by Lane Hart
“Hey, Owen. How have you been?” I ask with a smile when they bring him to the glass early Saturday morning. He picks up the phone on his side, looking the same as usual in his khaki-colored outfit, his dark hair buzzed and brown eyes full of longing and hope.
“Liz!” he says in greeting as a smile fills his face. “I’m so glad you were able to make it up on such short notice.”
“It’s no problem. I could use a day off work,” I tell him, even though I’m going to pay for it in fourteen hour days when I get back. “So what’s happening on Monday?”
“I’ve got a parole hearing! Finally!”
“Wait, I thought the federal corrections no longer allow parole,” I say. That was one of the first things I asked an attorney about years ago, before I started practicing.
“They don’t,” Owen responds. “Except for old people and the sick.”
“You’re sick?” I ask in concern.
“I’ve got lung cancer!” he exclaims like he won the lottery.
“Owen, Jesus. That’s awful. I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t be,” he says with his still charming smile. “This is my ticket out. I’m ready to punch it. My own fault for smoking a pack a day in here.”
“Well, have you seen a doctor? An oncologist? Isn’t there something they can do like chemotherapy or radiation?”
“I’m about to be free for the first time in almost seventeen years! There’s no way I’m going to spend my last few months laid up in a hospital bed.”
“But, with treatment, you could maybe have years…”
“Yeah, years I’ll owe every cent I make to medical bills,” he responds. “I’m okay with this, really, Liz. Don’t worry about me.”
“How can I not worry about you?” I ask him. “All I’ve done for most of my life is worry about you, and now you tell me that you’re dying?” Still holding the phone in my right hand, I reach up with my left to swipe the moisture from underneath my eye before I even realize I’m still wearing my wedding ring.
I try to lower it quickly, hoping Owen didn’t see it, but his eyes have already narrowed and are locked on my left hand. “Is that a wedding band on your finger?” he asks.
“Ah, yeah, it is.”
“When the hell did you get married? Who did you marry?” he asks, sounding more excited and less sad than I expected.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him.
“Of course it does,” he huffs. “Liz, just because I can’t get married or have a life doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to. I’m happy for you. You deserve to be with a man you love. I just hate that I didn’t get to come to the wedding.”
“No one was really at the wedding,” I tell him. “Just one of his friends and the magistrate’s clerk. It was at the courthouse on short notice. And the reason I said it doesn’t matter is because it doesn’t. It’s sort of over now…”
“What do you mean it’s over?”
“It’s a long story,” I tell him.
“I don’t have anywhere to be. At least not until Monday,” Owen says with a grin. “Now tell me.”
With a heavy sigh, I start from the beginning and tell him everything about Cooper, going back to two years ago.
“Well, he obviously doesn’t really mean he wants to end things. He’s just hurt, right?”
Shrugging, I say, “I honestly don’t know. He sounded pretty serious.”
“If you give him some time, he’ll realize what he has and smarten up. Only an idiot would walk away from you.”
“Thanks,” I tell him with the biggest smile I can manage. “But maybe it’s for the best. The crowd he runs with, I’m not sure if he’ll ever live completely on the legal side of the law.”
“You’re worried he’ll get arrested like me?” Owen asks.
“Well yeah. Arrested or killed. He almost did when the building exploded.”
“If it hadn’t exploded, the two of you wouldn’t have gotten married to try and help the orphan girl, right?” he asks.
“Right.”
“So then the near-death experience wasn’t all bad. Some good came out of it.”
“Yeah, I guess.” As we sit there, I start to ask Owen what he plans to do with his limited days if they let him out, but instead, I blurt out, “Why did you do it, Owen? All this time I’ve asked about what happened after the robbery went wrong, but you never told us why you did it.”
“I didn’t have a good reason. It was stupid. We wanted enough cash to buy a car,” he says. “We didn’t want anyone to die.”
“I know that,” I tell him. “But robbing the guy was stupid.”
“No shit,” he says. “He wasn’t supposed to come home.”
“I wish you would’ve stayed home that night instead,” I tell him. “Then we could be having this conversation in person in a better place.”
“Everything happens for a reason – people make decisions without knowing the consequences. I’d give anything to go back and stay home with you. But I can’t, so I want you to live life for the both of us, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree. “I’ll give Cooper a few days once I get back home next week and then see if he wants to give us another shot.”
“He will,” Owen says confidently. “And if not, I’ll kick his ass when I get out of this place.”
Laughing at that, I say, “Sure thing. Let’s hope they let you go Monday.”
“Are you crazy? Of course they will. How could they not when I have the best lawyer I could get on my side?” he jokes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elizabeth
I should be sleeping. It’s after midnight on Sunday, but my mind is still racing, thinking about Cooper, worrying about Owen.
When my cell phone suddenly rings in the silent hotel room, I bolt straight up and throw my legs over to sit on the edge of the bed and answer it. The number doesn’t show on the screen. Instead, it says, “Unavailable” just like Cooper’s phone. “Cooper?” I say hopefully when I answer.
