by Ella James
I ignore her as I lift Ad up onto another of the stools, and Dad slides an oyster-shell-shaped plate of chips and dip across the granite counter to her.
“Have some, guys.” He looks at Bea. “Bea, why don’t you get Luke downstairs?”
I shake my head. “We won’t be here for long. I just came here to ask about Beast.” I huff and decide, why be fake about it? “I’ve tried to reach you for weeks now, Holt. You never even bothered to call me back.” I glare at Bea. “Did she get calls from Honduras? I bet she did.” I glance at Ad and swallow the rest of my anger. “I only want to know what’s going on with Beast, and then I’ll leave you to your life.”
Now it’s Holt’s turn to go all wide-eyed.
“What? It’s not like it’s not true,” I snap. “I’m not a priority for you. Financially, maybe, but that’s all. I’m an obligation.”
Holt glances at Adrian, as if to be sure my outburst of truth hasn’t harmed her in some way.
“How is your mother?” he asks slowly. His gaze shifts from Adrian to me.
“That’s not what this is about,” I say. At the exact same time, Ad wails, “She’s going to be dead tomorrow!”
“What?” I whirl around to her.
“Lucy said so. On the phone,” Ad says in a tiny voice. Her eyes fill up with tears, and she bites down on her lip to keep them from falling.
“Oh baby.” I scoop her off the stool and walk into Holt’s den. I sit her down on his big, suede couch and put my arms around her. A few seconds later, I hear his footsteps and feel him kneel beside me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he murmurs.
“I tried,” I say out of the side of my mouth. Holt needs to leave me alone right now. Give me some space to straighten this out with Adrian. I ignore him and rub Ad’s hair back from her forehead.
“Baby, that’s not true. Lucy was just talking. The truth is, nobody knows when Mama might go to heaven. And if somebody did know, it would be me and you, not a nurse. Lucy shouldn’t have said that. Even though she is a nurse who takes good care of Mama, I don’t think she’s very smart.”
Adrian clamps her teeth down on her lower lip and nods, then slides her eyes to Holt, who’s still crouched down in front of the couch beside me.
“Hey, Holt.” She smiles a little. “Did you know I can spell triskaidekaphobia?”
He grins back at her. “No way. I’d like to hear that.”
Holt and I spend the next half hour lavishing Adrian with attention. Then we return to the kitchen, where Bea’s son, Luke, is asking if he can use “the Benz” to take his girlfriend out to get a milkshake.
The Benz.
Dear God.
I make a show of looking at my phone. “We should be going. Things to do at home,” I tell Holt with my eyebrows raised. “Can you walk us to the car?”
He nods.
I buckle Ad into her booster seat, shut her door, and stand outside the driver’s side with my hands on my hips.
“I know you’ve been avoiding me, Holt. So let me tell you this. It’s true what Beast—Ricardo—told you. We did meet one time way back, and while you were gone and I was starting to help with the library? We got to be friends again. I like him, Dad. I want to know what’s going on with him. Did he kill that guy like everyone says he did? Is he still in solitary? Because I was actually there when all this craziness went down, and the DA acted like he really had it in for Beast.”
Holt looks into my eyes and nods. My stomach lurches.
“So he’s still in solitary?”
Holt shakes his head and looks down at his feet. He shifts his weight a little while I hold my breath. Finally, he looks back up at me. “Honey, I’m sorry but…I lied to you. I wasn’t demoted. I was fired. I don’t know what’s going on at La Rosa. I miss it like hell and it’s killing me to be away. I made that place what it is.”
Is that something to brag about? I wonder, but aloud I say, “God. That sucks. I’m sorry for you.”
The truth is, I’m incapable at the moment of feeling anything but anger, but I know if it weren’t for Mom and my continued wondering over what’s happening with Beast, I would probably feel sorry for him. Maybe.
He shakes his head and presses his lips together. “You asked about Beast. You know the DA’s granddaughter was that model who was killed. In the wreck a long time ago? The one that landed Beast in prison?”
