Chapter Twenty
Staring Death in the Eyes
Menace
I wasn’t expecting another bundle, and I certainly wasn’t expecting those pictures.
Goddamn.
That was not the high school girl that I remembered. Sammy Nash had grown into a woman. A fine, tan, toned specimen of a woman. The sight of her shapely legs and that skirt had me standing in front of the window, gliding my fingertips along the length of my twitching cock as it rapidly began to thicken.
That picture was nothing short of art. A masterpiece. Her ass was poked out in a silent offering and all that gorgeous brown hair was sprawling down her shoulder as she peeked over it, looking like something I should be getting a hold of.
And get ahold of I did, I forget myself entirely and was rolling precum around the head of my cock with a gentle, “Fuck,” trapped on my lips.
“Inmate,” Larissa cooed.
I winced against the sound, jerked my hands out of my pants and held the pictures in front of my crotch so she wouldn’t see how tented I was.
“What?” I huffed.
“Your lawyer is here for a visit.”
Fuck!
“I– I don’t have a lawyer.”
“Public defender.” Shetapped her fingernails against the bars, and I let out a frustrated huff. I turned, stalling as I pretended to look for somewhere to set the package.
She laughed and started down the hall.
“Get yourself together, I need to grab another set of cuffs.”
I glanced down for one last peek at the picture and was hit with a sudden hot rush of feelings. The first glance at the picture had been all about her, but now that I was looking at it, that bike was familiar as fuck.
“That’s Griz’s.” I realized what that hot rush was as it exploded into jealousy and rage.
What the hell was she doing bending over another Savage’s bike?
“Ready?” Larissa cheerfully chirped.
The tone alone made me want to hurl the pictures at her, but I knew they weren’t heavy enough to do anything besides bring me restrictions.
She came back swinging a set of cuffs around her finger and I backed up to the bars and let her do what she had to. The less she saw of my eyes and expression, the better.
“You’re shaking,” she pointed out.
Damn. I was.
“Which one?” I tried to change the subject.
“Huh?”
“Which public pretender did they assign to my case?”
She snorted at my fondness for the term, “Tim Schooly.”
“Jesus.” I grunted, unable to really drum up too much disappointment. I didn’t have any faith in them to begin with, after all.
Still...
I’d rather have a used car salesmen plead my potential murder case than trust the matter to Tim Schooly, and that was on his sober days. It wasn’t even lunch, and his eyes were already bloodshot. His hair was disheveled, and he had a slightly sour, acidic smell about him that left me pinching my face up and staring longingly at the door.
I wanted to burn that green bike, and Griz right along with it. The fantasy of doing so was vividly playing in my mind, distracting me from the shuffling of papers and that acrid smell.
What type of shit was that, anyway? Ziggy had a fit that I wrote her a damned letter, but it was okay for her to be sprawled half-naked over a lesser Savage’s bike?
No fucking way.
She was mine, damn it!
“Mr. Zade?” I blinked and slowly returned my attention to him. “Mr. Zade, did you hear what I said? Keefe Kilbride died a few hours ago. Your charges are going to be elevated to homicide.”
I let out a breath that sounded more like a scoff when it blessed the air.
“So, I’m to be executed?”
“Capital punishment was abolished in this state long ago, son.”
I laughed and shook my head, “Tell that to the Irish, see if it buys me any time, would ya?”
Schooly stared dumbfounded across the length of the table.
“Right.” I nodded. “Tell you what, I’m sure you got a busy day with the bottle ahead of ya, Tim. Why don’t you get to it, and I’ll get to what I got to do.”
The paper shuffling instantly stopped, and he stared at me with those bloodshot eyes.
“And what is it you think you have to do, Mr. Zade?” Schooly asked, his nasal tone droning on until that one question stretched for miles.
“Survive, dumbass. What the fuck else would I do?”
What type of new blood did this bastard think I was? I wasn’t going to go shouting out any plan of action to him, even if I had one. The state was paying him, not me. I didn’t give a fuck what they said about attorney privilege.
“Guard.” I barked, slapping on the table.
Schooly shot out of the room with his shoddy briefcase the minute the door sounded, leaving me to inwardly curse him for his uselessness. I turned, bringing both hands behind the small of my back for cuffing. I could hear the heavy meal cart they brought the trays on in the distance. It grew louder and louder. Then hands roughly grabbed either of my arms and I was flung backwards.
