by Sophia Gray
Beth shook her head, amazed. “Wow. You Shepherds really do see everything, don't you?”
“No. Just more than most.” Dutton shelved the last book on his cart, then turned to look at her. “So what do you expect me to do for him?”
“You're the leader of the Shepherds. You can protect him.”
Dutton smiled humorlessly. “Because we're just another gang to you, is that right? We're non-violent, Ms. Callaghan. We do what we can to look after our own in here, but the bottom line is, if the Sinners or the Knights decide to cut through us to get to Hall, there's very little we could do to stop them. Not without risking bloody confrontations or longer sentences.”
It took Beth a moment to realize that Dutton had called her by her real name, rather than Officer D'Amato. If he knew that, how much else did he know?
Well, whatever he knew, it didn't matter. It didn't sound like he was willing to help her.
“I'm sorry I bothered you,” Beth said, turning to leave.
“So that's it? You're just going to give up? I thought you cared about him more than that. I thought you cared enough to stop crawling around asking for favors and actually use your head.”
Beth turned back. “Listen, Greene—I've taken about all the insults I can handle for the day. You're willing to help? Good, I'm listening. You're not? Fine, fuck you. But don't tease me with a bunch of fortune cookie riddles and judgmental horseshit.”
Dutton stepped forward, lowering his voice and putting a hand on Beth's forearm. The physical contact made her nervous, and so did the intensity in Dutton's eyes. Still, she couldn't pull away—she felt paralyzed, like a bird being hypnotized by a snake's glare.
“You've been here long enough to see how this place works,” Dutton said. “It's not about who has the biggest muscles, the sharpest shivs, or the most cash to throw around. Bluebonnet runs on information. Who knows what about whom, and how they choose to use it.”
Beth nodded slowly. “Butler keeps holding what he knows about me over my head. But what if I had something on him?”
“Everyone has secrets. Even Butler. Even the guard who oversees Ad-Seg.”
“And you'd be willing to provide me with useful information on them, so I could visit Hank and get Butler off my back?” Beth asked. “In exchange for what?”
“Nothing too difficult. There's an inmate in your cell block named Raheem Jenkins. He's a good kid, and he was innocent of the crime he's been convicted of. If he stays out of trouble and makes parole, he could still have a life on the outside.”
Beth shrugged. “So help him. I'm sure you've been able to do that for lots of kids who come here.”
“We can't get close enough to reach out to him. He shares a cell with two other Sinners, and they're always surrounding him, making sure none of the Shepherds approach him. So far, they've protected him without asking him to do anything for them. But with every day that passes, the odds of them swallowing him whole and turning him into one of them grow greater. I want you to reassign him to a cell with one of us, so we can help him before it's too late.”
“Sure,” Beth said. “I can do that. I'll put in for the transfer today, as soon as I get back from my lunch break. Now, what can you tell me?”
Dutton told her what he knew. About Butler, and the guard who ran Ad-Seg.
By the time he was finished, Beth was starting to believe there could be a way out of Bluebonnet for her and Hank after all.
Chapter 29
Hank
The cells in Ad-Seg, also known as the hole, were little more than dark, filthy, stone-walled holes where the worst of the worst—those who posed a serious threat to the guards and their fellow inmates—were thrown for undetermined periods of time. If a man was sent there as a short-term punishment for a specific act of violence or defiance, he could be there anywhere from a week to a month. But if a man proved himself completely unable to follow the rules or restrain himself from murdering other prisoners, he could be there for months, years, or even the rest of his sentence.
Every surface in the cells was covered with thick layers of grime and black mold, which frequently led to severe and permanent bronchial infections for those interred in them. There was a small toilet in the corner that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since it was installed. A thin plastic mattress was on the floor—it was designed to be tear-proof, fire-proof, and easily hosed off so the mildew in the room couldn't permeate it. Lying on it was almost as bad as lying directly on the hard stone floor.
Part of the experience of spending time in Ad-Seg was the crushing sense of isolation. There was no contact with other prisoners, and the only brief contact with the guards was when they slid a tray of food and a plastic cup of water through the narrow slot in the door once a day. Depending on what the offender had done to be sent to the hole, it was common for the “food” to be horribly tainted somehow—moldy and rotten, or polluted with the guards' fingernails or feces—and for the cup to be cloudy with piss.
Then there were the voices in his own head. Most prisoners in Ad-Seg started talking to themselves within the first few days. By the end of the first month or two, they were generally murmuring a constant stream of broken, inane babble that only made sense to them.
Hank had been in the hole for two days, and he already felt his mind beginning to soften into mush.
He could feel the walls leaning in further and further, until the room felt like it was about one square foot. He kept pacing from one wall to the other, over and over, counting each step so he could be sure the shrinking of the room was only in his head. Then he'd flop down on the mattress, insisting to himself that he was satisfied that the room was the same size it always had been.
