10. Knox
KNOX
Once you’ve entered Hell, you learn that you’ve never really had a nightmare before.
Just bad dreams. A true nightmare is hearing your cell door opening at three in the morning, long before the daily inmate count.
The only convicts ever woken up this early work in the kitchens to prepare breakfast, and I’m not one of them.
There’s barely any light to discern anything, but it’s enough to distinguish the color of my visitor’s clothes. Green. So, not a prison guard.
And he’s not alone. I take out the shiv I have under my pillow and slam the jagged piece of plastic into the first inmate’s thigh before he even has a chance to see if my eyes are open or not.
It’s shocking what some of the guys here can sleep through.
One of the new fish on the floor beneath mine reportedly got his throat slit in the middle of the night, and he hadn’t so much as stirred.
I, on the other hand, learned from an early age to sleep with one eye open, the byproduct of growing up in a neighborhood where drive-bys are a regular occurrence.
If my cellmate so much as sniffles, I’m awake.
Only once the attacker in front of me staggers back do I see his arm is raised towards the top bunk.
He wasn’t here for me.
At long last, Sleeping Beauty above me finally wakes up when the guy with my shiv in his thigh cries out as I twist the plastic and pry it free.
Lunging out of my bunk, I ram the full weight of my body into the first attacker.
He hits the wall hard enough that it steals his breath, and I use the distraction to hook my hands around the back of his head before slamming his face down into my awaiting knee.
I hear multiple cracks, and I have to wonder if one came from me, because pain lances through my leg upon impact.
I no doubt broke his nose, but the attacker crumples on the floor and spits out the remains of a tooth.
Considering the warm liquid coursing down the front of my leg, I can safely assume that the tooth cut my skin open.
It’s the least of my worries, because my cellmate isn’t faring too well.
Can’t blame him. His position on the top bunk makes it hard for him to fight back.
All he can do is try fending off the knife that slashes every which way at him from the second attacker.
The blade slices through his palm and cuts into the top of his forearm in multiple places, but they’re all surface injuries.
The grand finale comes, however, when the attacker uses my bunk to gain some height.
He lunges up at my cellmate, the knife about to sink into the man’s neck, but I manage to throw enough of my weight into him to knock him aside.
I’m rewarded with searing hot pain slicing into my own forearm.
Only, I’m not so lucky to call it a flesh wound.
The blade sinks in deep enough that it hits bone.
Something hits me in the face, and the next thing I know, I’m being torn out of my cell, my body thrown out on the walkway.
We’re on the second floor, and I already know what’s coming as multiple sets of hands grab me.
The blood from my forearm coats my palm and fingers, making it nearly impossible to get a grip on the railing, but I cling to it with everything I have when I’m pried up off the floor.
A guard who hasn’t been paid off finally must notice what’s happening, because an alarm starts to sound, but it comes too late.
I’m thrown over the railing as the blaring siren transforms into a scream.
Waking up, I’m more than a little disoriented and panicked.
I’m in the dark, but it’s not the inside of a jail cell or on the air mattress at Dominic’s. Wool and leather sleeves bat me in the face when I snap upright, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m still inside Anna’s coat closet.
Fuck, what time is it?
I don’t get a chance to look at my phone, because the scream I heard wasn’t in my dream.
It’s coming from down the hall.
The door of the coat closet is still cracked open, so I can see that the bathroom is finally unoccupied.
But both bedroom doors also remain closed.
No one’s coming out to check on the other.
What the hell?
Instinct overrides my self-preservation, because I’m up and down the hall before I can think better of it.
Did someone break in while I was asleep?
Did someone get hurt? As quietly as I can, I crack open Darcy’s door to find her sprawled out across the bed fast asleep with headphones turned on loud enough that even I can hear the music.
Which would explain why she wasn’t disturbed by the screaming. She probably wouldn’t react to anything less than a bomb going off.
But that also means Anna’s the one in trouble.
