I picked up the phone that rang incessantly in the middle of the night. “What the fuck do you want?”
Hyde’s voice shocked me on the other end of the line. “Get your lazy ass up. You’re coming along for a pick up.”
I peeked an eye open. “Come again?”
“You need to clean your ears, too? I said you’re coming on a pick up. Get up and meet me outside in thirty.”
I eased myself upright in bed. “First of all, tuck in that attitude. And second—”
“You gonna keep counting down or are you gonna make some money tonight?”
Shit, I needed the money. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be down there in twenty.”
“Make it fifteen.”
“Aren’t you the one who said double that in the first place?”
He growled. “Fifteen. Bye.”
“I can’t believe I was that stupid,” I whispered to myself.
I placed my head in my hands as the prison alarm sounded. I rolled my eyes and drew in a deep breath as I stared down at my boots. For the five years that I’d been in this dreary and grotesque place, I’d played that moment back in my head. Over and over, like a broken movie reel. Hyde called me a little after one in the morning on some random Wednesday to ride with him to pick up a very expensive and modded car for a client. It didn’t sit well with me in the first place since Hyde never called me for shit.
Plus, that wasn’t my fucking job.
“Why did you go?” I groaned.
I ran my hands down my face as I sat up. Prison guards yelled before a taser went off, crashing some unruly behemoth to the ground. Just another day at lunch for me, and yet again today I wasn’t hungry.
My nightmares haunted me more than usual.
See, prison gave me enough time to run down every detail of that night. Every phone call, every facial expression, and every person I’d come into contact with. And for the life of me, something felt off about it all. I couldn’t put my finger on what, but I knew once I got out, I wouldn’t stop until I had the answers I needed.
“Tell me again why I’m here,” I said.
Hyde shoved a coffee into my hand. “Simple. You’re an expert on modded cars and my client’s going to have questions I can’t answer.”
I snickered. “Then, why’d you take the damn job in the first place? Sounds like I should be at the head of this one.”
He slammed on the brakes and sent my coffee flying.
“What the fuck?” I asked as I looked over at him.
Hyde glared at me. “I was given this job because the client is a personal friend of mine. It’s taken me a while to solidify this deal, too. So, if you fuck it up? You’ll be the one paying my bills. Got it?”
I nodded slowly. “Maybe drive a bit easier, though. No car man trusts someone that can’t fucking drive a basic stick shift.”
That was another thing that felt off. Instead of taking our bikes, Hyde came and picked us up in some rubber-bumper bullshit excuse for a vehicle. Riding up on our motorcycles would’ve definitely impressed his client. Not some stick-shift rustbucket on wheels.
Up until that night, I didn’t even know Hyde owned a damn car.
“Curious,” I whispered.
The cacophony of sound coming from the cafeteria grew as inmates banged metal cups against their cell doors. Chants of “fight” and “get him” came from the other side of the facility and I stood to my feet. I slipped myself into my bottom bunk and closed my eyes, trying to make myself look as uninvolved as possible.
Because the last thing I needed was a stern beating from one of these asshats.
“Who the fuck is that?” Hyde asked.
I peered in the rearview mirror. “Shit.”
“Is that who I think it is?”
I drew in a deep breath. “Listen to me. Keep driving.”
Hyde looked over at me. “What?”
“I said keep driving past our turn. That’s a fucking cop behind us, and I have no idea how long he’s been tailing us.”
“But the car. I have to get paid for that—”
I reached over and fisted his jacket. “You listen to me and you listen good. I’m still your goddamn Sergeant at Arms until further notice, so don’t take the turn and keep on fucking driving.”
I mean did he take the car because he knew he’d be tailed? Was there heat on the job he hadn’t informed me of? Did he know I’d tell him to cancel the pickup?
Or was there something greater at work that night?
I threw my arm over my eyes. “Damn it.”
I gripped the “oh, shit” handle above my head. “Don’t step on the ga—no, Hyde! Back down!”
Hyde panicked. “We have to get out of here. I can’t get busted. I’ve got too much at stake with this.”
The cop threw his lights on behind us and started the chase.
“Damn it, Hyde, just pull over and let me get us out of this.”
He shook his head and white-knuckled the steering wheel. “We have to call Gage. We have to call him off.”
My eyes widened. “You fucking called Gage, too!?”
As the fighting grew louder and inmates cat-called for more, I choked back tears. My best friend. My confidante. He had been slaughtered that night because of Hyde’s squeamish bullshit. I mean I knew Hyde was a bit of a pansy at times. But I had no idea he’d panic like that under the idea of some cop following us around. I mean it wasn’t as if that kind of concept was new to us.
“He had something more riding on this job,” I murmured to myself.
I growled when I saw him pull out his gun. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Hyde pointed it out the window. “I’m sorry, Gage. But I can’t let this happen. I have to warn them that we’ve been blown.”
“Oh, so the fucking gunshot’s a warning shot? It’s going to get us killed because that cop will start—”
He fired into the air and I jolted. “Fucking Christ, Hyde! Let me out of this damn car!”