“What the fuck?” I snapped, twisting in their grip.
It was pointless, there was a team of officers on me in minutes, restraining me to the chair.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything,” I pointed out, as the straps were made tighter. “Stop!”
Of course, they didn’t stop, the biggest of them got behind the wheeled restraint chair and I was pushed from the room in a calm, procedural manner. Well, for their part. I was screaming like a goddamn banshee, but I’m sure that was a normal sight for those being strapped to the chair.
“I want a supervisor. Get a fucking white shirt down here, now!” I barked at Larissa when I was whisked past her.
Her eyes widened, and it only took a moment to read the guilt in them.
I whipped around to see who would impede her path, but no one did. She stood there, wringing her hands and watching as I was propelled onward toward the shower.
I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but I knew it wasn’t good. My brain knew it on a primal level that left me trembling violently against the stained restraints.
“Stop. Stop. This is wrong. You’re all gonna lose your jobs over this. Man, you’ll lose more than that. You’ll go to jail just like I am,” I tried to warn and threaten them.
Alas, the door was opened before me, and the chair flung inside with me still strapped to it.
“The man of the hour, there he is, boys,” an Irish accent crowed.
I sucked in an icy breath, but it still didn’t prepare me for the first fist I ate. It rang me good, rocking my jaw and sending blood and slobber flying from my mouth. Someone on the other side knocked the wind out of me with a gut shot I had no way of avoiding.
I didn’t see it coming, but when the next connected with the underside of my jaw, my teeth clicked together so hard I thought I broke them. I saw stars as my head snapped back.
“What’s going on back there?” I heard a distant voice in the hall and the occasional approaching sounds of a radio squeaking and cutting the silence.
“I don’t know, Ridgeway went to check it out,” Larissa lied, and the radio sounds drew distant and foggy again.
This is how I was going to die. Slow and wondering how mutilated I was from the last blow.
I was being called everything but a dog, I heard the various voices, the taunts. I couldn’t see them. I was dazed beyond belief.
“Not yet, boy. Not yet. You got to let him come around. He won’t feel it good. You want to make every blow count, don’t ya?” I heard someone coaching.
I knew this game. I used to play it with my third stepfather. He’d make the beatings last for hours when I got between him and Henny. Henny was older than me but wasn’t always the muscle head he is today. Once upon a time, he was just a scrawny middle schooler. Back then, I was his little big brother. I was heavier by thirty pounds all the way up until he got out of prison the first time.
My thoughts drifted with Henny as my head rolled. I was only aware it had because the drool and blood trickled down my face.
I knew they were going to do it, and I’d rather not sit here until the adrenaline wore off and I felt it good , as the bastard said. So, I drew every ounce of awareness I could from my disoriented mind and flung my head, and spit toward the bastard with the iron pipe.
The alarm sounded and the room sucked in a breath almost all at once. It was the only sign that this wasn’t in their plans.
The boy, whoever it was, gave a wild cry, that I instantly recognized. It ripped my attention and half my soul toward the sound.
He’d never killed before. He was summoning every demon he had.
“No,” someone hissed. “That’s too quick for the likes of him. We’ll finish this shit later. Come on.”
The door opened and guards flooded the room, urging them all out.
“They’re going to review the cameras,” someone hissed behind me.
“Let them. They didn’t see anything. They were off.”
“Yeah, what about the ones in protective custody? How the fuck are you gonna get him back in there?”
My teeth chattered as my body went into survival mode and I clung to consciousness.
“We’ll come back for him,” Ridgeway clipped.
It was the only voice I recognized. The door snapped shut and I heard the lock being manually set.
This was worse than all my stepfathers combined. I was no coward, but my body was fucking possessed by fight or flight nerves and urges I couldn’t possibly respond to. I opened my eyes, and the room spun. My stomach heaved and rolled.
The alarm continued to scream.
Voices and chaos sounded in the hallway.
“Sorry, Sammy,” I whispered, if only to taste her name.
I grunted and my face ached with the smallest of smiles. “God, I’m sorry I didn’t get to stare into your eyes and tell you how beautiful you are.”
I clung to those pictures of her, conjuring them so I had something to focus on instead of the shock and awe my body was reeling from.
I lost consciousness. I’d no idea for how long. My neck ached something fierce, but I didn’t know if it was from one of the blows, or the way I’d passed out, with my head tipped back awkwardly.
