Page 29 of Hard Heart

CHAPTER 12

SERAFINA

“If I didn’t have to work, I’d share the driving for sure.” Friday evening, and Heidi was standing in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the back of the apartment door, pivoting this way and that. “With the belt or without?”

Tonight, she was going back to the fifties with the “sexy secretary” look—a short black pencil skirt with Velcro seams, a white blouse she could unbutton slowly, and cherry-red stilettos. There was a big sales convention going on down the road at the Black Diamond Hotel, and based on past form, droves of businessmen would descend on Jackson’s after dinner.

“With the belt. It gives you something else to take off, and more time onstage means more tips, right?”

“Yup.”

“Plus you can use the end to flick any arsehole who gets handsy.”

She pulled a face. “Jackson hates when I do that.”

My visitor authorisation had come through today. Heidi had called at lunchtime to say there was mail with a Wise postmark—that matched the cat print I’d ordered from Lake Sterling’s website, incidentally—and I’d told her to open it. The background check had been completed, and I was now authorised to speak with Sykes officially. Which meant an impromptu six-hour drive this evening, a night in the cheapest motel I could find, and a trip to Redding’s Hill tomorrow morning. Visitors were allowed on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. What a fun way to spend the weekend.

Truly, I’d lost my mind, and maybe I’d lose my job as well if Raelene realised I’d gone behind her back.

But I couldn’t stay away, even if I wanted to.

The mystery intrigued me, and although I was loath to admit it, so did the man himself.

When we visited Elias Jones in Unit Eight, the atmosphere had been tense. Two stony-faced guards had escorted him into a room containing only a table and three plastic chairs and stood on either side as he lowered himself into a seat opposite us. Elias wore handcuffs and leg irons, and they’d secured his feet to the floor and his hands to the table.

With Sykes, I hadn’t been sure what to expect. Either the same process, or perhaps a non-contact visit with glass between us rather than a private room, seeing as I wasn’t yet a lawyer and therefore had no expectation of privacy.

But I got yet another surprise.

Two, actually.

Sykes wore the prison jewellery, but he walked in with a single guard, chatting about the weather—which had taken a turn for the worse and was cold enough to make a snowman shiver—then dropped into the seat opposite me.

And smiled.

My heart flipped, and fuck… I’d been expecting the cowed, nervous man pictured during the trial, the one who never raised his gaze higher than his feet. Wiry in stature, clean-shaven, preppy verging on dapper.

This man’s biceps strained at his prison scrubs, and a day’s worth of stubble lent weight to a chiselled jaw. His face had filled out, his hair was longer, and eyes the colour of root beer twinkled beneath a floppy fringe.

“Coffee?” the guard asked, and I was about to decline when I realised he was talking to Sykes.

“A latte, thanks. Serafina?”

The way he wrapped his tongue around my name made me shiver. “Uh… Okay.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Black, no sugar. Thank you.”

The guard was halfway to the door when Sykes summoned him back. “Jim…” He pointed to the floor. “My feet?”

“Ah, right.”

The guard secured Sykes’s leg irons to the floor but didn’t touch his hands, then left me alone with yet another convicted murderer. I twisted around and looked through the glass panel in the door because on my other visits, a chaperone with a stun baton had watched us the whole time, but Jim was nowhere in sight. At least Sykes wasn’t undressing me with his eyes or sobbing.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said. Today, his voice was stronger—I figured he had to keep the noise down on a cell phone—but it had a hypnotic quality about it. Almost sensuous. I didn’t think he was speaking that way on purpose.

“Oh, please. After your cold open?” I slapped my membership card for the New York State Bar Association on the table beside a printout of my details from the Solicitors Register for England and Wales. “There you go.”