The more I read the texts, the more it felt like I knew the person on the other end.
I’d decided that I would reply to the text as soon as I got settled into my new temporary home, but things never work out the way they’re planned.
Little did I know that I would have to fight for my life the very day I slipped into my new role, and I would have to continuously watch my back the entire time.
The only alone time that I was safe from being jumped was when I was in my cell, and even then it was hit or miss, since I was constantly watched.
The next day, though, I knew I had to say something. If I didn’t, something could go wrong, and the person on the other end of the line would be lost to me.
Thursday December 10th
Unknown (1:53 AM): Goodnight best friend. Today you would have been thirty-one.
Unknown (8:44 AM): I brought you balloons today. I wish you were still here. I need to talk to someone about my day. It’s really hard to keep working there, and I know I promised you that I’d leave, but with you not here anymore, to give me courage, I can’t make myself do it.
Unknown (6:02 PM): My superior just tripped me. I swear, she did. She turned, but the orderly that was standing directly behind me, the one that actually likes me, saw it and nodded that she had. So I didn’t imagine it.
Unknown (10:13 PM): I can’t do this. I just can’t, and you can’t expect me to. I’ll see you soon.
I hid under the blankets like a ten-year-old would that’s trying to hide what they’re doing from their parents, only I was hiding it from the prisoners across the way from me.
Me (10:13 PM): You’re not alone. I’m here. Don’t do anything hasty.
It took so long for whomever was on the other end of the line to reply that I started to get worried that I was too late.
Just when my finger hovered over the ‘9’ to dial 9-1-1, a message popped up on my screen.
Unknown (10:22 PM): Who is this?
Relief poured through me at the response, and before I knew it, I was telling them who it was.
Me (10:23 PM): Ridley. Who are you?
I stared at the screen waiting for a reply, and when it did, suspicion poured through me.
Unknown (10:24 PM): Freya. You’re kidding me, right? You have my brother’s phone? How long have you been getting my messages?
Unknown (10:24 PM): I asked about you today, by the way. They said you were at some undercover assignment. Is that why you have my brother’s phone?
Out of all the phone numbers I could have gotten, this one was the one chosen? My mind sped at the speed of light as I thought about all the chances of this, and how rare it would be.
But I had to admit, I’d been worried about Freya.
It was weird, yes, that I’d gotten her brother’s phone number. However, I never said that fate didn’t work in mysterious ways.
I’d met my wife much the same way.
I’d met Aerie while in high school. Then I’d gone off to Iraq about two months after graduating, and while there, I’d picked up a pen pal.
My wife.
We’d conversed for three years by email and letter alone, and the day I discharged from the Army, I went to find her in my hometown of Uncertain, Texas, and we’d been together for four blissful years before she was taken from me so harshly.
As my fingers fumbled over the keys, I had to stop and delete twice before I was finally able to type out the words I’d wanted to say.
Me (10:25): I got a new phone because I’m undercover, yes. I didn’t know it was your brother’s number. Delete the message that says who it is, plz. And don’t think anything of texting me. I don’t mind.
I closed my eyes as I thought about the day I’d had.
Everything on my body was sore.
I was in shape, or so I’d thought.
But being in shape and kicking people’s asses to stay alive were two different things.
My fists and head, though, were in the worst shape, and before I knew it, my eyes were closing before I even realized it.
Knowing that Freya was safe was like a balm over my tired soul. The uncomfortable bed meant nothing as exhaustion overtook me.
***
Freya
Friday, December 11th
Tears filled my eyes as, once again, I looked at the lights that illuminated the front of my house.
I’d woken up in the middle of the night.
Again.
Looking at my clock that shined at the very front of the room, I sighed.
12:02 AM.
That was the same time I woke up nearly every single night.
I didn’t know why.
12:02 wasn’t significant.
Nothing had happened at that time that I remembered.
But I was alone.
Corey was gone.
Nobody was here to know how tortured I was each and every night.
With the newly realized loneliness I felt, as I thought about how shitty my life had become, I started to cry.
He’d died two months ago, but it felt like just yesterday. I’d been floundering ever since.
Pulling out my phone, I texted him once more.
It was something I’d been doing for a few days now, and it seemed to keep me sane.
Freya: I miss you. I miss your face. The way you part your hair. The way you used to leave your dirty socks on the floor in the middle of the living room even though you don’t live with me anymore. I wish you were home. I wish you hadn’t left me. I love you. How am I supposed to go on?
As soon as I sent the message, though, I realized what I’d done.
I’d sent those messages before bed last night, and I’d thought that I’d dreamed them, but now that the evidence was right in front of my face, I realized that in my haste to relieve the pain, I hadn’t read the previous messages.
But now, with my vision not as hazy, I realized that I hadn’t dreamed the encounter.
That everything that had happened was real.
