Chapter 19
Nineteen
Adrian
Ivomited the second I reached the toilets, puking my guts up as the last two hours played on repeat in my head. And it hadn’t come from what I’d seen, what I’d done with her, but what it had done to me. Fuck, what was that?
Everything went so damn wrong, and I reveled right in the thick of it, letting it happen.
Watching her demon awaken and free to roam, attacking Randal like she was born to…
it was disgusting, foul, gave me flashes of images I didn’t want.
And that made me rage, renewed my hatred for the evil woman.
For myself, for having any emotions for her beyond disdain.
But he wasn’t supposed to rape her. He was supposed to seduce her with fucking chocolate or that shower she still groused over, giving me leverage over her, making her feel shitty and used. But she’d refused, and he’d taken instead. I was such a damn idiot.
I couldn’t watch that. My temper raged. And Penelope Karner liked it. First, my hatred for Randal touching her, taking from her bubbled, then it evolved with reminders and memories, bitter resentment for her rearing up. I needed to punish.
Watching her slide that baton into her rapist’s throat got my dick hard, made me want to wipe away any touch from Randal and make her feel bliss. Bliss I should never feel the urge to give her. It was all so fucked, twisted and ruined, a tangled mess.
With harsh intention, I denied her any pleasure, bringing her to the brink over and over to fuck with her head, to remind her of her place. What she’d done again and again.
And it was going too far. It needed to end. But not like this.
This, I hadn’t planned.
After a two-hour meeting with the warden, who’d driven in from being dead asleep at home to go over all that happened in minute detail, I was free to leave. Police came, internal investigators too, and it was all a shit show.
I gave them everything I had that was close to the truth, but it turned ashy in my throat. Randal lay dead because of Penny, not because of me. At least, that’s what I made everyone believe. She stole his last breath.
And now it felt wrong to leave her here, under the fate of someone else’s decisions. She was mine to mess with, to control. I couldn’t have it if anyone else got that instead of me.
Penny wasn’t getting out of solitary again anytime soon, if ever, and it made me itchy to know another was keeping her captive.
She belonged to me. She had to.
That someone else could decide what punishments she would face, what depravity.
It wasn’t enough.
It messed with my mind.
“Adrian?” a cool voice came from the door, a woman, peeking her head into the men’s. “It’s Sally. You want to talk?”
I sat up from the toilet and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, trying to calm down the panting sweats eating me alive.
I was afraid if I spoke, I would either vomit my guts up again or spill all my secrets.
So I took deep, measured breaths, as I’d trained myself, and sucked it all back in.
Buried that shit until I had her under my control once more.
“Hey Sally,” I called out, trying to keep my voice even. “Sure. Just give me a second.”
“No problem,” she said, and I heard the door swinging back shut.
The day shift had come in now, being informed of what shitshow had happened overnight.
A loss of one of our own was a big deal, and tensions would only be growing higher.
Between staff, between inmates, and between the power imbalance of COs and bored, incarcerated women.
Warden Domingo had been talking about cutting the inmates’ food even more, not letting them out of their cells for the rest of the week in a joint punishment for what Karner had done.
Most of Block A had heard the commotion, some figuring it out and shouting and jeering as a placid Penny was carried past their doors.
She was a rockstar to them, covered in blood, surrounded by the ashen faces of the half-asleep night shift.
Gossip spread like wildfire in this place, and Penny would be some sort of legend. Until their punishments came too. Then they’d hate her even more than they revered her.
The isolation wasn’t just a punishment at this point; it was a safety measure.
After spending a few minutes at the sink straightening myself out, swilling my mouth with water and washing my hands and face with the drying liquid soap, I stepped outside and found Sally waiting for me, a look of concern across her tired features.
“I have hot chocolate,” she said, shoving a styrofoam cup at me.
The liquid inside warmed my hand, and I grunted my thanks as we walked down the hall.
I followed her without question, grateful for the steadiness, even if I couldn’t tell her anything.
I needed… I needed my mother, no, my brother.
I needed to talk to him and tell him everything.
But of course, that would never happen.
Sally and I were on the other side of the security gates, so it was easy to step outside into the fresh air. The sun had almost come all the way up, but gold and yellow threw across the sky as the night clung on as long as it could.
And what a night it had been.
“The warden told us everything. Said you were taking a leave of absence,” she muttered.
“No,” I responded too fast. “Just one shift. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Adrian…” Sally admonished, sounding like she wanted to say more. Sally was a warm shoulder, but she never overstepped.
I shook my head and leaned against the wall, the cold brick chilling my spine. “I need to keep working. It was rough, but there was no love lost between me and Randal. I’m fine.”
“I just heard you vomiting in there, Adrian.” She nodded her head toward the building. “You saw it all. You pulled Karner off your dead colleague. I don’t think—”
“I vomited because it was a disgusting sight that ruined my dinner, nothing else.” It was a lie, and we both knew it.
But Sally didn’t know what the truth was, and she was kind enough not to push.
The sight hadn’t disgusted me; it had turned me on, inspired me.
And that itself is what had me fucked up.