But no matter how many times he counted, the walls kept inching in until he inevitably got up and started pacing again.
The trays that came through the slot were befouled, and after the first two, the growling of his stomach overcame him and he started to scream and scream—no words, just roars of incoherent rage and hunger. But the third tray was the same, and the fourth, and Hank could feel his stomach starting to devour itself. He was too weak to scream any more. There was no one to hear him anyway.
No one to care.
His breath was already starting to rasp and wheeze from the dank conditions of the cell. The air always seemed wet and chilly, and there was always a dripping sound coming from somewhere. He spent hours trying to find the source of the noise, but it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, until it threatened to drive him absolutely insane.
Maybe nothing's dripping, he thought. Maybe it's just a recording they pipe through the cells to make us go nuts. If so, it's fucking working.
Now and then, other sounds echoed from the cells around him, even though they were mostly soundproofed—shrieks, sobs, curses, and moans slipped through the feeding slots in the doors. They seemed as distant and inhuman as the cries of wolves and coyotes that Hank had heard when he was on long rides with the Warriors.
But of course, that seemed like it had happened to someone else, a million years ago.
Hank tried to hold his mind together by attempting to picture the world beyond these walls. There was a blue sky somewhere, he told himself, or a starry one—he'd lost all sense of time. There were wide open spaces with roads running through them, and men riding motorcycles with the fresh air blowing in their faces. There were families, husbands and wives and their children, laughing together and unpacking picnics like he used to do with Elena and Jason. People were drinking in bars and making love in bathrooms. Life was going on as it always had, even if he couldn't see it.
But no matter how much his imagination insisted that these things were real, the only true reality seemed to be the walls around him—their thickness stretching out forever all around him, an entire planet of merciless metal and stone, built just to keep him from ever being free again.
The rational part of his mind knew these thoughts were madness, and he hated the fact that being in
here was breaking him down so easily. But he felt helpless against it. He hadn't allowed himself to imagine that anything could be worse than waking up in a gray prison cell in block G day after day, but oh, this was. This was so much worse than anything from his wildest nightmares.
He felt like he would rather be dead than spend another second feeling like this. Beth and Bib would be upset, sure, but they'd get over it. Everything that had happened was his fault. He was a curse, a blight, a cancer. They'd have been better off if he'd never been born, and once he was dead, they could move on with their lives instead of trying to rescue him and getting themselves into deeper trouble. Maybe he'd even see his wife and son again in the afterlife. Even if he didn't—even if eternal nothingness awaited him, or hell itself—he'd still be gone from this wretched place forever.
He'd be free.
However, even that option seemed denied to him. His clothes didn't seem adequate to hang himself, and even if they had been, he couldn't find anything high enough to tie them to. The only metal object was the toilet, and it was too sturdy to break down into anything sharp.
The only chance for suicide seemed to lie in biting through his own wrists. Could he bring himself to do that? He looked down at them, considering...
Suddenly, Hank heard the heavy lock on the door slide aside. It slowly started to swing open, letting in a sliver of fluorescent light from the hallway outside. For a moment, this crack in Hank's reality threw him off guard, and he even smiled. Could Beth have found a way to visit him down here? Or was it some other CO, coming to tell him that they figured out he'd been framed and they were letting him return to G block?
But when Butler stepped in, Hank's heart sagged again. Even in his confused state, he knew that seeing Butler was never a good sign.
“So I'm guessing right about now, cafeteria food and a bunk in block G doesn't sound so bad to you, huh?” Butler asked.
Hank stared at Butler mutely, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing how crazy, sick, and miserable he was feeling.
“You can probably guess why I'm down here,” Butler continued. “Bull sent me to tell you it's still not too late. Most men in his position wouldn't have given you nearly as many chances to prove your loyalty, but hey, he's just a special kind of guy. He doesn't want you rotting away down here. That's not the kind of fella he is.
“All you have to do is stop pushing back against him. Understand? It makes him look bad, and he can't afford that. You agree that you'll get in line and follow orders from now on, and we can arrange for a witness to say that they saw the murders, and that you weren't the one who did them. Heck, we can set some lifer up for it. What difference does it make, right? They're already in here forever, so one more notch on their belts won't matter.
“But if you keep spitting in Bull's eye like you've been doing, we'll make sure you go down for these two killings. Then you'll be tried, you'll be convicted, and you'll end up a lifer. So what do you say? Are we going to go for the carrot, or the stick?”
These words penetrated the red haze of Hank's brain. Butler and Bull had stripped him of everything. His freedom, his dignity, even his ability to trust his own mind. They'd ordered him to be beaten and starved. They'd turned him into an animal, and now they were trying to train him like one—rewarding him when he obeyed their commands, punishing him when he didn't.
Well, maybe he wasn't a good man. Maybe he was a piece of shit. Maybe everything that had happened since that night in the bar was his fault, and he deserved to die for it.