I hurry down the hall, only to be met with a locked door.
Fuck! Picking it is easy enough, but doing it in the dark is a pain in the ass.
The only saving grace is that the knob is ancient, so when I pop the lock out, it sticks a little, reducing the noise.
If someone’s attacking Anna, I’d prefer to catch them off guard.
The only weapon I’ve got is the Swiss army knife from my keychain.
I need as much of an advantage as I can get, and I have a feeling that won’t be a problem.
I can still hear thrashing and sounds of a scuffle, even following the noise for me.
Whoever’s going after her isn’t letting up.
I throw open the door, ready to strike—
Only to be acquainted with an empty room, save for Anna.
Everything’s lit by only the dim light from her TV, but it’s enough to see her lying alone on the bed, kicking her legs and clawing her hands into the sheets.
Her entire body jerks with the movements as she moans and whimpers.
If anyone witnessed this some three hundred years ago, they’d think she was possessed by a demon.
But she’s only having a nightmare. And one hell of one by the looks of it.
Jesus, this woman’s going to give me a heart attack.
She’s muttering things I can’t make out, and, like any decent person, I want to wake her up.
I want to pull her out of whatever hell she’s experiencing.
But I can’t. All I can do is close the door behind me and just stand here, feeling the adrenaline once again leaving my body.
Any shut-eye I got from the coat closet is canceled out by this latest surge that I’m nearly tempted to collapse onto the bed with her, if not for the threat of being kicked and clawed at.
And then I see it. Lying next to her on the mattress is a certain yellow legal pad. Half of what she’s written has been scratched out, and half of what remains is illegible.
But what I can make out isn’t good. At least, not for me.
And now, not for her.
In another life, she could have been a detective, because she managed to pick up on details that the security footage and other witness testimonies hadn’t caught. Details that would be damaging.
The cameras in the shop aren’t equipped with audio, and no one else picked up on Dominic’s accent.
Why would they? It isn’t remotely strong, yet Blondie here somehow managed to detect it.
Dominic isn’t from Chicago, but when Cicero is just a skip down the fucking street, he may as well be.
Thank God she never interacted with Michael.
Jax moved up here over twelve years ago, so he’s able to mask his Texas drawl pretty well.
The same can’t be said about his cousin.
Five words out of his mouth, and Blondie here would have been able to peg down that accent.
Then there’s the matter of me . On any other day, my shoulder doesn’t bother me. The scar tissue had healed up rather nicely, but when the security guard managed to get one decent hit on me, the asshole punched directly over the spot.
And since the police are already looking at me, one glance into my file would confirm I have a previous injury on that very site she mentions here.
Much to my disappointment, she’s also the only one who caught Jax’s slipup calling me “Hoss.”
I set the legal pad back onto the mattress beside Anna when she screams again, scaring the ever-living shit out of me.
Her eyes are still closed, thank god, but they don’t stay that way for long.
They fly open, and I do the only thing I can.
I drop to the floor and roll under the bed where I know there’s enough room.
The area rug allows me to do this noiselessly, but was I fast enough? Did she see me?
She must have, because the light flips on and her weight shifts on the bed.
I wait for her to run, to grab her phone and call the police, to do something…
But I just keep waiting. What else can I do? She doesn’t make a move to do anything. Anna must not have seen me, because after another minute, the light goes out and she turns up the volume on the TV.
She thinks she’s safe.
Oh, sweet Anna. How you couldn ’ t be more wrong .
It seems she and I are about to be officially reunited in the morning. Despite the pickle this puts me in, I still can’t resist grinning.
Because I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy fucking with this woman.
I’m not sure if Anna sleeps at all through the rest of the night, but it doesn’t sound like it.
The weight of the mattress continues to shift, and she keeps sighing and groaning.
I, on the other hand, happen to doze off at some point, only being awakened when I hear her open the bedroom door.
If she notices that it’s not locked, she doesn’t give any indication.