Inside (Bulletproof 1)

“Patience, my ass. This is gonna happen, and it’s gonna happen soon. I didn’t drive all the way up to seacoast Siberia just to turn around and head home. You hear me? I didn’t spend all of last night sleeping in my truck just so I could crawl back to L.A. with my tail between my legs. What would I tell Horse and everyone when we got back?”

“That it’s not over, because it isn’t.”

Shady shook his head. “No, they’re waiting to hear that I got the job done, and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. I won’t let Skin make me look like a fool to my own men.” Swinging back around, he braced against the salt air sweeping in off the sea and started toward the water again. He had too much anger and adrenaline flowing through him to stay put. He knew his agitation would be apparent to anyone who saw him, so he was trying to keep his distance from others, but it wasn’t easy to go unnoticed in this place. They didn’t fit in with all the clean-cut correctional officers, retired loggers, hopeful shopkeepers and Obama-loving artisans.

“I think you’re taking this too personal, Shade,” Meeks warned. “And it’s gonna get your ass in trouble.”

“Don’t tell me my business!”

Meeks raised his hand in a placating gesture. “I’ve been down this road before, bro. You need to listen.”

“You’ve been out of the race too long, that’s all. You’ve lost your edge. I’m tellin’ you I’m not leavin’ here until Skin is six feet under.”

Meeks’s jaw tightened at the disregard Shady showed for his advice, but Shady was so worked up he didn’t care. He hadn’t slept more than a few winks in three days but the drugs made him feel powerful. Fearless. He was powerful. And while he felt no fear, he’d dare anything.

“You’re acting crazy.”

“Maybe I am crazy!” Spittle sprayed from his mouth but he didn’t wipe it off. “Virgil Skinner’s laughing his ass off right now because he’s making us all look like idiots. We have an entire gang against him—two gangs—and we haven’t been able to touch him.”

Meeks nudged a fallen leaf into the water with his foot. “I don’t think Skin’s laughing. The HF dude who called me said he didn’t look too good when they carted him away. He’s in the hospital. That tells us something.”

“They’ll bring him back from the brink if we let them. We gotta take him out while he’s weak.”

“And how do you suggest we do that, tough guy? They have armed guards at his door! I saw them myself when I tried to get in there this morning.”

“There has to be a way to reach him,” he fumed. “We’ve got nothin’ so far. Thanks to Pretty Boy and what he did in Gunnison, we’ve got less than nothin’.”

Meeks’s cell phone rang. Eyebrows rumpled in frustration, he pulled it from his pocket. “’Lo?” Head down, he began to walk away. Shady got the impression he’d walk all the way to L.A. if he could. But he wasn’t getting out of this. He’d wanted to be a part of it; he’d follow through or suffer the same fate Shady had in store for Virgil.

“Who told you that?” Meeks said. “When?…No kidding…. What does she drive?…When does she usually leave?…Right. We’re on it.”

“Who was that?” Shady asked once he’d ended the call.

“A messenger from the Hells Fury.”

“What do they want with us now?”

“They want Skin as much as we do.”

“They should. So what’d they have to say?”

Meeks slid his phone back into his pocket. “You’re determined to find a way to hurt Skin?”

“Yeah.”

“Now we’ve got it.”

Shady felt cautiously hopeful. “Through a woman?”

“The chief deputy warden herself.”

“No…” He couldn’t believe it. Someone like that would be too far up the food chain to take any interest in a con. Except that Virgil didn’t look like the average criminal and technically wasn’t one. He’d switched sides. And he’d always had a way of making people admire him….

“How’d he meet her?” he asked skeptically.

“Who knows? Probably through whatever deal he did with the CDC. The warden and maybe a few others would’ve had to be involved, right?”

“But he’s only been here a week or so.”

“Maybe she’s butt-ugly and he was desperate, but there are rumors going around that she was crying when he got hurt. And before that, she asked a C.O. to leave them alone in an office. Those rumors have to be based on something.”

Or not. As far as Shady was concerned, it was a long shot. How much could Virgil care about this woman if he’d just met her?

But killing her would let Skin know they wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t go away. And they had nothing better to do while they waited for the opportunity to get to him. “How do we find her?”

“There’s only one road leading in and out of that prison. We watch for a white Volvo SUV with a woman behind the wheel to drive by and then we follow her home.”

At last. Something they could do that would siphon off some of his anxiety. “Then let’s go.”

As soon as they climbed into the truck, Shady crushed another meth crystal and snorted it. He preferred to be flying high when he met the chief deputy warden. He’d never done a woman before, not like he was going to do this one.

He wanted his encounter with her to leave an impression that Virgil would never forget.

It’d been a difficult day, one in which Peyton didn’t accomplish nearly as much as she normally did. Her time was taken up with putting to rest everything that’d happened during the past week. She’d spent an hour first thing with the warden and Investigator Rosenburg going over every detail of the dining hall incident, what John Hutchinson might know about Judge Garcia and how they were going to get Virgil out of Crescent City. After that they’d had a conference call, including Rick Wallace, to confirm their plans for Virgil to go into WITSEC and to talk about the leak, but that hadn’t lasted long. Once again, Rick had acted distracted and eager to get off the phone. Only at her insistence did he stay on so they could call Laurel as a group and let her know the situation.

Like Peyton, Laurel was relieved that Virgil was out of the prison mostly in one piece. At least, she sounded that way. Probably because if he healed as well as expected, she might get to see him soon. Peyton was now confident he would heal. Her discussions with his doctor, at noon and again at three, had reassured her. She’d been told he was responding very quickly to the antibiotics. He should be fine in a few days—provided they were able to keep The Crew and the Hells Fury away from him.