Inside (Bulletproof 1)

She didn’t know how to respond to that, wasn’t even sure what it meant. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t want to jack you up. I’ll blow you away if I have to, though, so you might want to work with me.”

He was high or drunk or both. She could tell by the way he kept twitching. His eyes darted between her and the door as if he expected the cops to come charging through at any moment.

Assuming he’d fire before he left, she covered her mouth to stifle the sound of her fear. “I’m trying,” she whispered through her fingers. “I just…don’t understand.”

“That’s why, if I have to kill you, I’m going to carve Skin’s eyes out and serve them to him on a platter. Tell him that.”

Oh, God… “I c-can’t tell him. I don’t know where he is. I swear it.”

The lightning bolts that served as his eyebrows shot together. “What if I don’t believe you?”

That was the million-dollar question—and she’d never been more frightened to learn an answer. “It’s the truth. I went to p-pick him up last week at the—” her tongue felt thick and unwieldy as she forced it to form words “—at the prison, but he n-never came out.”

“He must’ve called, told you not to worry,” he prodded.

Tears spilled over her lashes as she shook her head.

“You’re telling me you haven’t heard from him?”

“I’m afraid he’s d-dead.” Her voice caught on a sob.

The man studied her for a second and finally lowered the gun. “Go ahead and cry, Laurel, because if he’s on the run he might as well be dead.”

The burning in her stomach grew worse. “He’s been exonerated. Why would he run?”

“You don’t need to know that. You just need to know this—if you hear from him, tell him Ink stopped by lookin’ for him. Tell him he’s got one more chance. He calls Pretty Boy by noon tomorrow, anything…unpleasant can still be avoided. If not, you’ll all die.”

“Mommy?”

Laurel’s breath lodged in her throat. Mia stood at the entrance to the room, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “Who are you?” she asked, wrinkling her nose as if she didn’t like what she saw.

Grinning at her reaction, the intruder showed her his gold tooth, then waved her forward with his gun.

“No, Mia!” Laurel cried. But it was no use. He reached out and grabbed her before she could back away. Then he put the gun to her head.

“Are you tellin’ me the truth? Huh? Are you still gonna say you don’t know where your brother is? Because I’ll shoot her. You know I will.”

Laurel’s lungs pumped like pistons but she couldn’t seem to suck in the oxygen she needed. “N-no!” she gasped, fighting just to speak. “I d-don’t know! Please!”

Her veracity must’ve shown through her terror, because he released Mia. He shoved her away so hard she fell, but at least he didn’t shoot her. “Now I believe you,” he said with a laugh. Then he saluted her and went out the way he must’ve come in.

By the time Laurel scooped up her daughter and managed to stop shaking enough to dial 9-1-1, he was long gone. So was the car across the street. The officer who arrived fifteen minutes later found the imprint of a man’s boot in her plants at the back door, but that was it.

Peyton normally loved Saturdays—and tried to enjoy this one. Since she was off work, she rambled around the house a bit, did some reading, cleaned out the fridge, caught up on correspondence she’d brought home from the prison and iced her injured ankle, which was still a little swollen. But she couldn’t concentrate. All she could think about was Virgil Skinner, who was in the worst situation she could imagine, or soon would be. Picturing him sitting over at the Redwood Inn with a small quantity of clothing, a few prized letters from his sister (not to mention the less-prized letters from what sounded like a terrible mother) and a steak knife bothered her. He’d already suffered so much. What else would he have to endure?

She didn’t like the idea of someone being wrongfully imprisoned for any length of time, let alone fourteen years. It didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t walk away and try to forget. But if she expressed that sentiment to Warden Fischer or even Wallace, she knew how they’d respond. They hated people like her, who still felt compassion. Believing she was weak or misguided made it easier to cope with the difficult decisions they had to confront almost daily, helped justify their callousness. But she didn’t care what they said. Was it so bad to be worried about the safety and survival of a fellow human being? People weren’t pawns….

And yet she understood the need, on occasion, to use them as such. Police and prison officials had to have some way of fighting the gang problem. Recent estimates suggested seventy percent of the prison population was affiliated with a gang. They couldn’t allow the Hells Fury to gain any more power than they already possessed. If the “good guys” didn’t do something, something like this, how else would the HF be stopped? Getting convictions required information, and there weren’t a lot of gang members who’d talk. They knew what would happen if they did.

Propping her foot on the couch, Peyton surfed through several channels on TV, but nothing held her interest. So she tossed the remote aside and grabbed her cell phone instead.

“Redwood Inn.” It was Michelle. Peyton recognized her voice.

“Hey, it’s me. You’re still there? I thought you’d be off.”

“My assistant manager called in sick. But I bet he’s fine. He wasn’t happy that I scheduled him, said he had a lot to do around the house. I think this is his way of getting back at me.”

“Sorry, kiddo.”

“Lee has the kids today, too. I could’ve had a few hours to myself for a change. But I’ll live. What’s going on with you? I tried to reach you last night but you didn’t answer.”

“I twisted my ankle, so I took some painkillers and went to bed.” She’d actually gone back to the prison, pulled the arrest history of every inmate she suspected of being a member of the Hells Fury and made notes she hoped would be helpful to Virgil and the investigation. But she couldn’t tell Michelle that.

“How’d you hurt your ankle?”

Peyton’s mind flashed to that moment when Virgil had hauled her out of his shower. “Climbing the stairs to my front door.”