Inside (4 page)

“They’re going to move her soon. Now I just need to do my part.”

Which wouldn’t be easy and it might even be impossible. “Blood in, blood out,” she murmured. No wonder he’d reacted the way he had when she’d said that before. He knew the meaning of those words far better than she could’ve imagined.

A bitter smile curved his lips. “Blood in, blood out.”

Peyton felt such sadness for the dreams his sister had expressed in her letter.
We’re going to live the most boring, safest lives in the whole world,
she’d written, and just the opposite was true.

“Do you think your mother had anything to do with the murder of her husband?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

That explained why he hadn’t opened her letters. “A pretty unequivocal response. What makes you think—”

“And that’s all I’ll say on the subject,” he interrupted.

Peyton could see why he might not be eager to discuss it. She didn’t need to know any more, anyway. She’d already figured out what she deemed important.

After their little tussle, her hair was too messy to walk outside and risk running into Michelle. Pulling out the elastic, she shook it loose so she could redo it. “You’re not the luckiest man in the world, are you?”

He leaned against the wall and watched her from beneath half-lowered eyelids. “No. But I haven’t done myself any favors, either.”

At least he accepted responsibility for his actions.

“So where do we go from here?” he asked. “Are you planning to march over to Wallace’s room and try to blow up this deal? Because you won’t succeed. The department isn’t going to back off. They have me right where they want me, and they’re going to take full advantage of it.”

The more she complained and raised hell, the less chance Skinner would have of keeping a lid on what he was doing. She felt it was safer to say nothing. For now, anyway.

“No. I’m not even going to tell him I know.” She limped into the bathroom, tossed the bloody cloth in the sink and examined the cut on her neck in the mirror. “Whether or not you tell him is up to you, since you’re
the one putting your life on the line. But I want you to understand one thing.”

When he came to the doorway, he blocked it and she instantly felt trapped. “What’s that?”

Her injury was just a nick, nothing serious. “Fischer has put me in charge of this operation, so…you’d better play nice.”

“Which means…?”

“No games. You trust me, tell me everything as soon as you possibly can, and I’ll work to protect you.”

“Why’d Fischer put you in charge?”

Using her fingers to groom her long hair into some semblance of order, she created another knot at her nape. “It’s what he does when he encounters anything too…volatile.”

“You got stuck with the assignment no one else wanted.”

“Basically.”

“I feel sorry for you.”

Sarcasm. “I won’t apologize for caring about my job.” Taking another look at the cut on her neck, she dabbed at the fresh blood. “Just know that, for the time being, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

His gaze slid down her body. Either he’d noticed she was favoring her ankle and wondering if she was seriously hurt, or he was trying to intimidate her by reminding her that she was, after all, no match for his strength. “How friendly do we want to be?”

She rolled her eyes at the suggestiveness in his voice. Then she turned on the faucet and dampened a clean washcloth so she could remove the blood from her suit before it stained. “You nearly slit my throat. That’s hardly an aphrodisiac.”

“You broke into my motel room. There are people who might see that as…somewhat Freudian.”

“Which gives you an excuse to come on to me?”

He lifted his large hands. “Hey, I’m just playing my part, right? Isn’t that what you’d expect from a guy who’s been without a woman for fourteen years?”

She studied him in the mirror. “‘Without a woman’ doesn’t necessarily mean you haven’t been sexually active.”

“I’ve never had sex with a man, if that’s what you’re implying. But you’re not going to bed with me, so what does it matter?”

After hanging the cloth on the towel bar, she turned to face him. “If you knew that already, why’d you ask?” she said, but she could guess easily enough. He wasn’t used to being around a woman, let alone working with one, not since he’d been incarcerated, and this was his way of establishing some boundaries between them. After more than a decade of being forced to adhere to strict rules governing every interaction, he was probably uncomfortable with so much freedom. She understood the psychology, but still found the behavior fascinating.

“I asked so you could quit pretending,” he replied.

“Excuse me? Pretending what?”

“To look at me like a human being. I’m garbage, right? A beautiful woman like you, someone with a normal life and so much…
promise,
has no interest in gutter trash like me. I’m nothing to you.”

“Fortunately, I don’t know
exactly
what you’ve done. And I don’t want to know. Since we’ll be working together, I’d rather not let that form the basis of my opinion.”

“Hiding from my history won’t change who and what I am.”

He
was the one pointing that out? That said a lot about him, evoked a certain amount of respect, however grudging. “What’s the problem,
Simeon?
Afraid I’ll expect you to act like an honorable man?”

