Chapter 20
Twenty
Penny
Ihummed and patted my fingers together one by one, rocking a little, trying to let the crazy hit big so I could go off into imagination land for good.
Maybe another few slams of my head against the wall would do it.
“Ten green bottles of beer on the wall…” I sang, leaning into the nutcase I wanted to be. If I faked it for long enough, maybe it would become reality.
It was hard to have any more hope inside me, hard to pretend things might work out for the better if I just tried more. My one cause for anticipation, for some fun, was gone. He’d proven himself as someone not worth my time, again and again; he’d betrayed what I thought we were growing.
I suppose that showed my insanity for the truth it was. My mind must have been fading; my marbles lost long ago. To think a person like CO Adrian Darling, sweet in name alone, could ever be manipulated.
I was shit out of luck.
Sighing, I slumped against the wall, tapping the side of my head against it to pass the time. A crash, or something like it, from somewhere else in the prison echoed and tried to snag my attention, but I didn’t let it. I kept singing my stupid little song and swaying my stupid battered body.
But it just wouldn’t let me go. Reality clung on in there like a curse that refused to break.
Frantic shouting grew louder, with banging, crashing, and footsteps pummeling the floor above our heads, down the stairs, all around us.
Chaos was bleeding out down here too; the other sad saps, so deprived of anything, started pounding on their doors, getting all rowdy, feeding off the energy seeping through the cracks.
Whatever was happening, though, wasn’t my business. For once, I wasn’t in the middle of it. For once, I was glad to be far away, locked in my shitty solitary cell with only the brain I was trying to addle for company.
Randal’s death hadn’t been my fault either. He raped me. Adrian sent him in to do so. It was him, that man, the one under my skin when he wasn’t supposed to be. It was his fault. All of this was, I decided, as I paced my cell and pushed away the bellows from my fellow solitarily confined.
But then the door at the end of the hall opened and closed, and my attention piqued, sharp and sudden.
“Keep them all locked in, stay and watch,” a stressed voice sounded, cracking through a radio.
Someone pounded down the length of the hall, ignoring all the pleas for mercy or what the shit ever.
Heat prickled under my skin, a sense of doom making the back of my neck tickle. Something big was happening.
There was a groaning, creaking kind of noise that I’d never heard before, and yet more shouting. Okay, maybe this was worth paying attention to. I leaned into the dread and played with it. An emotion beyond boredom, beyond fatigue and irritation.
Something like an explosion sounded above our heads, but that wasn’t possible. Why the hell would there be explosives in here? It must have just been a crashing or banging that my brain couldn’t compute. But it made me jolt, raised my blood pressure to painful throbs in my head.
“Fuck yeah!” the woman in the next cell over to me screamed, her joy curious enough in this situation that I moved, ready to peer out of the door my damn self.
But someone opened it.
An inmate stood there, one I’d seen around causing hell, a wicked smile on her face, wild orange hair sprayed out behind her, my door swinging open between us.
“The door locks are broken,” she said, simple, shocked. “The automatic locks have failed.”
I froze. I didn’t even know these doors had automatic locks.
Was this it? My time? All I’d built for being handed to me in the wrong way. All the crazed planning and I needn’t have bothered.
I took a step forward, and the inmate bolted. Another bolted past my door. Someone screamed, a guard maybe. A radio crackled; something slammed.
Fuck it, I followed, needing to see this through. It wasn’t like they could punish me more. Even if all I got was a bit of a heart-rate jump and a laugh, that would do.
So I stepped out into the hallway, ran for the now empty of bodies, swinging on its hinges, door. It felt weird to be out here without a guard, but I didn’t stop to contemplate that. There was no time.
This was all autopilot, all adrenaline.
I let my legs lead me down the hallways, cackling at the mayhem I could hear going on around the prison. I think the main section was behind me, and I was near the exits, but it was hard to tell. All my path was based on was gut instinct, and my instincts were shit.
But gates hung open, guards were missing, and inmates raced in front of me or ran in the opposite direction. Who knew which was the correct one? I was just here for the fun, the intrigue. The possible, minute chance…
I turned a corner and smashed right into a firm body. “Shit,” I grunted, ready for this all to be over. No inmates were built like that.
