He doesn’t answer right away. That’s okay, he will. They all do. “They call me Sledge,” he finally mumbles.
“Any particular reason?”
“I bashed a man’s head in with a sledgehammer.” There’s pride in his voice. Good for him. “So, I’d stop pissing me off if I were you.”
At least he somewhat has a set of balls. There’s nothing worse than a man who cries and snivels at your feet just before you split his skull in half.
I hate that.
However, acquiring a set of balls won’t give me back the six hours I wasted listening to this asshole rattle every bar in this cell block with his damn snores.
You sin, you pay.
You sin, you pay.
You sin, you pay.
This time, I don’t guess. I know exactly where I’m aiming when I punch the underside of this asshole’s bed. Hard.
“Fuck!” Sledge shoots up like a cannon and grabs the side of his head as he rolls toward the edge of the bed.
Just where I want him.
I’m already on my feet with my hand around his throat before he knows what’s happening. “Want to know how I got my jail card punched, Sledge?” He tries to shake his head, but he can’t. I’m crushing his trachea. “I killed a priest and took his eyeballs home as souvenirs.” A sadistic grin pulls across my face as I tug him closer. “And I just confessed to helping kill nine more. So, maybe instead of Enzo, they should call me Hatchet. Because here’s a secret they don’t know, Sledge. Those nine others? They’re not in nine places.”
Releasing his throat, I shove him so hard, his spine cracks against the wall of his bunk. He grabs his throat, wheezing and coughing. “Y-y-you’re crazy, man. F-fucking crazy.”
Shrugging, I lay back down on the bottom bunk. Stretching out, I fold my hands behind my head once again, the cheap fabric of my orange jumpsuit making a scratching sound as it rubs together.
“I was brutish and ignorant. I was a beast toward you.” Smirking, I add, “That’d be Psalm 73:22 for the salvation impaired.”
“So? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
What doesn’t it mean? It means the circle is closing. It means promises are coming to fruition, and debts are being repaid. It means penance and justice and revenge.
But most of all, it means although the beast watched and waited while locked away in a cage of his own doing, his patience will finally be rewarded. My father always told me that a man reaps what he sows. Those words have never rung truer.
It’s time for the masks to come off, and all pretenses to fade. Predators can hide their true selves for a while, but not forever. Eventually, instinct devours will.
Leopards are meant to hunt gazelles, not pretend to be one.
“It means a storm’s coming, Sledge, and for the second time, it’ll blow destiny right into my path.”
CHAPTER THREE
Madigan
They say fear is the ultimate deceiver. She makes the guilty plead innocence, even when their bloody die is cast. The sound fills the walls of hell, which is exactly what Broward County Jail is. It’s Florida’s most notorious maximum-security facility, and home to more depravity and deception in one square mile than in all of America.
“Keep up, Miss Bailey. This isn’t a petting zoo.” The warden motions impatiently at me. “Stray too close to the bars and these occupants are liable to bite.”
“There’s no need to explain it, Mr. Redwick,” I say, conquering his patronizing words with a chilly look. “As one of the top public defenders in the state, I have a well-used backstage pass to these kinds of places.”
“So I’ve heard. You’re a real appeal queen and the DA’s royal pain in the ass. Tell me, Miss Bailey,” he snipes, dragging his gaze up and down my slender, well-dressed frame. “How the hell do you sleep at night?”
“I might say the same to you,” I snap back, letting him know—in no uncertain terms—that his shitty reputation precedes him. Red name. Redder hands. His unlawful beat-downs and crimes against his charges should have piqued the interest of the national press years ago. The murder rate inside Broward County Jail is just as high as the numbers on the outside.
“J-Wing isn’t the place for your run-of-the-mill purse-stealers,” he forges on, ignoring the jibe. “This is where we keep the real shit of society: the serial killers, the kiddie rapists...” I watch his gaze travel again to the soft outline of my breasts beneath my neat, white blouse. “We need to keep moving.”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
“I know as much as you do. The case file is waiting for you inside the room.”
“You do realize this is extremely irregular, Mr. Redwick.”
“Like my bowel habits.” He spins around to catch my reaction to his crudeness. “This place devours all the good health out of a person, Miss Bailey.”
He and Trent Anderson should go fishing together and then do mankind a favor by drowning in a freak accident.
I quicken my steps as he leads me down the narrow hallway and past a row of black metal doors housing the blackest of hearts, my high heels sparking up the promise of salvation from the concrete. Sure enough, the air is soon a chorus of desperation and lies.
“Hey, Red! You a lawyer? I ain’t guilty, you know.”
Fear.
“I was framed, lady. You gotta believe me!”
Fear.
“Shut your mouth, Sánchez,” snarls the warden, ramming his clenched fist against the nearest door. “You too, Anton. We know exactly how you crushed that little girl’s skull, so don’t go pleading your fucking innocence now.”
Once upon a time, such evil would have shocked me to the core.
Once upon a time, I wasn’t a girl who’d been enticed by lust, brutalized by sin, and broken by the devil himself.
My steps falter.
“Are you coming?” Redwick snaps.
“Yes, I...”
But the bastard has already turned back to the cells.
We reach the end of the hallway and wait for the doors to open to the screech of reluctant metal. The light above us flicks from red to green, and we step forward into a holding cage.
“What the hell am I doing here?” I mutter for the millionth time today.
The warden tuts out his irritation as he jingles the change in his pocket. “Like your colleague said, Vincent’s refusing to give up the location of these bodies to anyone else, and I have the cops climbing my goddamn walls over it.”
“What am I, a confessional?” I turn to glare at him again, my dark green eyes narrowing at his tepid gray ones. Dark green, like the churned-up ground after all the battles I’ve fought and survived.
Except with him.
I never survived him.
“What happened to the victim we know about?” I add swiftly. “Him” belongs in a locked box in my mind that never gets opened.
“The priest?” Redwick sucks in a breath through his crooked front teeth. “They slit his throat and ripped his eyes out. Left him in a shallow grave with a number carved into his chest...” He flicks his eyes to the ceiling, as if trying to recall which one.
“Twelve,” I blurt out, filling the stale air with my certainty.