“Want some help?”
He snorted and glared at me. “They see you wheel me into the cafeteria, I’m as good as toast.”
You’re ready for a fork anyway.I didn’t say that out loud, but if he was a friend of mine on the outside, I would have urged him to take a shower and go to bed. “Okay.” I shrugged and walked away, not really ready for another round oftake my help or else. I went to the mess hall and waited for him to show up. My nerves twisted together as Wettekin nodded at me from his spot in the corner where he loomed and waited for people to do anything to allow him to yell at them. And I cooled my heels some more.
Eventually the chow line closed down, and I sighed as I went back out to go look for my newest problem. I stopped to gripe at a few guys who were trying to get away with smoking in their cells, and by the time I got back to Gaffin, he’d made it into the main building but was still closer to A block than the mess hall. He sat with his chair against the gray-painted cement-block wall and turned his face away from me. Dread worked its way through my guts at the way he sat in a slump.
“Gaffin,” I called as I approached. He lifted his chin, and I was not happy to see that he had a bleeding cut on his forehead, over his right eye. Maybe someone had shoved him into the wall and he’d smacked his face off it. “What happened?”
“I was doing eighty and spun out,” he replied, dry as anything. He even gave me a cocky little smile. My gut jerked far too pleasantly.
“Okay,whohappened?”
“None of your business.”
“You missed dinner.” Irritation powered through me. He was fucking hurt already?Goddamn it.I strode over and stopped near him, not really enjoying the way his shoulders hunched at my proximity. “What evening activity should you be at? They assign you anything yet?”
“No. Like fucking what?” He sat up straighter in his chair.
“Narcotics Anonymous, for a start. It’s not just about mainlining meth, it’s for any drug-or-alcohol addiction.” I gave him my patentedplease don’t make my life hellsmile.
“Fuck that. I’m not doing that.” His chin jutted and made his bottom lip stand out.Christ.
“You’ll do what they tell you to do.” I scowled and made a note to mention to Lon that Gaffin could benefit from Brandon’s special brand of magic, though maybe there weren’t enough cookies and caffeine in the world to break this guy. I didn’t know Gaffin yet, but he seemed like a rough case.
Gaffin snorted. “Guess I don’t have a choice, then.”
With a fewchoicewords trying to pop out of my mouth, I stomped over until I was in front of him. I didn’t make the mistake of getting close enough to be swatted at, but I went down to one knee so we were on more of an even playing field.
“Do you want me to push you somewhere? We haven’t had any big bullshit go down for a while, so the evening bell won’t be until about eight thirty.” I checked my watch. “You have two hours to kill. Want to go to the library?”
He shook his head, and if it was possible, he seemed even less talkative than before.
“Want to go get that cut taken care of?” I tapped my own head.
He furrowed his brow as he touched the wound. When he glanced at the streak of blood on his fingertips, he laughed and shook his head again.
I took a deep draught of air and let out my irritation with a long breath. “Fine. If you aren’t in your cell in two hours, there will be hell to pay. I’m not going to come looking for you again.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, almost like he was telling me I was full of shit. Yeah, I was, but it wouldn’t help matters to let him know he was right, so I got up, brushed myself off, and with a final frown in his direction, I turned and walked away.
When I did my rounds again, he was gone from the hallway.
I shrugged it off. He could go where he wanted during free hours. The facility was secure, and none of the inmates were deemed high-risk, so they were allowed to go to their activities at will unless someone had pissed off one of the higher-ups or there was an emergency. I swung by the NA meeting and hung out in the back of the crowded room for a few minutes. Brandon ignored me the way he usually did. He looked good in his blue button-down, but in a nod to the prison situation, he didn’t normally wear a tie—too easy to get choked out. Feeling itchy, I went off to look for Gaffin. There wassomethingabout that guy that had crawled under my skin already, and this whole day had been weird, besides.
No matter where I searched, I couldn’t find him. Panic never had been my go-to in an emergency, but the longer I hunted for him, the more my skin buzzed. I walked the halls until it was close to the final bell of the day. As a last-ditch effort, I went to E block. He wasn’t in his cell, because my life couldn’t be easy.
The rest of my block was secure, and I got a few waves as I strolled through. Every man was where he belonged. I ignored one couple in a cell clearly bunking in together because I’d asked both of them if they were good with it prior to today. It wasn’t my business to make life choices for people if they didn’t hurt anyone. I let out a shaky breath. We weren’t staffed well, and a lot of me not being dead came down to the goodwill of the cons I watched out for. Some of the men here weren’t great. We had a few who had been transferred in and really didn’t belong in medium.
I shuddered. I was glad Tatum Black was in the SHU at the moment. He did not fucking belong here at all, but there was overcrowding and we were stuck with him. I’d pulled the short straw, and when he got out of the SHU, he was being moved to the last empty cell in my block to break him up from his clique of white supremacists.
I was glad he didn’t seem to remember me. I’d known him on the outside, and to be honest, he wasn’t any worse now than he had been then. It was good he’d be where I could keep an eye on him, but that didn’t make me happy about it. The man was dangerous.
This was getting me precisely nowhere on the Gaffin mystery. I gave up trying to walk around on the hunt and went to the guard station, which was a dingy unpainted cement-block room with a massive gun safe along the right wall and lockers on the left. Across from the door was the security desk. It was just my luck that Wettekin was hanging out, trying to hit on Burnsdale, one of the few women who worked in the whole place.
Burnsdale was trained to man the security systems and cameras, although they conveniently went on the fritz quite often. I was more than a little sure every member of the security team, including Burnsdale, must be on the take from someone. It probably wasn’t smart or safe to voice those concerns to anyone.
Wettekin ducked close to her where she sat in the chair at the desk, and she leaned away from him. Her long ponytail was fed through the adjustment band on the back of her brown cap and swayed away from him with her rapid move. She laughed, one of those too-hearty titters that flashed her perfect white teeth and strained her lipsticked mouth. It was clear to anyone with eyeballs she wanted him to back the hell off, but he interpreted her forced amusement as “please touch me” because he trailed a finger along her arm.