The tires of the concealed police car behind us squealed before two gunshots popped off. One came rip-roaring through the back windshield and one took the side-view mirror off my side of the car.
While Hyde kept popping off warning shots.
“Stop firing your goddamn gun or I’ll kill you myself!” I roared.
Then, he did the one stupid thing I could have strangled him for.
He took the fucking turn we weren’t supposed to take.
Cell doors around me were thrown open and men were tossed into their pens like the wild animals we truly were. And as I laid there, staring at the bottom of the bunk on top of mine, I thought about Gage. About how Hyde did literally everything opposite of what I asked him to do, and how those actions got my best friend killed. The only man I ever considered family. The only man I ever trusted.
Dead, in the blink of an eye.
And all because of Hyde’s sloppy actions.
“I’ll kill you myself when I get out,” I grumbled.
After we took that turn, it was all a blur. More cop cars showed up out of nowhere and our client barely got away. Gage and Hyde started shooting to try and get us out of the sticky situation, but a bullet right through Gage’s heart took him down before I could get to him. I still wasn’t sure how I got caught. I mean other than the fact that Hyde was a literal piece of cow dung about it all.
The next thing I knew, I was being pulled out of the car with ringing ears and cuffs slapped against my wrists.
The one thing that didn’t make sense though—the one thing that seemed out of place in all of it—were the charges brought against me. I figured I’d get some time for selling illegal, modded cars. Or riding in the car with a lunatic. Or attempting to evade the police. But no. The only charges brought against me were the former, with modding cars and shit.
And drugs.
There had been fucking drugs in Hyde’s car.
I had turned that one piece of evidence over in my head so many times that it made me sick. And for the life of me, I couldn’t debunk how absolutely shocked Hyde looked whenever they started pulling shit out from a false bottom in his trunk. Hyde’s shock seemed genuine enough. My shock was definitely genuine as well.
But there was so much about that night that didn’t add up.
For a while, I entertained the idea of a setup. The Black Flags had been after my club—the Dirty Misfits—for years before that. They were jealous of the territory we owned around these parts and they wanted a slice of it. And who wouldn’t? We had the best restaurants, the best bars, the best booze, and the best hideouts. We had the best apartments, townhomes, and meetup spots.
And the women.
Hoo wee, the women we lured into that part of town were prime slices of sinful goodness.
“Too many unanswered questions,” I whispered.
“What did you say!?” a guard roared.
He banged his club against the bars of my cell door, but I was unphased. “Can’t a man take a nap?”
He snickered. “Animals. All of them. Not even the screams of the weak wake them up.”
I shrugged. “Got no use for the weak, to be honest.”
As the fighting and the chaos died down, I forced my mind to turn elsewhere. I still had a year left on my sentence, and there was no way in hell I’d come closer to any sort of answers before then. Sure, I was eligible for parole, but I knew they wouldn’t give it to me. All of the prison guards in this place knew who I was. Knew who I ran with. Knew what I had my hands in.
Nope, I was serving all six years of my sentence, whether I liked it or not.
Nevertheless, I turned my thoughts to Raven. I’d thought about her more times than I cared to admit while being locked up in here. I mean a man didn’t have much masturbation material in this place, and Raven was the cream of the crop. Plus, I tried reaching out to her several times with letters and phone calls.
None of them were answered, of course. But it didn’t stop me from trying. It didn’t stop me from hoping that she might one day reach back.
That’s your dead best friend’s girl, man. Back the fuck off.
I drew in a deep breath and let it fill my lungs. I kept telling myself that the reason why I kept reaching out was to comfort her. To let her know that simply because Gage was gone doesn’t mean that she was alone. That man was my pal in everything: we ate together, rocked out together, ate shit together, went down together, and came up for air together. We had been attached at the hip until Hyde got him killed, and that left Raven all alone in the world.
I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.
You know it’s more than that.
I gnashed my teeth together. “Shut up.”
Another guard yelled at me. “What the fuck did you say to us?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not everything is about you, gentlemen. I’m just talking to myself.”
Something slammed against my cell door before another guard spoke. “You better just be talking to yourself. Otherwise you’ll find yourself on the—”
I craned my neck to look at them. “The business end of your baton there?”
The guard narrowed his eyes. “I think this one could use a bit of solitary for that mouth of his, you think?”
Yet another guard released my cell door. “My thoughts exactly.”
I stood to accept my fate, rejoicing in the fact that I’d finally get some fucking peace and quiet. Until a familiar voice sounded from around the corner, stopping the guards in their tracks.
“Sorry to interrupt, boys, but my client and I have a parole hearing to get to.”
My lawyer—Mr. James Rothsfield—came around the corner with yet another fucking guard. How many of these assholes did this prison employ? Nevertheless, the hot-headed guards that were ready to throw my ass downstairs backed off and my lawyer held out his arm.
“Ready, Mr. Brooks?”
I locked eyes with the still-growling hot-head. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Then, I walked right out of my cell and headed down the hallway while mentally preparing myself for the shitstorm this parole hearing would be.
Because I already knew the outcome.
I already knew I’d finish out my sentence in this dreary, disgusting place.