I nod. “But I don’t care. He shouldn’t have that kind of power. He’s not the warden.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What does that mean?”
“There are a lot of different things at play here—a lot of different…players, if you will. The DA is being opportunistic. And, unfortunately, Beast is taking all the fall.”
“Taking all the fall? For what? For stuff he did with you? The way the two of you ran the prison? You did do illegal things, didn’t you?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no point in talking about that old stuff now.”
“Look at me!” I snap my fingers. “Quit looking down. I think there is a point. I want to know what’s going on.”
“Not now.” His eyes are sorry. No, not sorry. Guilty. “I can’t talk about that stuff, and Annabelle? You should try to stop wondering.”
I hop into the car and slam my door, then speed off so fast I leave rubber streaks on the drive.
CHAPTER 4
Beast
In my free time, I look up the man Beast supposedly killed, and decide, after just a few news stories, that Beast probably did the world a favor.
More days creep pass. Three. Four. Five.
Mom hangs on, barely. Ad and I paint her fingernails and toenails, rub lotion on her bony legs and arms. At night, when Ad’s in bed and the nurse is reading quietly on her tablet, in the hallway, I spend hours talking to her. Telling her all kinds of things I’ve never told her before. The kinds of things I used to wish I could tell my mom, if we’d been BFFs, and she’d been…normal. Mom without the drugs or drinking. Mom without the men.
This is her, and even though it may be sad or sick, I find myself clinging to her.
Days fade into nights and nights bloom into days, and I hate the passage of them. It’s been two weeks. Three weeks.
Mom’s deep in her coma. I begin to think the hospice nurses are right: She’s not waking up.
I call Holt again, begging him to give me Clinton’s number. I think Clinton will know at least how Beast was treated when they took him, but Holt tells me there’s no point.
“I talked to a friend. He’s not being treated great, Annabelle. And his sentence has been extended. Four more years.”
For some reason, the news is a crushing blow. I cry more that day about Beast than Mom.
And then suddenly, a few days later, TV news says it’s been a month since he killed the gang leader. A month since he told me he remembered me. A month since I touched him. A month since I heard his voice.
I try to get a pass into the prison by calling and asking the director of outreach if I should continue trying to get donated paperback and hardback books for the library. Not that I ever really got that rolling, but I can now. I can do it easily if it means I might be able to get a glimpse of Beast.
I’m told by someone at the prison that the library project has been put on hold.
Depression sets in.
Ad starts sleeping in my bed. She cries at night, and so do I.
I never drift off before 3 or 4 a.m.
Until a Sunday night. The night of a day we were all sure Mom would breathe her last. The night of an exhausting day, one where I just can’t hold my eyes open, so I fall asleep with Ad’s arms around my neck.
My ringing phone wakes me from a fitful sleep. The area code is local, but the number is unknown.
I blink at the phone, held up over my head with the bright screen pointed away from Ad. Then I answer on a whim. “Hello?”
“Riot girl. Maura here.” In the pause that follows, my heart beats so hard I
feel like I might black out.
Finally, after a few breathless moments waiting for her to speak again, I cough out, “Yes.”
“I’ve got some news for you.”
I push up on my elbows. Swing my legs off the side of the bed. If she tells me something bad, I’m going to run into the bathroom. If I start to cry, Ad will think it’s Mom.
“What is it?” I croak.
“It’s your man. Your Beast. They told us he was transferred out, but I went downstairs with Tony—he’s another guard, a senior one—and we heard him. Down there moaning in a solitary cell.”
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. I think…he’s taking something. He was…different. But that’s not why I called.” Silence spreads out, cruel and thick. “Tomorrow, there’s a hit on him.”
I step into the bathroom in my cotton shorts and bra and whisper at my screen-lit reflection in the mirror. “What do you mean a hit?”
“Some people are gonna sneak down there and kill him. While he’s not defending himself.”
My blood runs cold. Ice cold. It takes me a minute to find my voice. “Is this a known thing? Can someone stop it?”
