CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tyler’s phone buzzed. A text from Bertha. Marcy’s starting to whine about you not seeing her. I’m going to have to do something more extreme to shut her up, or she’ll put us both in danger.
Tyler’s stomach turned. Damn it, Marcy. He texted back, Please try not to. He hesitated, sweat beading on his forehead. After a half-dozen breaths, he added, but do what you have to do.
He sent the texts, then deleted them. He looked up and saw Chef looking at him, one eyebrow lifted. “Wife nagging you?”
Tyler found that hilarious for some reason. He giggled, trying and failing to stifle his laughter. Chef chuckled nervously, then asked, “Hey, are you all right?”
“Fine,” Tyler said, getting his laughter under control. “Yeah, it was my wife. She’s upset that I’m not spending enough time with her.”
“You know what that means,” Chef said. He winked, then grinned, revealing a perfect square gap between his top left incisor and the canine to the right.
"Yeah, we'll see," Tyler replied. "Usually wanting to see me means an hour-long talk about our feelings and exactly zero seconds of sex."
“Sex first, feelings after,” Chef advised.
“Sounds like a plan, buddy.”
Chef nodded, satisfied. “So, what does the prince want for dinner tonight?”
“Salisbury steak.”
Chef frowned and looked up at him. “Literally no one likes Salisbury steak.”
"I think he just likes screwing with me," Tyler said, which was the truth.
Chef sighed. “Well, now he’s screwing with me.” He sighed and trudged back to the kitchen. “Think he’ll notice if I just pour potato gravy on the meatloaf?”
“If it were anyone else, I’d say no.”
“Yeah, Yeah.”
Tyler waited while Chef constructed Elijah Cox’s special meal. His phone buzzed. Bertha again. He glanced at Chef, who had his back turned, then turned his own back so his body shielded the screen from view. She’s talking shit. Got to do something, Tyler. Sorry.
Tyler released a rush of breath. He deleted the text, put the phone away, then brought both hands behind his head, interlacing his fingers as he paced the waiting area in front of the counter.
Since Cox took his dinner an hour before the rest of the population, he was the only one here. God damn it, Marcy. God damn it.
He was a piece of shit. This wasn’t Marcy’s fault. It was his. The poor girl had actual feelings for him, and he was just using her to feel good. Now she was going to get hurt just because she didn’t know why her boyfriend wasn’t seeing her anymore.
Anger flared within him. What the hell did she think this was?
She was doing sixteen years for drug trafficking.
She was here because she kept breaking out of lower-security prisons.
He saw her for a damned blowjob a few nights a week and occasionally got her off too.
Was that what counted as a relationship for her?
Did she think that meant he loved her? That he’d risk his career, his freedom, his future with his daughter over her?
The answer was no. She didn’t think those things. Because she didn’t know about those things. Because he’d never told her. Because he’d never cared to because she was just the blanket he wore to feel warm for a few minutes a night.
He was a piece of shit. He deserved to be hurt. Not Marcy.
“Order up,” Chef said. He frowned at Tyler.
“Hey, man, I’m serious about tonight. I don’t mean you just bend her over the table and push it in.
Buy her chocolate on the way home. Cuddle on the couch and watch one of those shitty romantic comedies girls like.
Then make sweet love to her. Nice and gentle. Lots of kissing and foreplay.”
“Yep, got it. Thanks, Chef.”
“All right.” He pushed the tray toward Tyler, and Tyler placed it on his cart. “It’ll be okay. If she loves you, it’ll be okay.”
Tyler fixed his… wow. Chef really was kind of his friend huh? He fixed him with a smile, then escaped the least comfortable conversation of his life.
So far, anyway. His loving wife had scheduled a meeting with him and her attorney the following Monday to discuss terms of their divorce.
She’d made no secret that she intended one of those terms to be full custody of Elise.
There would be no sweet love between the two of them tonight or any other night.
As for Marcy? She was just another casualty of Harriet’s cruelty and Tyler’s cowardice.
He was a piece of shit.
Cox waited in his usual yogi squat. Or seat. Or whatever the fuck you called it. Tyler pressed the intercom button and said, “Cox, dinner. Assume the position.”
Cox didn’t move. Tyler took a deep breath and said, “Cox. I’m not in the fucking mood. Assume the goddamned position, or I’ll just let you go hungry and let the warden chew me out. Or better yet, transfer me. I’m sick of this shit.”
Cox tilted his head thoughtfully. “I have seen a horrible thing.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Yeah? That sucks. Stand in front of the damned wall.”
“They commit adultery and walk in lies.”
Fear lanced down Tyler’s spine, but he remembered that Cox already knew about Marcy. “Yeah? What does God say about people who help people commit adultery, because I’ve had a nice sixty or seventy afternoons thanks to your help.”
For only the second time since Tyler had known him, emotion flickered across Cox’s face. He didn’t thunder at Tyler like he did when Tyler took God’s name in vain, but the anger in his eyes was just as powerful. Tyler felt a petty rush of joy at affecting Cox like this.
Cox turned to him. “All of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”
Tyler rolled his eyes again. “Cox…”
“Behold!” Cox cried. “I will feed them wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall!”
Tyler flinched and watched, transfixed, as Cox unfolded himself from his bunk and stood. Even though an armored wall lay between him and the Lawgiver, he still backpedaled, as though afraid Cox could reach right through the wall and throttle him to death.
Cox stood in front of his bunk, eyes flashing with rage. Demonic or divine, Tyler couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure it made a difference.
Then Cox smiled. “For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the Earth.”
Tyler watched, still transfixed, as Cox got to his hands and knees, then to his elbows, then to his belly. The killer shimmied underneath his bunk and covered his head with his hands.
“What the actual f—” Tyler began.
Then it clicked. The maintenance guy. Smith. Probably not his real name. Definitely not his real job.
Realization flashed across his mind like dominos.
Cox had asked for things from Tyler. A cell phone.
A pen and paper. The delivery of a letter.
A candle. He had contacted someone on the outside and arranged to contaminate the ventilation system so the maintenance guy had to come fix it.
The moldy toilet paper was a ruse. There was no gap in that ventilation system.
Tyler was there the day it was installed.
Smith, or whoever he was, opened the panel, stuffed old toilet paper in there, and made up a story that allowed him time to plant an explosive device to break Cox out.
And Tyler was just standing in front of the door like an idiot.
He cried out and turned for the door. Then a heavy hand—the hand of God, perhaps—slammed him into the opposite wall.
He didn’t feel himself hit the ground. He couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t hear anything either. He could only see.
Haze filled the air. Red alarm lights strobed.
A hole allowed him to see inside Cox’s cell.
He watched as a man approached. He recognized Smith, but this time, Smith wore the uniform of a guard, not a maintenance worker.
He smiled at Cox, who had come up from underneath his bunk and was now approaching the hole in his door.
He took Cox’s hand and kissed his fingers, then helped him through the hole.
Cox didn’t so much as glance at Tyler as his companion led him to freedom. Tyler was just another evildoer slipping away to face God’s judgment.
Just another piece of shit.