He didn’t have an answer for that.
I turned and walked out of his office before I said something that would get me fired.
As far as my ex getting a job here in the first place, maybe it wasn’t entirely Callahan’s fault. Maybe Silas had just figured out how to game the system. And eventually, this would work itself out. The charges would catch up to him. He’d be arrested. Fired. Gone.
But “eventually” wasn’t good enough.
Because right now, Silas Whitmore was a correctional officer at Coldwater Penitentiary. With a uniform. A badge. Authority.
And direct access to the man who had already promised to crush his windpipe.
Please, I thought.Please let me figure this out before someone gets killed.
35
KNOX
I’d been staring at the same row of syringes for fifteen minutes.
Counting them. Recounting them. Writing numbers on a clipboard that I’d already erased twice. My handwriting looked like a seismograph during an earthquake, which was fitting, because everything inside me was trembling with barely contained rage.
The infirmary was quiet. Harper was at her desk, just visible through this exam room’s doorway. Head down. Pen scratching against paper. Her dark hair pulled into a neat ponytail that swung slightly every time she moved.
I heard footsteps in the corridor. The purposeful kind of walk that announced itself before it arrived.
Whitmore. He appeared in the doorway of the main infirmary, not even glancing my direction. His attention went straight to Harper.
“Nurse.” He said it like a summons. Like she owed him something just for existing in his line of sight.
Harper’s pen stopped moving. I watched her shoulders climb toward her ears. Watched her shrink two inches without moving an inch.
Interesting.
“Officer Whitmore.” Her voice was professional. Flat. The voice of someone who’d learned to make herself small. She straightened her spine. “Can I help you?”
He moved into the room. Medium build. Soft around the middle. The kind of guy who probably got his ass kicked in high school and spent every day since making other people pay for it.
“Just doing rounds.” He stopped at her desk. Too close. His hip nearly brushed her shoulder. “Making sure everything’s running smoothly.”
Harper didn’t look up. Her hand moved to the base of her throat. Just briefly. Just a flutter of fingers against skin.
My eyes tracked that motion. Filed it away.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Quiet day.”
“Good.” He didn’t move. Just stood there. Looming. “I like quiet.”
Holding my clipboard, I stepped into the doorway.
Whitmore’s head turned. His eyes found me, and something shifted in his expression. Irritation. The look of a man who didn’t like witnesses.
“Blackwood.” He read my name off his mental roster like it tasted bad. “Inventory duty?”
I said nothing.
He left Harper’s side and stepped toward me, making a show of having a reason to. But his body stayed angled toward Harper. Even with his back half-turned, he was tracking her. Keeping her in his peripheral vision.
Possessive.