“Honorable?” He chuckled under his breath. “I’m not worried about that. Just making a few things clear.”

“Well, there’s no need to draw such a solid line between us.”

“Because you’re not likely to forget who and what I am?”

“Because you’re not interested in me in the first place.”

He leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “Why do you say that?”

“You don’t like authority figures.”

Reaching around her, he grabbed the cloth. Then his chest came within an inch of her breasts as he wiped the cut on her neck. She could tell he expected her to flinch. He was trying to prove she
wasn’t
really willing to treat him like any other man, despite her words.

But she didn’t jerk away, and that seemed to surprise him. Judging by the expression on his face, it also piqued his interest.

“Tell me how I’m not interested in you again?” he murmured.

“Stop testing me. I work with convicts every day. I won’t spook just because you stand close.”

Strong emotion flashed in his eyes as he took hold of her arm. “Maybe you should be more frightened than you are,” he said from between gritted teeth. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

If he wanted to hurt her, he would’ve done it when
he held the knife. So why was he dead set on displaying himself in the worst possible light? To make sure she wouldn’t give him a chance to prove he could be so much better?

She wanted to ask, but didn’t. She knew she’d be stupid to tempt him into revealing how terrible he could be. Besides, she preferred to keep her distance. He made her uneasy. But not because she feared him. Just the opposite, in fact. She saw something decent and worthy in him regardless of all he’d been through, all he’d said and done—which was dangerous in its own right. Feeling empathy or anything else for a man caught in this type of no-win situation could only lead to heartbreak.

“Next time you proposition someone, you might show some tenderness,” she said, and stared at his fingers, which were still wrapped tightly around her arm.

“Some women like it rough,” he said, but he let go simply because she’d indicated she wanted him to, and that made her smile. He was what she thought he was—essentially a good man.

“You can’t always play it safe,” she responded.

“Play it safe?” he echoed.

She removed her high heels so she could walk without stressing her ankle and squeezed past him. “Someday you might actually want to feel something that goes beyond the physical.”

He didn’t follow her. “That won’t be any day soon.”

Considering what he had to face in the coming weeks, that day might
never
come. But she didn’t see any reason to state the obvious. “Get some sleep,” she said, but then she spotted the groceries and remembered that he’d used them to prop open the door.

Hesitating, she turned back. “How’d you figure out I was here before you even entered the room?”

“I pay attention to detail,” he said, and this time when his gaze dropped to her legs, she got the impression he wanted her to know he was enjoying the view.

P
eyton Adams had done much more than break into his motel room; she’d blindsided him. The raw, jagged emotions she inspired—desire, regret, frustration, sadness and hope—slammed into one another as if there wasn’t room inside Virgil to hold them all. There probably wasn’t, not with the hate, anger and resentment already simmering in his heart.

You can’t always play it safe…. Someday you might actually want to feel something that goes beyond the physical,
she’d said. But she didn’t understand. After what he’d been through, it would be a
relief
to limit his experiences to tangible, concrete exchanges.

Anything more than that fed the yearning he felt for all the comforts and experiences a normal man would crave, and that was his greatest enemy. Anything more brought up the “what could have beens” and the “if onlys” and the “whys” that burned in his gut. Anything more made his existence unbearable.

The only way to survive in his world, at least without going mad, was to stop
wanting.
Wanting made him weak.

Dropping onto the bed, he covered his eyes with one arm while trying to regain the calm, cool, decisive
control that had taken him this far. Getting out of prison after so long and facing all the changes that required had been a lot harder than he’d anticipated. The opportunity to
finally
touch, taste, feel, smell and see the outside world had made him greedy. He wanted to grab what he could, experience as much real living as possible before it was too late. And finding a beautiful woman in his room, especially one who knew what he was and didn’t seem to be afraid, only heightened that desperate urge.

But he wouldn’t think about Peyton anymore. It didn’t matter how pretty she was. Who was she to him? No one. Just a woman—a woman he’d be a fool to even
like.
He couldn’t afford distractions, hopes or disappointments. Only if he managed to do the impossible would his sister and her children have a chance at the life they deserved, and he wanted that for Laurel, Mia and Jake more than all the things he wanted for himself.

Lifting his arm, he eyed the phone, wishing he could call Laurel. He knew she had to be upset, even frantic with worry, and that made him agitated, too. But Wallace was right. He couldn’t put her mind at ease. Not yet. When she’d arrived at the prison to get him, she would’ve been told that someone else had picked him up and that was all she could know until Wallace had her safely tucked away, with a new identity, somewhere else in the country.