“Come on,” Adrian said, making my heart pound, my stomach drop out, grabbing my arms and tugging me back with him. Had he come for me? Or was this coincidence? From how unsurprised he seemed to see me, I guessed the first.
I was shocked for a moment at the sight of him. I was so, so mad at the man, but… maybe my plan had worked. He was here, his hands on me and not chasing down inmates. There was a pause, a heavy beat where I didn’t know what he might be about to do.
Then he tugged me again, picking up the pace and leading me through the dark halls, no explanation, no apology. Nothing.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he led me in a run, not resisting when I should. But if I was right… if this had worked after all… relief made tears well in my eyes.
He didn’t loosen his grip, but he did slow down, allowing me to meet him at his side as we walked at a fast, steady pace, his head on a permanent swivel searching for movement. My brain was such a crazed mess I couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow, let alone a shadow from a person.
“Listen, shit.” He stopped and pushed me up against a wall, into a small alcove where a magazine rack dug into my ass cheek. He placed a finger to my lips and mouthed for me to be quiet. We’d reached a foyer, maybe a waiting room, before he’d heard something concerning.
I slowed my breathing and did as he asked, enjoying him so close to me as a herd of guards rushed past us.
We were just about tucked in enough to the shadows to be missed, and they were on quite the mission, so none of them spotted us as their boots pounded along.
It felt dirty, relishing his closeness, even with all the shit he’d put me through.
“Listen to me, little killer,” Adrian whispered, his harsh voice running right through me.
“I can’t get you the fuck out of my head.
And I don’t know what that means for this, for…
us, but I want to get you out of here.” He smiled in spite of himself and rubbed his thumb along my cheek, his eyes warming when I leaned into it.
“I know it’s what you want. You want your freedom, yeah? Let me give it to you.”
“Okay,” I whispered, pecking a small kiss on his bottom lip. “Okay, Sir.”
He groaned and looked up at the ceiling. “God, I can’t wait to fuck you somewhere other than a prison cell.”
“Or a visitors’ room?” I smirked back. Despite what he’d done, what situation he’d put me in, getting free was more pressing.
He laughed, something so rare to hear, and gave me one firm but fast kiss before sticking his head out of the alcove to check the coast was clear.
It must have been, because he tugged me out and we continued on our journey to freedom.
This was fucking happening. He’d had to work through a lot of internal shit to make up his mind, but we were here; he was mine.
He was breaking the law for me in a big way. I grinned.
As we wove through the corridors, on what seemed to be some random trek, I watched Adrian’s every move. I don’t know when it happened, what tipped him over, but I was so, so grateful I’d pushed his buttons and burrowed myself into his mind.
At last, when it seemed like we weren’t even in the prison anymore, Adrian paused again. I looked around, focusing on my dead silent surroundings. We passed through a door with a metal sign above it, but I missed what it said.
A few more turnings, through an open gate, and we took a beat.
Everything was dark, but it looked… familiar. “Where are we?” I asked, peering at the row of cells. It was all dilapidated, dusty and shadowy, but it appeared remarkably like the place I’d called home for the last seven years.
“The men’s prison; no one will come looking through here,” Adrian explained as we walked along the cells. “At least not for a while.” I kept expecting the ghost of some old cellmate to burst forth and attack, and every new cell brought a bout of tension in me, but we soon moved beyond them.
We walked through the open gates, along the corridor past doors labeled staff room, toilets, and visitor center, until finally, we were in a fucking foyer. The emptiness and openness felt strange, as did the absence of anyone to stop us.
Like we were in some alternative dimension.
“I unlocked the door earlier, parked a rental round the back so it would be invisible,” Adrian told me. “You’ll need to hide in the back, under a blanket just in case, but we’re almost there.”
“You planned this?” I asked, wanting to pause and think for a second. Hang on.
But Adrian Darling pulled me toward the door, and the promise of freedom grew too tasty. “We need to move now.”
And we did. We stepped outside, past the broken vending machine and curled up magazines, into the fresh night air.