I need a chance to think this through. What if something goes wrong? What if I end up putting Kerri in more danger than she already is? This jail is a violent fucking jungle. Do I really want to bring a pregnant woman into the crossfires of a sniper?
“I need to fucking think about it, man,” I tell Spider, leaning back. “It’s a lot to do.”
Spider shrugs. “That’s fine,” he answers. “But think fast. Because she’s already on her way here.”
“Stone,” a guard calls out from the front of the canteen. “You got a fucking visitor in Room C.”
Fuck. So much for thinking through this.
I get up from my chair, giving one last look to Spider as I head out of the canteen. Whatever happens for the rest of my life is going to come down to this afternoon apparently.
Kerri
“You’ll be okay as long as you do everything I tell you to do,” the Deputy Warden told me as he sat next to me in the car, holding a gun pointed in my direction.
This was maybe an hour after he had knocked me unconscious in my own house. At first when I had woken up, I thought he had come and saved me somehow. Like someone from work had come to my rented house and saved me from the intruder that had attacked me.
Once the fuzzy feeling in my head had cleared up and I began to understand what was happening, I began to piece together what was going on. That Deputy Warden Marshall wasn’t here rescuing me. He was actually the one who had attacked me.
He hadn’t said much, only to do what he told me to do. He made some phone calls.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked him when he hustled me off to my car.
“Drive,” he said. “You’re going back to work.”
He held the gun at me as I climbed into the front seat, backed out of the driveway, and tried to stay calm as I entered traffic heading toward Achillees County Maximum Security Correctional Facility.
“Why are we going back?” I asked.
There came no reply.
“What do you want me to do?”
Again no response.
I started to slow the car. I was on the right side of the freeway. I was thinking of pulling off onto the shoulder to be able to talk to him.
Suddenly, Warden Marshall’s fist rose and he brought it towards my face.
His hit didn’t sting, as much as startle.
“I said keep driving!” Warden Marshall hissed. “Or both you and your boyfriend Lucien are as good as dead.”
Lucien Stone?
What was he involved in all this for? Had Lucien sent Warden Marshall to bring me back? Was I arrested?
No, neither of those could be it. It didn’t make any sense.
But I knew one thing.
“So you’re a corrupt correctional officer, aren’t you, Deputy Marshall?” I asked as I drove, my eyes on the road as I spoke. “What’s going on?”
“Shut up and drive, I swear to fucking God,” he replied, and said nothing else for the entirety of the trip.
* * *
I’m sitting in the visiting area where inmates meet their friends and loved ones. It’s a cold, depressing room, designed to hit home the fact that many of these men on the other side of this wall will never be able to hold their family in their arms again. It's a cruel place. One filled with hopelessness, hate, and despair. And, it’s where I sit now, awaiting Lucien.