But he was still a goddamn human being, and if he was going to die, he'd die as a man instead of a dog.
Using the last of his strength, Hank launched himself at Butler with a snarl. Butler stumbled backward, his eyes comically wide—he clearly hadn't expected this response, and he fumbled with his baton, trying to yank it from his belt. Hank's fingers closed over it first, wrenching it out and raising it over his head as Butler fell backward into the hall.
Hank was on top of Butler in seconds, clawing at his eyes with one hand as he raised the baton with the other. Butler cringed, terrified, and raised his arms to protect his face. He was too slow—Hank's nails hadn't been cut or filed in almost a week, and they were sharp enough to leave a series of deep gouges under Butler's left eye.
The first time Hank brought the baton down, it connected with Butler's forearm. Hank hoped it would snap a bone or two, but Butler's bulging muscles cushioned the blow. He was still trying to get up, but Hank straddled his wide chest, pinning him to the floor.
Butler yelled for the guard in charge of Ad-Seg. “Rory! Help! Hall's gotten out of his cell!”
Hank swung the baton again, and this time, it hit Butler squarely between the eyes with a thwack. Butler went cross-eyed for a moment, let out a groan, and fell back to the floor, unconscious.
The alarms started to honk, and above them, Hank heard a strange roaring sound, like what he used to hear when he'd listen to the inside of a sea shell as a child. It took him a few seconds to realize it was the voices of the other inmates in Ad-Seg, howling and cheering through the slots in their doors.
“Take 'im down, Hall!”
“Yeah, that's right! Fuck him up! Fuck him up! Fuck—”
“You're the fuckin' man, Hall!”
“Right between the eyes! Put his lights out for good, the cocksucker!”
A door at one end of the corridor slid open and a squad of corrections officers marched in wearing riot gear. They rushed over to Hank, pulling him off of Butler and prying the baton from his hand. Hank felt a series of kicks and punches to his torso, but the pain barely registered, dulled by a strange euphoria.
Butler had come down to gloat and treat Hank like some kind of trained pet. In response, Hank had scarred his face and probably given him a concussion.
Good. Fuck him.
Because Dutton had been right. These people could take everything away from Hank, but they couldn't rob him of his soul. No one could snatch that away from him. He could decide to give it freely, but instead, he'd chosen to stand his ground.
The guards dragged Hank back to his cell, threw him down on the flimsy plastic mattress, and slammed the metal door. From the jagged agony in his side, he could tell that his injured ribs had been re-broken.
But he didn't care.
He was too busy laughing triumphantly, until tears spilled down his cheeks.
Chapter 30
Beth
The day after Butler was attacked by Hank was Beth's day off.
Beth had celebrated when she'd heard what happened down in the hole. She knew Butler had gone down there to bully Hank into playing by the rules, and when she heard about Butler's injuries from the other guards, it took all of her self-control not to throw her head back and laugh. She was just sorry to hear that Hank hadn't been able to give Butler a solid kick to the balls while he was at it.
She knew the effect that Ad-Seg could have on prisoners—both mentally and physically—and she'd been scared for Hank, knowing that the claustrophobia of incarceration was already difficult for him. But when she found out that he'd still had enough strength to throw himself at Butler and snatch his baton, she was relieved.
Just hang on a little while longer, Hank, she thought to herself. There's still a chance for us to get out of this together.
When she got home, she realized that she still hadn't bought a pregnancy test. The news about Hank and Butler had distracted her again. It was probably for the best, though. Given what she'd have to do the next day, it would be better for her not to have the results hanging over her in case they turned out positive. She'd need all her focus if this was going to work, and then she could pick up the test afterward and deal with the results then.
She didn't sleep well that night due to nervousness, and when she woke up the next morning, she threw up again. She tried to tell herself that it didn't mean anything—that it was just anxiety, that anyone would throw up repeatedly if they found themselves in her position.
<
br /> Those thoughts weren't much comfort to her. For the hundredth time, she wondered what would happen if the test came back positive, and for the hundredth time, she tried to shove those thoughts away.
Beth threw on some casual clothes, got into her car, and drove to the nearest rental car company. Butler would recognize her vehicle if he saw it, and if this plan was going to have a snowball's chance in hell, she knew she'd need to be careful and cover her tracks. She rented a plain-looking white sedan for the afternoon and drove to Saint Felipe de Jesus High School.
Then she parked across from the school, got the camera on her phone ready, and waited for the final bell to ring.
When it did, the front doors of the building were flung open and a sea of teenagers in school uniforms flooded out, screaming and laughing and shoving and jeering. Beth looked at them carefully, singling out a long-legged girl of Mexican descent whose hair was tied back in a ponytail. She waved goodbye to a couple of her friends and then crossed the street, adjusting her pink backpack.
