and you could slip and call me Ridley and blow the whole thing. Not to mention it’s more than obvious that there’s a fuckin’ leak somewhere or you wouldn’t be here.”
His glare was ferocious.
I shook my head. “I won’t do that.”
“You can’t promise me that,” he countered.
I was nodding even before he finished that statement.
“Yes, I can,” I said emphatically.
He sighed and sat down on the couch that was easily ten years old.
It looked comfy, though, by the way Ridley’s shoulders and back sank into the cushions.
“Sit down,” he said tiredly. “You’re here now.”
He sounded resigned, and I frowned.
Dirty Mother (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 5) Page 6