“You want to help?” Her voice sounds hopeful. “I can sell you my pass code.”
“What’s a pass code?”
“Like an employee ID code.”
“And…? It gets me into places? Different areas of prison? You’re just a junior guard, you said. I’d have access to the solitary units? I find that hard to believe.”
“Well…it’s not my pass code,” she says. “It’s Tony’s.”
I take a deep breath. Let it out. In the eerie light of my phone, with the reflection of the mirror transposing the part on the left side of my hair, I look strange and thin and sick. “You wouldn’t cheat me, would you, Maura? I feel cheated from last time, because you never called. I don’t like to be cheated.”
“A pass code is a pass code,” she tells me. “Ask Holt.”
I straighten up to my full height, as if getting more vertical will help my head stop spinning. Help my chest stop aching.
“I need the money,” she says. “My baby daddy doesn’t have a job, and I pay child support. I’m running low. If I give the pass code to you, it needs to be today.” She waits a beat, then tells me, “Seven hundred dollars. You have that much money?”
I take a deep breath and step back into the bedroom so I can find my card.
CHAPTER 5
Annabelle
I end up not giving her my card number again. I realize as soon as I reach for my clutch, at the foot of the bed, that this is not a smart idea—no matter how desperate I am or how much money is still left from what Beast gave me.
“I’ll pay you when I get there,” I say firmly. “You’ll have to meet me to let me in, anyway.”
“The library,” she says. “You been there before?”
I press my tongue into the roof of my mouth. My head pounds. “Have you?”
“No, but I heard it’s a blind spot.”
I exhale—relieved. “A what?”
“No cameras there. Not yet. Cause it’s unfinished. No one goes there.”
“There is one,” I say. “Not on the inside, but outside.”
“How do you know?”
“What does it matter? I just know. You’ll have to find another way to let me in.”
“Everybody knows your face. They know you’re Holt’s daughter. And the gangs that are gunning for Beast—they know you’re his lady.”
“I can assume this is a bad thing?”
“Oh yeah. Really bad.” She’s silent for a moment, then she says, “You need to cut your hair.”
“I need to what?”
“Cut off that curly frizzy shit and wear a hat or something. Dress in…I dunno. Hell. Cover up that sexy body in some coveralls. Something plaid or…damn. A jumpsuit. I can get you prison orange if you want.”
“No. No way. I’ll find my own clothes. And I’ll fix my hair. I’ll be there. When?”
“Come now.”
“What do you think I can do to help him?”
“Help Beast?”
“Yeah.”
There’s an ugly little pause that tells me she doesn’t have an answer. She just wants to sell the pass code.
“That’s what I thought.”
“You still want it?” she asks.
I chew on my fingernails. I step back into the bathroom, where I look at myself in the mirror. I’m Adrian’s only guardian. If something happens to both Mom and me, Ad would have no one.
I shouldn’t go to the prison on some fool’s mission. I can’t see Cal Hammond—Ricardo—Beast in solitary.
I shake my head, but when I open my mouth, I hear myself say, “Yes.”
*
Maura knows the camera guy working tonight, and after some wheeling and dealing I don’t even want to know about, she gets him to disable the camera that monitors the back door to the library.
She recommends, in addition to all her other insane recommendations, that I rent a car and come in through the back fence, where the employee parking is.
I do everything she tells me, except with my hair. I’m not cutting my hair. My crazy, curly hair is totally my thing. I pull it up into an uncomfortably tight bun and stick a Lakers cap over it, then find the least fashionable outfit I own—which turns out to be a pair of baggy jeans that belonged to my college boyfriend, and a plaid button-up I sometimes wear when I’m styling my hair. I add a pair of paint-speckled boots and call the rental company to let them know I need a car, and that I need someone to pick me up.
I spend the next hour cutting up fruit for Adrian’s breakfast, calling Holly over to our apartment, and saying “bye” to Mom, who is clinging to life with a stubbornness I have to admit is kind of surprising.