My reaction was not that of horror. At least not at first.
I would take a day to recover from that, to plan, but then it was game fucking over. I would return tomorrow, ready and prepared to take Penelope Karner on once more. For good. I needed her all to myself. No bars, no barriers, no one else to defer to.
“Thanks for the hot chocolate,” I said to Sally, leaving her there, watching me go as I slipped back into the building and towards my car. The warden mandated a day off, but no more than that.
He understood better than most of us why I needed to keep going.
More detectives arrived as I left, and I gave my old colleagues a nod, ignoring their curious eyes. Even when one of them called after me, I kept moving.
I had to fucking think.
I spent the day with my mother. Despite the lack of sleep, my mind and body were switched on, and there was no way I would be able to crawl into bed and switch off my brain.
The apartment made me think too hard, made my plans seem too real, even down to the new bed I’d bought.
I walked in, showered, and walked right back out.
Soon.
Mom and I wandered through the park, Boba at our feet, weaving and almost tripping us up every few steps when she stopped to sniff a twig or whatever the hell caught her attention. It was nice, easy. Fresh air and innocence.
We strolled arm in arm, her jabbering gossiping about the neighbors or her book club, letting me be silent, in my own head, distracted.
I hadn’t told her much about what had happened to Randal, but it had, of course, made national news. Renowned female serial killer murders male CO in cold blood? Too exciting a story to pass up. Especially as it had happened at the local prison, many residents of the town working within its walls.
So I said I wasn’t involved, was on the other side of the prison, and she let it go with a fair bit of reluctance, all narrow eyes and that mom-styled pursed lips that used to get me spilling every teenage secret.
I just had to be grateful they hadn’t released any names yet.
“I still don’t know why you chose to work there.
” Mom’s voice pulled me out, and I realized we’d walked the length of the park, and the prison compound sat visible in the near distance.
The building loomed, ugly and sterile, a concrete square against the desert backdrop.
It ruined the town when it was built, according to the older folk who’d lived a whole life here, emanating a sense of darkness, a rot.
It rankled me. Knowing she was in there. That she was locked away but alive. Breathing. Thinking. Existing. So close, but so many barriers keeping me from her. When I’d found out where Karner was, that she was so close…
“I know,” I said, squeezing Mom’s arm. “But you won’t change my mind, Mom.”
She sighed. “I never could. You or your brother, always so pig-headed.”
I laughed. “Pig-headed? Really? Didn’t know my own mother was so anti-cop.”
“Oh, shush.” She whacked me with a light laugh. “Don’t be so dim; you know what I mean.”
I nodded, I did. And she wasn’t wrong. Once I set my mind to something, I couldn’t rest until I had seen it through.
I arrived back at work a day later to find the prison in more chaos than when I’d left it. Nothing was as it should be. The day staff were nowhere near ready for handover, and the prisoners weren’t locked up tight in their cells.
They were… chanting.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked the nearest CO, a young woman by the name of Alicia, who looked stressed to fuck, her hair half out of its bun, her eyes red. It was clear this had been rolling on for hours, whatever it might be.
I’d never seen anything like it. In all the years I’d spent working toward this prison, doing my time in others, the inmates had never been so… organized.
Alicia looked at me with open relief. The night crew brought more bodies to her side.
“We let them out of their cells an hour ago after they had been locked in all day. The warden said the state insisted they not be kept from their daily rights, that he’d spent all day arguing it.
” She yanked on her hair, messing it up even more.
“But now they won’t go back in. That one.
” She pointed at the loudest inmate, one Amanda Mooreland, who was commanding most of the room.
“Stood on the rec table and started chanting, and they all joined in.” Alicia spluttered and threw her hands up.
“They haven’t got any proper demands or anything, just… ”
“We want food! We want food!” they all chanted, red faced, tired and damned angry. On tables, exhausted and raging, caged animals with a lick of freedom using every single inch of it to get their voices heard.
I’d be pissed too, to have my rations cut so significantly.
To be locked away even more than I usually was because someone else had done something so heinous it was almost unheard of.
It wasn’t their fault they lived with a psychopath.
And she wasn’t even here now, confined below, probably listening to the commotion with a smile on her face and her hands down her pants.
I huffed a breath through my nose, trying to parse out the situation, take measure of it and fix it. I couldn’t see anyone in control from our end. Only Inmate Mooreland cawing at her masses.
“Where’s the warden?” I asked Alicia, already guessing the answer. He wasn’t here. Neither was useless Saggy Sal. Both tucked tail and escaped this mess, ready to shoulder no blame tomorrow.
“He already left,” Alicia said before turning from me with a steadying breath and striding to the middle of the braying group.
On her own. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated a female CO and what they could do, but this wasn’t the time or place for a slight thing like her to be diving into the fray by herself.
So I followed her with a muttered curse under my breath.
“Inmate!” I shouted at Ms Mooreland, hoping I could command her attention. Instead, she shrieked something incomprehensible and dove off the table, landing on Alicia.
That did it.
The thin elastic snapped.
With that one move, it was no longer a peaceful protest, loud but harmless. It was a riot.