Dinner came and went.The usual slop I was willing to bet they tried to pass off as food in every prison in America.I ate mechanically, my body needing fuel even if my taste buds objected.The new cellblock was quieter than my last one, which was both a blessing and a curse.Quiet meant less immediate danger, but it also left room for thinking.
I was about to roll out of my bunk and do some pushups to focus my mind on something other than Nadine and the guard when the phone buzzed.One o’clock sharp.
“Yeah.”Knuckles didn’t care about niceties any more than I did.
“You’ve got six months unless you tell me you need out now.”Knuckles’ statement puzzled me.
“Why the fuck would I not want out now?”
“I hear you and I’m not a complete asshole.If you’ve reached your limit, I’ll pull you out tonight.But if you can make it the last six months, I’d prefer not to have to do an urgent extraction.”
“Motherfucker,” I grumbled with no real heat.“Honestly, I think staying is the best thing right now.But I need your help with something.”
“I’m here, brother.What do you need?”
“There’s a nurse here.Name’s Nadine Brentner.Have your guys check into her.”
“Everything OK?”I could hear the genuine concern in Knuckles’ voice.The man was a hardass but he protected everyone in his circle.I was lucky enough to be in that circle.
“Not sure.There’s a guard here who feels off to me.He intimidates her and she cowers too easily.I can work this end and can be here if he’s a danger to her.”
“You’ll need to be able to move freely from your cell to her.Your girl a guard?”
“No.She’s in the infirmary.A nurse.My block is a straight shot down the hall.And she’s not my girl.I knew her on the outside.”
“Makes things simpler.You got a name on the guard in question?”Of course Knuckles knew I’d want to look into him, too.He also ignored my denial that Nadine was mine.
“Not yet.I’ll have it tomorrow, though.”
“Good.Roberts or Johnson will bring your access card and code before their shifts end.”
“Any way you can get me a computer?”
“Give me a couple days.Knight will take care of it.”
I sighed, tension easing in my chest.I hadn’t been to the Kiss of Death compound before, but I knew the majority of the men who belonged to that MC.We’d all met in prison and had bonded together because of Knuckles.The man had some crazy hard pull with someone high up in the Bureau of Prisons.It’s how I got transferred to Terre Haute from San Quentin where I’d done the majority of my time.It was an unusual transfer and the guards grumbled about it the entire flight, but here I was.
All the housing in this block were singles, so we had more room than most.It was originally set up to be a solitary confinement wing, but it got turned into Terre Haute’s version of a luxury hotel.Hell, we even had mini fridges for snacks and drinks.Yeah.Knuckles came through big time for me when he got me this transfer.I had to grumble at having to pull the last six months, but honestly, the accommodations here were a vast improvement over San Quentin.I could manage six more months.Which meant I had six months to find out what the fuck was going on with Ms.Nadine Brentner.
Chapter Three
Pain
Three Months Later…
I leaned against the crumbling wall of the courtyard, arms folded across my chest as I eyeballed the powder keg of inmates before me.Tension was a living thing, crackling in the stale air like static before a storm.I’d seen this before, a hundred times over.Body language doesn’t lie and today it was very easy to read the aggression in every line of every inmate in the yard.Even those of us who had no intentions of participating knew something was about to happen.
Then, like the spark that ignites the gas, a fist holding a shank sailed through the air, finding its mark with a sickening squish.The inmate’s eyes widened in shock before blood bubbled from his lips.Violence was unleashed like water crashing through a busted dam.Shouts erupted, creating a symphony of rage that filled up the space.
Yard fights always looked like a mosh pit at the world’s most violent and angry concert.I stayed back against the wall, crouching down and waiting for the guards to get involved.Most of the time mace and tasers were enough, but I wasn’t taking a chance on one of them shooting first and asking questions later.
Given the numbers of men in the yard who were armed, I figured this was a planned event.Lovely.Likely had something to do with the influx of a couple different gang members into gen pop.Someone was looking to make a statement and anyone who got caught in the crossfire would just be fuck outta luck.
Right on cue I spotted the scrawny kid with eyes too big for his face, looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler.The poor bastard was all flailing limbs and sheer panic, trying to dodge fists that flew at him from every direction.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, the word slipping out like a prayer to a God I stopped believing in a long time ago.
The kid stumbled, getting shoved between two hulking brutes who were too busy trying to tear each other apart to notice the reed-thin boy bouncing off their muscled forms.It was one of those freeze-frame moments, where everything slowed down and you could see the disaster before it hit.But this wasn’t Hollywood.
