Chapter 6 Sly
CHAPTER SIX
SLY
“If you don’t move, I’m gonna rip your arm off and shove it up your ass,” Pete says, palms resting on the table as he grins down at the new guy who dared to sit at our spot. It’s not a kind grin, it’s the sort that promises chaos.
The young guy immediately jumps up, his face stricken with terror as he runs off like a puppy with his tail between his legs.
He didn’t even take his food with him. I sigh as I stare at his tray. What a waste.
“Dibs!” Dex yells, taking the next seat over, grabbing the extra tray, and pouring the kids' food on his plate.
I sit in the now vacated seat and try not to sneer at the slop they have the nerve to call food. Pete sits across from me, and Jagger takes a seat beside him.
“The green shit isn’t half bad today,” Dex says before shoveling in another mouthful.
“Yeah,” Pete agrees, staring at his fork as if he can make out what’s in it. Good luck with that. “It tastes extra green today.”
“Green isn’t a flavor,” I inform him.
“How would you describe this?” he asks, holding up another forkful.
“Disgusting.”
“Disgustingly green,” Pete says in thought.
“Green globs of… greeness,” Dex says with a nod.
I roll my eyes and slowly eat my meal. It might taste unappealing, but I need to eat.
A tap on the table has us glancing at Jagger. He looks at me, then his eyes move across the room, then back again. Tensing, we all look at what he wants us to see, worried there’s a brawl about to start. My shoulders relax when I see it’s just Bowman pushing the mail cart into our wing.
I look back at Jagger, and I swear I see the barest hint of a smile tug at his lip. A letter from Wren is the only thing that can do that.
He was the first one to arrive in Stoney Creek. From what he’s tried to explain, he was here only a week before I arrived and was placed in a cell with him. He never spoke a single word to me, and I thought he was going to try to kill me in my sleep.
Instead, he actually protected my back when another inmate tried to slash my throat at lunch time on my second day here. Since then, I know he has my back, and I have his in return.
It was about a month later when Dex and Pete arrived, only days apart, and thanks to overcrowding, they were placed in the same cell as us.
At first, their constant chattering and derogatory humor had me thinking I was either going to go mad or murder them in their sleep.
But after a week, there was a full-out brawl in the cafeteria, and the two of them turned into two of the most savage fighters I’ve ever seen.
Pete never lost his humor, laughing as he punched a guy so hard that several of his teeth went flying.
Dex, on the other hand, seemed to have blood lust, and it was as if a switch had been turned on in his head.
He tore through the room, fists flying, feet kicking, and snarling like a rabid beast, all the while clearing and protecting the flanks of his three cellmates.
When the fight was over, he switched back in an instant, grabbing some leftover food before we were thrown back in our cells.
That’s when we started talking—or at least Pete, Dex, and I did; Jagger communicated as best he could with no voice.
It turns out we had something significant in common: we were all wrongfully imprisoned.
Not that we were innocent, just innocent of the crimes they convicted us of.
And although they still irked me with their constant chatter, impulsiveness, and lack of insight, I at least knew they had some honor and could trust them in here.
Now, though… now we have several things in common, the most important being Wren. It didn’t matter that she cared about all four of us; in some ways, it made it better—we could share our obsession of her together. There’d never be another person on this earth who could understand her like we do.
I’m brought back to the present as the buzzer rings out, signaling the end of lunch. We all stand quickly, eager to get back to our cell for once.
Pete runs ahead, and when I step inside our cell, I see him frowning down at a single envelope.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, immediately sensing something amiss.
“Just one letter today,” he says, shaking the envelope in the air.
“Who’s it for?” Dex asks as he and Jagger join us.
“All of us.”
He turns it around and shows us the envelope with all four of our names on it.
“Maybe she ran out of envelopes?” Dex asks, as Pete rips it open and pulls out a single sheet of paper. My heart sinks. Why is there only one?
“Fuck me,” Pete whispers.
“What? What does it say?” Dex asks, trying to grab it, but Pete jumps up on his bunk to keep it out of his reach.
“Hold on, I’ll read it aloud.”
My dearest Dex, Jagger, Pete, and Sly,
I wish I were writing with better news.
My heart thumps so loudly in my chest, I worry it’ll bruise my rib cage. I cling to the side of my bunk as I listen intently.
Robert left me alone this evening, so I went snooping for a music player in his office that I’d seen there a year ago. I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I was craving something different from my everyday routine and thought it’d be my only chance. I know you guys will understand why I did it.
