Colt’s handsome smile with those deep dimples made me smile. “It’s okay. That’s all I need to know for now. We can get back to the formalities if you need to.”
I paused for a minute and took a sip of water. I needed it. “Bella is doing great. She wanted me to give you this.” I slid over a picture of her patting Moonlight’s head.
The last time I saw Bella, she gave it to me. She’d asked, “Can you please give this to Daddy, Amber? I know he will be worried about Moonlight. I want him to know his big girl is taking care of her. She’s in good hands.”
Colt lingered over the picture for a long time. I watched as the tears welled up in his eyes. In a very masculine way, he wiped them away as soon as they came.
“My sweet girl. Tell her to hold on. I’m going to be out of here. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, of course I can. And you will be. I know the judge on your case. I’m going to make a call to him as soon as I leave.”
Colt’s face was stoic. “I know not to get my hopes up with these overcrowding parole board appeals, but thank you. If you can get me the fuck out of this piece of shit, I will be eternally grateful. Plus, I know I can help Hector. I know some people that owe me, and they will cover that debt. It’s a done deal.”
“Colt, are you sure? I don’t want you taking money out of your pocket.”
“No, it’s not like that. It won’t be coming out of my pocket. I have some associates. Probably the fewer questions you ask about that, the better.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Okay. I guess that’s what I have for you today. We are making progress. Let me work on the parole board member and see if we can get a hearing date, at least.”
“You really are an angel sent to me.”
I knew I was blushing because I could feel it. “Thank you, Colt.”
“If we didn’t have that prison guard standing right there. I would kiss you.”
Nine
Colt
Fresh pools of sweat soaked my bedsheets as I jostled with an imaginary attacker in my cell. I woke up in a rageful fit. The realism of the dream made me gasp for oxygen. Anna was flanked by two men either side of her, and both of them were injecting lines of heroin into her veins as she shrieked for help. I tried to run to her, but I was caught in a rope. I didn’t make it in time. She frothed at the mouth and keeled over on her knees from an overdose.
I looked around me. On one side was the prison wall and on the other was the desk. The lights were out, and I could hear noises down the length of the prison halls, which was normal for USP. I got up and wiped the slick sweat off my chest. I ran the water in the washbasin and looked at myself.
“Get it together, Colt. Think of Bella,” I whispered in the stark darkness.
As I paced the cell, another note mysteriously landed under the door. I picked it up. I ripped it open and turned on the lamp.
Lights out. The job is done. See you in the yard. OS.
I shook my fist violently as I touched two fingers to the photos of Anna and Bella on the wall. I slicked my wet blond hair out of my eyes. A day of false redemption, for nothing could bring Anna back to me. Anna’s killer, though, was dead. Only his mother would miss him. Frank was a man of his word.
That’s how the Outlaws worked. If you’re loyal to them, they’ll be loyal to you. I’d earned my stripes, and now I was cashing in. At least the punk couldn’t fuck up anybody else’s life. I ripped the pieces from the envelope into shreds and threw it in the trash. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of an early release. My bedsheets were wet, so I took them off, balled them in a corner, and slept directly on the lumpy mattress.
I woke to the sound of the clinking metal bars. My eyes shot open as Raymond ran his black baton along the length of our cell bars.
“Rise and shine, fellas. It’s time for laundry and showering. Unless you bitches want to stink all day.”
I felt my stomach cramping up as Errol and I rose up from our lackluster beds.
“No way,” Errol answered.
Raymond, with his overgrown belly and new porn mustache, eyed me with too much interest. “You’re getting out soon,’’ he said. “Trying your hand at an appeal, huh, Colt?”
“I mean. Anything can happen. I might be here for the full three months. I’m not expecting much.”
He rubbed his belly as the cell door clicked unlocked. “You shouldn’t expect anything,” he spat. “What’s that shit balled up in the corner?”
“Just some sheets for laundry.”
“You wet the bed or something?” He snickered, revealing his yellow teeth. If I had two bricks, I would smash this man’s head between them. Instead, I let the blood rush through my fingers. Errol watched the conversation from a distance. I made the mistake of scoffing as he said it.
In a quick reflex reaction, Raymond snatched his black baton out of its holster and struck down between my shoulder blades with three swift brute force blows. “What’d you say?”
I bent over in the shock of the acute pain. I blew out a strained breath, staying hunched over. I thought I would take a leaf out of the play-dead handbook.
Errol spat out in anger. “Hey! Lay off him. He ain’t doing nothing. That’s police brutality.”
Prisoners started crying out from behind their cells adjacent to mine that heard and saw him.
“Hey, I saw that! I’m going to report you to the warden.”
“Kick his ass, Colt!”
“Yeah, Colt, fuck him up!”
Raymond put his lethal baton back in its holster. “I know you’re not going to listen to them, are you?” he taunted, his stinking breath close to my ear. He turned to yell out to the other protesting prisoners. “Shut the hell up, you bitches, before you’re next!”
He turned his back to me. He reeked of alcohol and sweat. I gravitated away from him as much as I could as he followed a pace behind us. I stood tall as I walked, trying to stretch out the pain radiating across my upper back.
Raymond laughed. “You’ll be all right. Teach you to talk back. You have to learn your lesson, boy,” he sneered and kept walking past the showers to the other end of the cell block.
“You all right, man?” Errol asked once the officer from hell was out of earshot.
“Yeah, I’m good. If he was on the outside, he would already be dead,” I fumed.
Errol cocked his head to one side as we stripped and showered. “I don’t know about that. If we wanted to get rid of the guy, that could be organized. You and I both know a few heavy hitters in here.”
I let the hot water wash over my back, which was throbbing where Raymond hit me. “I can’t be focused on that. I have an appeal to think about. I can’t be getting into anything with him.”
“I hear you. Hey, pass the soap, and don’t drop it,” Errol joked.
I handed him a cake of thick yellow soap. “Ha. You’re not my type.”
He laughed.
We toweled down and headed to the yard. I rolled my shoulders back and forth to lift the pain. The shit wasn’t working. Austin recognized what it was immediately. “He get you, too?”