Just a few more days, he told himself. As soon as Wallace called to say she was in protective custody, he’d explain.

The relief he felt then would have to carry him through the months ahead….

The Ford Fusion was back. Laurel spotted it in the pale yellow light of the streetlamp near her neighbor’s
house, and the nagging anxiety she’d experienced so often of late began to churn in her stomach. The acidic burn suggested her ulcer was coming back. The doctor had warned her that could happen. He’d insisted she relax, calm down. But how could she calm down when her brother was missing? When she was being watched, even followed, by two men she’d never seen before? She had children to protect.

Were these strangers somehow involved in Virgil’s disappearance? She’d thought that collecting her brother from prison would be the easiest part of the past fourteen years. But it hadn’t gone as planned. When she’d arrived, he’d already left, and no one seemed to know where he was.

Had he slipped away because he knew these men would be waiting for him?
Were
they waiting for him? What else could they want? They’d started coming by around the time she’d first learned he’d be exonerated.

If only she’d hear from him.

Fearing he might be dead, she struggled to hold back the tears that seemed to burn behind her eyes all the time now. She and Virgil had been through too much for his life to end so soon. They deserved the chance to recover what they could of the years they’d lost.

Forever conscious of the car across the street, she returned her attention to the window. She needed to call the police again. Yesterday they’d sent out a patrol unit. The officer had run the men off and warned them not to return, yet here they were. They didn’t frighten easily.

Maybe they’d be arrested this time.

She’d just pulled her cell phone out of her pocket when a noise from behind caused her to whirl around. A man of about twenty-seven stood in her living room.
He’d shaved his head, although a small patch of hair grew from his chin. He wore baggy jeans and an overlarge T-shirt that hung on his muscular body and even his face was tattooed. His physical appearance was frightening enough; the gun he held in his right hand made him downright terrifying.

“Throw your phone over here.” He motioned with the muzzle.

If she did as he asked, she wouldn’t be able to summon help. But if she didn’t, he’d kill her and the noise would wake Mia and Jake.

She imagined them stumbling from their beds to find her dead on the floor, and tossed it away, hoping she’d be able to placate him. “Who are you?” she whispered.

Only five foot nine or so, the intruder seemed almost as wide as he did tall. A gold tooth flashed when he talked, but his eyes had no sparkle. They reminded her of shark eyes—dark, flat and dull. “I’ll ask the questions. Where is he?”

Her heart pushed the blood through her body at a dizzying pace. “Who?”

“Skin.”

She prayed he’d keep his voice down. “Who’s Skin? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Virgil Skinner. You know
that
name, don’t you?”

That he believed Virgil to be alive gave her a glimmer of hope. It meant this man, whoever he was, hadn’t killed him, and neither had those people outside on the street—whoever
they
were.

“Where is he?” he demanded again.

“I have no clue.”

“He better not be dropping the flag.”

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.”

“Those stairs are so steep,” Michelle complained. “They’re dangerous.”

But they provided an incredible view of the sea.
Peyton loved her small, cabinlike home, and the deck was her favorite part of it. “They’re fine as long as you watch where you’re going.”

“Are you on crutches?”

“Not quite.”

“So will you be coming to dinner?”

“Dinner’s still on?”

“Of course.”

“What did Jodie and Kim say?”

“Jodie’s fighting with her ex and doesn’t feel she can leave the kids. But Kim’s coming.”

Peyton wanted to say she’d go. But she couldn’t take the time, not when she only had three days to prepare Virgil. She got the impression that Wallace planned to toss him inside and let him learn it all from the ground up, but she felt Virgil’s stint at Pelican Bay could be shortened if she gave him a crash course on who was who inside the Hells Fury and what to expect from them. Now that she was in charge of the investigation, at least the on-site part, she had every reason to make sure it ran smoothly, and that was what she intended to do. Skinner wouldn’t be killed on
her
watch.

“I wish I could, but I should stay off my ankle. I’m behind at the prison, anyway, and had to bring some paperwork home with me.”

“You work too hard, you know?”

“That’s what it takes.”

“Come on, I can’t believe you’re bailing out.”

Knowing how much Michelle counted on the escape their evenings provided, Peyton felt a twinge of guilt. But she wouldn’t be good company. Not tonight. She was too distracted, too caught up in what would be happening at the prison on Tuesday. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay. We’ll miss you, but—” Michelle sighed “—I guess it’s not a big deal.”

“Have fun.”

“We will. Someone just walked in. I have to go.”

“Wait—will you put me through to Rick Wallace’s room?”

“Mr. Wallace is gone.” Michelle sounded surprised.