But what I found… I’m not even sure how to explain it. There was a note, which I’ve included with my letter. I can’t believe it, but it says that Robert’s planning to sell me off! Like livestock!
“What?” Dex and I ask in unison as my blood starts to boil with rage. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Hold on, let me keep reading!” Pete yells before picking up where he left off.
He’s going to hand me over to that horrible man and send me to Russia to marry him. I can’t do it. I just… I can’t. I’m leaving. Tonight. Now. I’m sneaking out while they’re gone, and I’m jumping on a bus to who knows where.
I promise to write to you as often as I can, but I won’t be able to give you a return address, as I can’t risk Robert finding me. I’m so sorry.
I hope you know how much your letters mean to me, how much you all mean to me. You’ve been the best part of my life these past nine months… or ever, really.
Maybe one day, when I’m not worried about being caught anymore, I can visit you. But I know it's too risky right now. I need to hide somewhere Robert will never find me.
Please know you are in my thoughts every day, and please don’t write as Robert will find it and read it, and I don’t want him to taint the only good thing I have.
Take care of yourselves,
Love,
Your Wren
The only good thing in her life? We are all convicts, put away for life, and yet she sees us as her light?
A muffled yell jolts me from my trance, and I watch Dex scream into the pillow he’s wrapped around his head.
Jagger steps forward and pulls the envelope from Pete’s hand and stares into the opening, before tilting it and letting a small handwritten note drop into his palm.
“She said she included a note,” I say, remembering her words. Dex drops the pillow as we all stare at Jagger. His jaw works back and forth as his temple starts to pulse. He shoves it at me before dropping to my bunk, his head hanging in his hands as he stares at the floor.
Looking at the note, I read it aloud.
IS will send the subsequent three shipments (guns + parts) through the usual channels. First batch arrives by mid-June. Payment: $350k up front, another $400k a month later, followed by the second batch at the beginning of August.
RB will transfer WR to IS and the new batch to be sent through upon completion at the end of year. Wedding to take place in RUS.
“IS?” Pete asks.
“That must be Ivan,” I say as I re-read it.
“Wait—Wait wait wait…” Pete says, his eyes wide with worry. I’ve never seen him look this scared before.
“What?” I ask, a large ball of dread forming in my stomach.
“Russia, the initials I.S., guns. You don’t think that could be Ivan Sokolov, do you?”
“The Russian mobster?” Dex asks from his bunk. “Oh, shit! It fucking is!”
“We don’t know that,” I tell them with a frown. They both narrow their eyes at me, and I clench my fists.
“Yeah, we do. It fits with everything. Her brother fucking sold her to the biggest mobster alive!” Pete yells, trying to pace but with no room.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” Dex asks, his eyes bouncing between all of us, like we have the answers. “Can we call the cops or something?”
“Not a chance they’d listen to us, or have grounds to do anything about it,” I tell him solemnly.
There iss nothing we can do trapped in this cell. I’ve been here almost a year, and I’ve never felt as trapped as I do right now. Out there somewhere, my little bird was on the run, on her own, probably struggling as she’d never had to fend for herself before.
“Who knows what sort of trouble she’ll get herself into,” Dex says, as if mirroring my thoughts.
Slowly, we each climb into our bunks, knowing there is no hope in escaping this place. If there were, we would have found it by now. The overcrowding may mean our paroles would come up sooner than planned. But we’d barely been here a year, it would be decades before hope of that is on the table.
My mind wanders to thoughts of Wren, wandering the streets, living like a homeless person in dark, dangerous alleys. Even if we got out, how would we even find her? We don’t even know what direction she went.
A soft clunk wakes me from a fitful sleep, but the cell is dark, so I’m unsure what it is. When it remains silent, I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep.
“Did you hear that?” Pete whispers.
“Yes,” I whisper back. “It’s nothing, go back to sleep.”
He doesn’t respond for almost a full minute, so I think he’s gone back to sleep. But finally, he speaks again. “I think it came from the door.”
“So?” Dex asks, joining our conversation.
“I’m gonna check it out.”
“Be my guest,” I say, rolling over to watch him climb down with the grace of a cat. He’s the smallest of the four of us, lean and wiry. His blond hair, green eyes, and devilish grin trick people into thinking he’s friendly, but he’s a psycho just like the rest of us.
When he gets to the cell door, I watch as he tries to slide it open and—it moves. I bolt upright, nearly hitting my head on the bunk above me as he pushes it wide enough to slip through.
He pokes his head out, looks both ways down the hall, then pulls it back in and turns to us with a giant grin that speaks of chaos and excitement.
“What do you say, boys? Ready for a little prison break?”