“I love you so much, and so does Adrian. I’ll be back soon,” I tell her. “Adrian is here, and so is Nurse Sarah.”
I step back into the bedroom to kiss Ad and grab my purse, then go down to the parking lot to wait for the car rental guy to pick me up. I could always take my own car to the rental place, but Holly’s ’89 Accord is a piece of shit, and I want her and Ad to have mine if they need something.
I don’t need to discuss what we’ll do if Mom passes away while I’m gone. The plan has been in place for weeks. The prison is only about an hour and fifteen minutes away, so if something happens, I’ll come home immediately, and Adrian won’t be told until I’m there.
The guy who picks me up is lanky, with spiky, puke green hair and a lip piercing. Strangely, he has the radio station set to country music.
His weird taste in music reminds me of Clinton. I wonder, as I sign the paperwork for my rented van, what happened behind the scenes that led to the breakup of the Beast regime.
I wonder about the DA looking into my family. It’s disgusting, that I’m feeling almost sick with worry, considering driving back home to check on Ad and Holly, just because that asshole is misusing his power. Maybe Holt and Beast did a lot of things wrong, but Holly didn’t. Adrian didn’t.
I call Holly, who assures me that Ad is fine—other than refusing her fruit and begging for waffles—so I end up driving on toward La Rosa.
An hour is too much time to think, these days.
I worry over whether I’m wasting my time and energy… What if Mom dies while I’m gone, and I can’t get into the prison with the stolen pass code anyway? What if—God help me—Beast gets killed before I get there? What if it’s some kind of set up? I can’t really think of a reason why… but I feel generally nervous. Death is all that’s on my mind. I feel its fingers tap, tap, tapping on me, reminding me it’s only one wrong moment away—for everyone. I stop at a gas station, because the sun is finally starting to come up, and I need something basic for breakfast. There, I lament the way they have a thousand caffeine products—even gum—but no sedatives.
In the car, I do a few deep breathing exercises before I pull back onto the road.
I just need to calm down. Think positively.
I’ll get there in time. I can…what? What can I do? God. How will I even help him once I’m there? What if Ad is left with no one? Mom and I both die.
The scariness of thinking that thought again, not in the darkness of my bathroom safe at home, but here in the car, on the way to La Rosa, has me considering turning the car around.
I don’t. Because I’m an idiot. The same idiot who tried to get her V-card punched by a celebrity. The same idiot who agreed to Beast’s initial deal—three hours a day. The same idiot who fucked him after he beat up Holt.
It’s true, I’ve done a pretty good job at life for the most part, but when it comes to this man, I’m an IDIOT.
I laugh a little as I turn off the highway and onto the long dirt road that I’m pretty sure will lead me to the employee parking lot.
I’ve got my big purse with me this time…and part of the reason is because I’ve tucked my Mace inside. I’ve also got a can of that awful new age spray sunscreen, which hurts like a bitch if you get it in your eye. These are my weapons. This is how I’ll help him if someone tries to come and kill him while I’m visiting.
I roll up to the gate and try the pass code Maura gave me; this one’s hers. She refuses to give me Tony’s until I pay her. She said if I didn’t pay her when I got inside the prison gates, she’d “go prisoner” on me. I told her if the pass code for the gate didn’t work, and I drove all the way out here without even getting in, I’d report her.
Luckily, or maybe very unluckily…her pass code works.
The gate wobbles open on its big wheels, and I roll through. I park between a Subaru and a Toyota Prius and get out of the car slowly. There’s a guard stand looming over the asphalt lot, and for a moment, as I glance up, I feel ill. I’m wearing plaid, not the brown guards’ uniform. But no one jumps out to grab me as I walk around the building, toward the library.
I find Maura sitting in front of the door, opening and closing her palm like a greedy monkey.
I pull a wad of hundreds from my purse and wave it in her face.
“I want to get inside first. I want to see that it will open the door to the solitary area.” Thinking of what I’m about to do makes me feel off-balance. Kind of dizzy.