Someone had my brother’s phone.
Ridley had my brother’s phone.
Corey: You just do. You live, because I said you should.
My heart started to pound.
Freya: Who is this? Why are you doing this?
Corey: Ridley. I just got a new phone, and I know you’re not texting me, but I want you to know that someone would miss you if you were gone. Don’t do that to them.
I don’t know what made me do it, but I changed the name in my phone. I couldn’t keep texting Corey.
He wasn’t there anymore, but Ridley was.
And right then and there, a relationship started…one I could never expect to lead where it led.
Chapter 3
If you hear ‘Oh, hell no’ it’s already too late.
-Note to self
Ridley
Friday, December 24th
“Get the fuck away from me!” I heaved myself sideways, displacing the body that was on my side and trying to pin me down. “And don’t try to eat my goddamned cookie again. The next time I won’t give you a warning.”
The guy went flying, his head hitting the brick wall on the other side of my cell.
It hit so hard that the bone cracked, making a sickening sound that would have made a lesser man heave.
I, of course, didn’t.
I was just trying to fucking survive.
This motherfucking place was filled with people that wanted to kill me.
I guessed being the brother of a cop was just as good as being a cop.
They didn’t care that I wasn’t a cop (even though I was, but they didn’t know that). They just knew that I was related to one, and they didn’t take kindly to it.
My stupid brother should’ve kept his fucking trap shut.
He never knew how to do that, though.
Which meant I had to beat every mother fucker in this whole fuckin’ place up, in order to es
tablish hierarchy.
Whistles blew as the guards finally chose to show.
Usually they hung back a while, hoping that the fight would break up on its own.
It never did. They were shitheads.
They also didn’t know anything about me, which was the way it was supposed to be.
Because if they did, they wouldn’t be doing the things that they were.
For instance, they wouldn’t keep trying to toss my cell.
The warden had to come stop them three times in the last week.
I’d told the warden point blank that if they tried to anymore, I’d beat the shit out of them.
He hadn’t taken kindly to that and had threatened me. But I’d taken care of that, too.
Seems wardens don’t take kindly to having their jobs threatened. Especially ones that’d been in said jobs for well over thirty years.
I’d gone a tad overboard, but it’d gotten the point across.
Now we were here, and the guards disliked me immensely.
They couldn’t do what they wanted to do, and they knew it.
Eventually, I knew they’d have to be apprised of what was actually going on, but I wanted to see just how far they’d go before I let them in on the game.
And, apparently, they didn’t care if I got the shit beat out of me by seven men.
“That’s enough, dick. Don’t try it again, you’ll only end up in the infirmary like the others,” guard one, Dickinson, said.
I snorted and rolled to my belly, pushing myself up and to my feet in the next second.
“I didn’t tell you to get up, asshole,” guard two, Roans, said, punctuating that comment with a poke in my gut with his baton.
I looked at Roans.
“I know the warden told you not to fuck with me,” I said.
Roans face shut down.
“He said I couldn’t hurt you or search your cell. He didn’t say a damn thing about bothering you. Now get back on the ground,” he ordered.
I shook my head and started walking away.
“Make me.”
Let’s just say, he didn’t make me.
***
“You’re going to have to tell the guards what’s going on, or I’m going to get the hell beat out of me,” I said, pressing my fingers to my jaw and checking out my new shiner in the shower of the infirmary.
“You need to stop fucking with them, and maybe we wouldn’t have to have them apprised,” Kelly countered.
I glanced at him in the mirror.
“True,” I agreed. “But I can’t stand self-righteous pricks who think they’re better than me. They’re not. And they don’t need to treat me like a criminal.”
“They think you are a criminal,” Kelly pointed out.
I shrugged. “Don’t give a fuck. That doesn’t give them the right to fuck with me day and night. I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep since I got here thanks to them.”
Kelly sighed dramatically.
“Fuck. Fine,” he said, getting up and walking to the infirmary’s door.
“You’re supposed to be my guard. If you leave, I’ll have to leave with you,” I said helpfully.
Kelly glared at me, then snatched the door open and walked away, I presumed, to speak with the guards.
My phone dinged, alerting me to a text message.
I got them a lot now, and to tell the truth, I looked forward to them, too.
Freya never seemed to disappoint me with her words.
It’d been two weeks now since she’d realized that it was me, and she’d yet to make me feel like I was cheating on Aerie.
If I even considered a relationship with any woman, other than the very rare occasions I’d had casual sex, I would immediately feel like I’d done Aerie’s memory a disservice. As if I didn’t love her as much as I thought I did.
Because if I needed another woman’s companionship that meant that maybe Aerie didn’t mean as much to me as I thought she did.
Now, though, with Freya, it didn’t feel wrong.
When I spoke to her, it didn’t feel like I was betraying Aerie’s memory.