“No,” the deep male voice on the other end says. “It’s Torin.”
“Torin?” I repeat in surprise.
“Sorry to call so late. I got your number from Jade.”
“No, it’s fine. I was awake,” I tell him. “What’s going on?”
Blowing out a breath, he says, “It’s Cooper.”
“What about him?” I blurt out in concern, my chest tightening as I prepare myself for what Torin’s about to say.
“He needs an attorney,” he finally replies. “A criminal attorney.”
“Oh,” I say in surprise.
“Did he tell you what he was going to do?”
“No,” I answer. “He left two days ago, and I haven’t heard from him. I’m pretty sure we’re through, and I’ve been out of town. What happened?”
“He got arrested in Orange County for assault.”
“Jesus!” I exclaim. “What the hell was he thinking?”
“He obviously wasn’t,” Torin grumbles. “Orange County Correctional is where they’re holding Peter Kozlov.”
“You don’t think…” I start to say as I begin to realize what Cooper’s planning to do.
“He’s going after him,” Torin finishes for me.
“No, he can’t, Torin! If Cooper kills him in jail, there will be witnesses and video. He’ll never get out!” I shout as I begin running around the room looking for my clothes to get dressed. I freeze when I suddenly remember that I’m hundreds of miles away and promised Owen I would show up for him at tomorrow’s hearing.
“How could you let him do this?” I yell at the man on the phone when I flop back down on the mattress and try to catch my breath.
“I didn’t let him do shit! This sure as fuck wasn’t club approved. If he had told us, we wouldn’t have let him do it.”
“I thought he had decided to let the system take care of Peter, that it was better for him to spend his life in prison rather than a quick death.”
“That’s what we thought too
,” Torin mutters. “Something must have changed his mind.”
Squeezing my eyes shut tight, I know exactly what changed. “He had to give Ruby to her father the day before yesterday. It wasn’t easy for him, and we had an argument...”
“Shit,” Torin huffs. “He’s lost his damn mind and is about to do something he’s going to regret for the rest of his life.”
“You’ve got to try and talk to him, to convince him not to go through with it!”
“Me?” Torin huffs. “Why do you think I’m calling you? As his attorney, you’re the only one who can get in to see him right away.”
“I-I can’t,” I respond.
“What do you mean you can’t? You’re going to let Coop ruin his life because the two of you had an argument?”
“No,” I say with a heavy sigh. “What I mean is, I’m not in town and won’t be back until late Monday at the earliest.”
“What out of town shit do you have that’s more important than Cooper?” Torin grumbles.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I decide not to go into the specifics with him. “Look, if he’s not out by tomorrow night, then I’ll try to get in as his attorney; but if he was just arrested, they won’t even have a bond hearing for him until Monday! He’ll have to stay inside.”
“Fuck,” Torin replies. “I’ll try to go see him, to talk him out of it.”
“Okay, yeah. Do that. It’s probably best that it’s you who tries to convince him and not me. He’s angry and pissed at me, for some reason.”
“I’ll do what I can tomorrow morning. They said eight a.m. is when they’ll allow visitation again, but I need you back here too, Liz.”
“I’ll get in touch with one of the attorneys in my office and see if they can work on getting his bond lowered. I’ll give them your number. Until then, let me know if you have any updates. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Just, Torin, do whatever it takes. Find a way to get through to him before he fucks his life up!”
“I’ll try my best,” he agrees. “I’ll text you my phone number and keep in touch that way.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say before I end the call.
Dammit, Cooper! What the hell were you thinking?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cooper
If I had known how miserable being squeezed into a cell with half a dozen nasty, stinking jackasses would be, I may not have gone through with this. Not to mention that they shaved my fucking head! Running my fingers through the stubble feels strange. I’ve kept my hair long for years, and now it’s all gone.
It’s a small price to pay. At least it’s cooler, which is convenient since it’s about a hundred degrees in this hellhole.
It’s hard to imagine how Ian has endured this type of treatment for five years, or how Liz’s old flame has survived sixteen. I get what she meant about how depressing it is to visit him, when there’s absolutely nothing for him to look forward to except more of the same shit.
I sit on the floor while I wait for our cell door to open. Soon, I’ll get a chance to mingle with the other roughneck population, and hopefully find Peter Kozlov.
I finally get to my feet a few hours later when they let us out for breakfast. It must be early as fuck since it’s still dark outside of the slits at the top of the wall that pass for the smallest windows in the world.
I’ve only seen his photo a few times, so it takes me a few minutes of sitting at a table with my tray before I eventually spot him. He’s just to my left and three tables back. I’m pretty sure I can even hear his foreign accent as he talks to the man sitting next to him.
I wait and watch as the other inmates get up and take their trays to the trash can that’s behind Kozlov’s table. It’s perfect, because it should give me a little time before one of the ten guards patrolling around us realize what I’m up to.
I take a few more bites of the rock-hard biscuit to let the closest guard pass before I make my move.
