Just like I’d had his.
I still hadn’t come across another soul. I crossed the dingy reception area, taking a quick peek over at the visiting rooms, visible through clear plexiglass. I was never going to sit at those tables again, wishing I could reach across them to hold Mae. Either this insane plan would work, and I’d get to hold her as much as I liked, all day, every day. Or any minute now, sirens would blare, metal doors would slam down, and I’d be dragged off back to solitary where a lethal injection would be waiting for me at the first available opportunity.
It wasn’t going to be the latter.
At the main exit, cool night air kissed my skin, and despite still being within the confines of the prison gates, it felt like freedom. Trying to keep my posture as casual as possible, I headed for the gate, praying the guard on duty would be asleep. My mind raced with ways to explain why I was leaving on foot when Rowe’s car was sitting in the parking lot.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “Think, dumbass. Think.”
I didn’t focus well under pressure. It had never been my forte. It was why my father had always called me brick head. I was big and broad and dumb. Only useful on a football field, but I hadn’t even been good enough at that to please him. He’d reminded me of it every time he got drunk and came home wanting a fight.
“Good thing you’re big, because you sure ain’t smart.”
“Obviously no brains in that thick head of yours. You take after your mama.”
The words might have been uttered twenty years ago, but they were always there in the back of my mind. They never went away, just like the memories of him. Time hadn’t diminished them one iota.
I hit the final gate separating the prison and the outside world. I swiped Rowe’s card and punched in the code for the last time. To my right, the cement box of the guards’ hut sat silently. If there was anyone inside, I couldn’t see them through the dark glass. I didn’t dare look for long. I simply pulled the pedestrian gate shut behind me and kept walking. One foot in front of the other, head held high, shoulders pulled back. Twenty yards and I’d be in the clear.
“Hey.”
I didn’t stop. But inside, everything shriveled at the sound of the guard’s voice.
“Hey! Stop for a second.”
I had no idea what to do. I wished I were Liam. He would have known instantly. Or Mae. They were both so smart, they probably would have come up with a believable excuse in seconds, but they’d left it to me. All I had was a head full of my father’s voice telling me I was too dumb to breathe.
I couldn’t run. I was fast, despite my size, but nobody was faster than a bullet.
I spun on my heel, facing off with the guard in the darkness. I peered at him from beneath the brim of Rowe’s hat. He wasn’t familiar.
“What are you doing?”
I filled my voice with a confidence I didn’t feel. “Going home.”
“Shift doesn’t change for another hour.”
“Got let off early.”
The man stepped out of his booth and walked toward me, his heavy boots, identical to the ones I wore, crunching over the dry summer grass. “I’m Maynard. I don’t think we’ve met yet, right? I only started after the riot. Got brought in by Tabor after he fired half the staff. I worked with him at his last prison. Good guy.”
“Yeah, the best.” I barely managed to stifle my sarcasm. Tabor was a walking, talking sadist.
The guard kept coming, his hand held out for me to shake.
Panic speared through me. I couldn’t get that close to him. It was one thing to talk to a guard in the dim light at the edge of the floodlights illuminating the prison, but another thing entirely for him to be close enough to identify me. Just because I didn’t know him, didn’t mean he didn’t know me.
I held my hand up in a stop motion. “Ah… Might not want to come any closer. I’d shake your hand, but truth is, you hear about that stomach bug going around Gen Pop?”
The man made a face, dropping his hand to his side and wiping it on his pants, as if he’d caught my fake germs from a distance. “Shit. That why you’re going home early?”
I eyed the gun holstered at his side before forcing my attention back to his face. “Yeah. I’ve got a bit of a walk, too, and I’m kind of living on borrowed time here, if you know what I mean.”
That was actually true, just not in the way I was implying.
His hand rubbed across his stomach, like he was suddenly feeling a little bit sick himself. “Yeah, right. I gotcha. Go. See you around.”
With a half-hearted wave, I turned and hurried into the darkness. By the time I got around the corner, out of sight of the prison, I realized I truly did feel sick. But there was no time to stop and heave like my body wanted to. Hell, if I could have, I probably would have curled up in the fetal position right there on the side of the road.
But this wasn’t all going to be in vain. I was out. I moved through Saint View stealthily, sticking to the shadows, turning down backstreets and alleys and for a while, everything around me was quiet. For a big guy, I could move silently when I needed to. It came from years of avoiding my father. If he couldn’t find me, he couldn’t beat the shit out of me.
For the first time in months, a tiny bit of the weight lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t deserve that death sentence. Not back then. Not now. If I went down for Jayela’s murder, then the person who did kill her walked free. I could practically feel Jayela on my shoulder, urging me on, demanding that the true murderer be found. As much as she was a stickler for the rules, she was also a stickler for justice. She wouldn’t want me dying for a crime I didn’t commit, while the real murderer was free to take another life. Jayela’s blessing was a whisper beneath my father’s taunts, but it grew louder with every step I took away from the prison until hers was the voice I heard loudest.
It whispered other things, too.