I opened my eyes and was surprised to find the floor fairly clean. There were no pools of blood, only some splatter, and even that was surprisingly minimal.
“What's the update?”
I sucked in a startled breath, at the abrupt sound and how close it was.
“Contained,” a voice sounded back, just as the door was tested.
“Is there any reason the PC Shower room is locked?”
Silence.
“H–” The word died on my lips.
If I announced myself, I might be killed in a hurry to keep me from reporting the incident. If the guards had to come back and clean up without cause to kill me, I might have time to buy room to wiggle? How the fuck did you come back from this?
There was no coming back from this , my brain screamed.
I was a weak link for the correctional officers. They had as much reason to want me gone as the Irish now, simply to cover their own asses.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. I had the most impressive shiner of my life, and there was some pink tissue glistening around the blood on the underside of my chin.
I looked around for the pipe, and realized I’d never heard it hit the ground. The reality that I’d probably been assaulted with the same damn tool that took Vince’s life left me sweating in the restraints as I heard a key being tested.
“I did that to contain the area,” Larissa sounded over the radio.
I was so shocked by her betrayal I didn’t recognize my own expression in the mirror. I quickly fixed my face and decided to stay quiet.
The lack of certainty and faith in my own decisions was making me physically sick.
“Update,” I heard again, a few minutes later from a more distant radio.
“Ridgeway is down, Tucker is down, three inmates are down. We have multiple EMS en route, stand by.”
“Copy,” a male voice returned, and the beeping grew distant again. “The next time I hear the word ‘contained,’ let’s make sure it is, in fact, contained. Shall we?”
The authority in his voice made my heart race. Only a white shirt would scold another officer like that.
“Help. Fucking help me. I need an ambulance. Help!” I started screaming for all I was worth.
“What the fuck–?” the voice boomed, and a rapid jangle of keys began outside the door.
“They hit me with the pipe. That pipe they got Vince with. Help!” I screamed until my throat was scratchy.
“Jesus H. Christ.” The door sounded with a thud and more keys jangled. “Porter, get your ass down here now! PC Shower room, bring whoever you can.”
My headache waned and sparked in time with the alarm outside, making me wince at times as I closed my eyes against the unknown.
The door finally gave an ancient whine as it moved, and I snapped my eyes open on instinct. My gaze locked with the white shirt and his jaw fell.
“What in the name of—?”
Larissa hurried toward him, but I saw her in the mirror, her pace slowed when she realized she was busted.
“Sarge, the EMS is demanding an escort,” a voice sounded on the radio.
When he didn’t answer it squeaked again after a few moments, “Sarge?”
“Send it.” He scoffed, stepping toward me.
“You– you said something about a pipe?” He looked round the empty room, double-checking his safety before his gaze swung back to me.
“I was hit in the face with a pipe. I’m fucked up. Let me go with that ambulance. Please, I’m begging you. Don’t let them come back and kill me.”
Somehow, I knew in my soul, that hospital was my only way out of this alive.
He looked at my chin and his face scrunched, “Shit!”
“Calloway went with them, Sir. That leave—”
“Shut the fuck up,” the Sarge clipped, staring at me. “I know what it means. They got room in that ambulance for one more?”
I could see the stress on Larissa from across the room, even if she kept her gaze locked on the floor and pretended she was straining to hear the radio.
“Negative, Sarge.”
“Shit.” The Sergeant carried on, as he thrust the radio back onto his belt. “H– how did you?”
“They wrestled me into a chair and tried to kill me. Thank God you and Deputy Porter arrived.” I tried to snap Larissa out of it, hoping against hope that she’d come to my side, if I played her.
The sergeant slowly undid the restraints.
“Can you st–?”
I shot out of the chair and shoved my hands behind me.
“Well.” He seemed stunned, hesitating just a moment before he put the cuffs on me and rubbed his beard.
“Porter, you’ll take him to Memorial Hospital for treatment in a squad car.”
“I can’t–” Larissa tried to deny.
“You will. You’ll take him. I can’t send one of the others and risk that.”
I was good at reading between the lines, one had to be when they made a living through criminal means. Some conversations couldn’t be had out in the open or directly spelled out.
I wasn’t sure I was in my right mind, though, because I was pretty sure he just conceded that he’d rather risk my escape, than risk losing control of his jail with whatever populace of male guards he had left.