It just felt right.
Which hadn’t happened since she’d died well over five years ago.
The door to the infirmary slammed as the first guard showed.
This one was Cruz.
He was actually one of the better ones.
He was smart as a whip, six foot one inches of pissed off Mexican American, and was fair to his core. He felt that the system was true, and never ever made a mistake.
Which was why when he saw me unattended, kicked back against the bed, he froze.
“Where,” he asked, voice tightening, “is your guard?”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Kelly said as he came in the door, four more guards behind him.
Five guards meant there were only eight on shift, which left the entire prison at a disadvantage if a prison break decided to happen while we were having our come-to-Jesus meeting.
It wouldn’t. However, every man felt antsy as they shifted from foot to foot to stare at Kelly and me.
“Why are we here?” Cruz finally asked, miffed at having been brought here.
“We’re here to tell you that Mr. Walker isn’t the man you think he is,” Kelly said evasively.
I sighed.
“What he’s pussyfooting around about is that I’m actually undercover and would appreciate you breaking up the fights a little faster than you have been, or I’ll have to beat the shit out of you,” I replied bluntly, tossing an annoyed glance at Kelly as I did.
I still wasn’t happy that I was here, and most assuredly wasn’t happy with the fact that the guards were being assholes, testing me like they did every new inmate.
They wanted to see what I was made of and, normally, I was all for that. But, in this instance, I wasn’t.
They were impeding my ability to work, and making it so that I was going to have to be here longer than I ever intended to be.
It’d been two freakin’ weeks and I was no closer to finding out any of the information I was here to get than I was the day I’d entered this fine facility.
There was silence after my declaration, and Cruz’s face started to turn a ruddy red as his anger became palpable. “Bull fucking shit,” he said, starting forward.
Surprisingly, it was the one I’d been calling ‘Bull’ that stopped him from coming.
“I knew you weren’t the same little fucker who was here before you,” he said. “I saw what you did to that kid, Mendes,” Bull said.
His name wasn’t actually Bull. In fact, it was nothing close to Bull.
I thought it was Jeffries, but Bull fit the man to a T, seeing as his shoulders were as wide as Texas was across.
And his fists were the size of hams.
I shrugged.
He was right.
I’d saved the little kid, Mendes.
Mendes had been convicted of dealing thanks to his brother.
I’d actually been the one to book him and try his case.
The short of it was that Mendes wanted to fit in so badly with his older brother that he was willing to do just about anything. Even transport ten pounds of weed across county lines.
Not that he’d known that what he was transporting was weed.
His brother had told him it was a friend’s gym clothes that he’d left in his truck.
Mendes, only wanting to get his brother to notice him, had taken the bag to the ‘friend.’
Only the ‘friend’ was actually an undercover cop who’d been just as surprised to see Mendes as Mendes was when he was arrested for distribution, and his brother was arrested for possession.
Mendes had finally realized that his brother was a piece of shit. He took the plea bargain, but he still had to serve time, and he’d always have a record.
The kid had been dealt a bad hand in life.
He was smart a
s fuck, though.
And I knew exactly who I was going to offer a job with Peek the minute he got out.
Mendes was a whiz with computers.
In fact, he’d gone so far as to hack into the oldest computer in the world, which just happened to be in the prison’s library, giving me access to the Internet while I was in this hellhole.
I didn’t know how he did it, and I was pretty sure that what he did wasn’t illegal, but the kid had ingenuity, and I found that I kind of liked that about him.
I shrugged. “Kid wasn’t harming that fucker.”
Bull nodded.
“No, he wasn’t, and that’s why I try to keep my eye on him. Which is also why I caught you sticking up for him. Your brother wouldn’t have done that,” Bull observed.
My brows rose.
“How do you know he’s my brother?” I asked.
He gave me a look that clearly said, ‘how stupid do you think I am?’
I smiled.
“Yeah, he’s my brother,” I confirmed.
“That’s starting to make a lot more sense. I heard your brother lost half his hand, and then suddenly you show up with a perfectly working hand and not even a scar on it,” Anon, another guard that I didn’t mind, said.
I picked my hand up and looked at it.
“Shit,” I said. “Kelly, what the fuck? Why didn’t you keep that shit under wraps?”
Kelly shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “Guess I will next time I do this, though, won’t I?”
“If we noticed it, chances are some of the inmates probably noticed it, too,” Cruz pointed out reluctantly. “Some of the guards don’t keep their traps shut when they should.”
I pursed my lips and thought about it.
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “I hopefully won’t have to be here that much longer.”
“I’ll be happy to stab you in the hand and make it look more realistic,” Jessup offered.
I glared at the little fucker, then back at the guard I hated most of all.
He was always the first one to accidentally knock my food on the ground.
Dirty Mother (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 5) Page 5
