“Oh yeah,” she said with a smile at me.
I clicked my tongue and leaned forward as she pointed at the screen on the left and two familiar-looking men came into view. The attack itself was brutal. They came up behind Gaffin without warning. He never even turned around. One man grabbed Gaffin by the back of the neck and tossed him to the floor. That was when the chair got damaged. The other dropped to his knees and pounded on him. Quick as a flash, they dragged him into the classroom and dumped him. They didn’t seem to care whether they got caught or not, or they would’ve chosen a different corridor. The classroom was mighty close to the main hub of activity, namely the showers, commissary, and mess hall. God knew it wasn’t hard to fuck with the cameras, either, so they must not be very smart.
“Aren’t those two skinheads that hang out with Beast?” Burnsdale asked me, and her tone held all the disgust in the world. She turned her piercing blue eyes on me.
I sighed. “Don’t encourage that shit. That’s not his name.”
“Everyone calls him that,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes. “You call him that.”
With a grumble, I dropped my head and rubbed at the back of my neck. “I know, I know. But still. Fuck, I don’t want to deal with their Klan bullshit. Why them?”
“So, they are skinheads?” she asked, sitting up tall in her chair.
“I think they prefer the term ‘bigoted American.’ ” I wanted to laugh, but I was all too familiar with these men, or at least the insidious need to please and cause horror that drove them to do the things they did. Men like them were part of the reason I was working at TFC to begin with.
“We’ll send them to the SHU. I’ll get the paperwork rolling,” Burnsdale said. She grunted, and I saw her fingers flying to isolate the footage so it could be added to the right behavioral files.
“I wonder… what are our chances of getting them transferred out?”
She looked at me like I was working with a few loose screws. “With the way things have been lately?”
“I know.” I shook my head. “Can I see it again? I need to write up the report for this.”
She nodded and tapped at her keyboard. “I can email you the footage if you want to attach it yourself.”
“Thanks.”
The attack was just as terrible the second time. My gut heaved as I watched Gaffin smack the floor. He’d been… okay, his attitude was terrible when I helped him off the bus, but in a strange way, I’d thought he was grateful. Nothing Gaffin had said suggested as much, but he’d had some hurt in his eyes that made me want to keep on helping him and not dump him in a cell and wash my hands of him.
I growled. “They’re going to fucking kill him. This isday onefor him.”
Burnsdale shrugged. I winced as she rolled her neck and her vertebrae audibly popped. “You gotta stop thinking you can help these people, Greene. They’re all a lost cause.”
I ignored her. I hated her frame of mind because I’d be in here wearing a gray jumpsuit or six feet under if everyone in the world thought the same way, but she was hardly the only one with that attitude. “He’s being targeted by the worst of the worst. He can’t be all bad.”
“Or he’s even worse than they are.”
My blood ran cold as I watched the men in the video run off. “There’s a scary thought. Either way, let’s keep an eye on him.”
She snorted and shook her head so that her ponytail almost slapped me in the face. “You want to make yourself a project, that’s great, but I have other work to do.”
Shifting, I turned to pout at her because I’d learned early on she was susceptible to it. “I’m not here twenty-four seven.”
Unimpressed, she simply stared. “You want him alive or not? I don’t work round the clock, either.”
I sighed and ran a hand over my face. “Are they looking for overtime this week?”
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “When aren’t they?”
Fuck, was I really going to let Gaffin interfere with my free time? I hung my head for a second, then glanced back up as she replayed the attack again. I hissed at the blow that knocked him out of his chair. Damn it, I had to keep an eye on him. Those weren’t love taps. What the hell had Gaffin done to piss off the most dangerous gang in the prison less than twenty-four hours into his time?
2
Peter
The old lower-lumbarinjury on my back screamed from the way I’d been slammed to the floor earlier, but I wanted to curl up and watch the door anyway. The medical wing wasn’t too bad. This was almost like a real hospital room. The bed was a damned sight more comfortable than the one in my cell—I’d sat on it to change clothes earlier and had not been looking forward to trying to sleep—and there weren’t even bars on the windows. Clean white tiles stretched away from me across the floor, and the walls were gray, but they weren’t dingy. I wriggled my toes against the fresh sheets and sighed. This was fucking comfortable. The pills I’d been given weren’t much better than regular ibuprofen and hadn’t begun to touch the twinges in my body. I breathed out and wanted to close my eyes because I was exhausted, but I kept staring at the door.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins and my stomach jumped with it. My legs twitched and I growled at the low-grade agony. Drinking and smoking helped with my random aches and pains.