Strolling up to the trash can, I toss in my tray and then I pounce on Peter from behind, locking my forearm against his neck so hard that I pull him up out of his seat. It happens fast and guards start for us quicker than I expected.
“This is for Jenna, the woman, the mother you killed at Avalon,” I say in his ear as he fights to pry my arm from the front of his neck and starts to gasp as his oxygen cuts off.
“Let go of the inmate!” one of the guards yells right before they start beating me in the back of my head and back with their batons. It hurts like a motherfucker, but I refuse to release my hold. At least not until I feel a sharp piercing pain in my stomach. The agony is so sudden and intense my grip loosens, and the fucking Russian almost squirms away from me. A club lands on the back of my head, and as we both fall to the floor, I feel him try to crawl away from me. Blinded by rage and losing consciousness, I pounce on him, just as two guards grab my arms. I’ve only got one weapon left at my disposal, so as they try to drag me off of him, I twist my head and bite Peter as hard as I can. His high-pitched scream drowns out every other sound in the cafeteria, even the curses of the guards as they forcefully rip me away from him.
As they drag me away, my palm goes down to the source of the agony in my gut, which is when I feel the plastic handle that’s still lodged inside me. A slowly spreading blood stain trails down the front of my prison jumpsuit.
Son of a bitch. The motherfucker shivved me!
And I was too stupid and blind with rage to see it coming.
Elizabeth
“I can’t thank you enough for coming up here,” Owen repeats for at least the tenth time.
“Of course I came! We’ve been waiting for this for sixteen years; you knew I wasn’t going to miss your first days of freedom. Where do you want to go eat?”
“Damn, Liz, I don’t even know where to start,” he laughs. “Everything sounds good when you’ve been eating prison food for so long. I can’t believe the hearing went so well. I know having you there to speak on my behalf made all the difference. Thank you.”
“No more thanking me for now,” I tell him when I smile over at him, unable to believe he’s really free and sitting in my passenger seat. “Think about where you want to stop. We’ve got a long ride back to North Carolina, and then we’ve got to get you set up with a parole officer when we arrive.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the signs as we go, and let you know when to pull over,” Owen agrees before turning up the stereo and hanging his arm out the rolled down window.
When my phone rings through the Bluetooth system a few minutes later, interrupting Bon Jovi on the radio, I hit the button on my steering wheel to answer.
“Hello?” I say aloud.
“Liz, it’s Torin.”
Just his tone tells me something is up.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him
“I went to the jail this morning, but they wouldn’t let me in to see Cooper.”
Even though I assume the reason is that he’s in solitary for committing murder, I still need to hear it. “Why not?”
“He’s in the medical ward.”
“Medical?” I repeat. “W-what happened?”
“What do you think?” Torin huffs. “Coop must have tried to have a go at the asshole, and he was ready for him.”
“How bad is it?” I ask.
“No idea. They won’t tell me anything! That guy, Mike Davis, from your office is going over to see if he can get more details, but they won’t allow him to visit either.”
“Great, that’s just…great,” I sigh.
“Are you on your way back?” Torin asks.
“Yes. I could be in Orange County first thing in the morning.”
“Good. I’ll meet you at the jail,” Torin tells me before he ends the call.
“Who was that?” Owen asks once the radio comes back on through the speakers.
“I-I can’t!” I sob as I pull over onto the shoulder and slump over the steering wheel. “I can’t do this again! I can’t spend another sixteen years visiting him in prison!”
“Shh, it’s going to be okay,” Owen says as he rubs his palm over my back while I cry.
“No, it’s not. It’ll never be okay! You’re dying, Cooper’s in-in jail and-and Ruby’s gone!”
“I’m so sorry, Liz.”
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t even know you wanted kids,” he remarks.
“I didn’t! I didn’t want to get married or live with him or have a kid, not until Cooper came along and rushed me into all of it! Damn him for making me want it and then walking away, breaking my heart just like I knew he would!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cooper
Well, I guess the good news is that the shiv didn’t hit anything vital and I’m going to live. The bad news is that I’m confined to a bed in the medical wing, restrained to the rails while they pump a bunch of antibiotics into me. Even worse is that Kozlov is chained to a bed right beside me, his head swaddled in bandages.
“What is your problem?” the asshole asks, his English heavily accented.
“My problem?” I exclaim. “My problem is that you blew up a fucking building with me and a woman inside! You killed her.”
He’s silent for several seconds before he responds. “You are, ah, one of the Savage Kings, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“You killed my father,” he growls.
“I didn’t have shit to do with your father!” I shout back. “I wasn’t even there when he died! But that doesn’t mean I didn’t approve. He deserved it for what he did, blackmailing people for every cent of their hard-earned money and threatening their lives if they couldn’t pay up! How many people did your father kill, huh?”
When he doesn’t say anything else, I mutter, “That’s what I fucking thought. He wasn’t a good man. He was a murdering, heroin dealing, mob boss and the world is a better place without him!”
“He was still my father,” he says softly. “He wouldn’t marry my mother when she found out she was with child, but he made sure I never wanted for nothing my entire life.”
