Officer out of Uniform (Lock and Key Book 2) (10 page)

“Looks like he’s auditioning for an episode of
Hoarders
,” Grey said. “That what you’ve got going on here, Whitby?”

Whitby made a face like he’d just bitten into a crabapple. “This is all stuff I’m allowed to have!”

“I need to have a talk with you,” Liam said. “Come on.”

“I didn’t do nothin’, CO.”

“Come on.”

Whitby cast a glare over his shoulder at Henry and Grey as Liam led him away.

“So you know there could be anything in here, right?” Grey said.

Henry pulled his cell searching gloves out of a pocket and put them on. They were supposed to protect him from things like hypodermic needles, blades and bodily fluids. Just like every time he cleaned out a cell, he hoped the task wouldn’t test their effectiveness. When he was gloved he broke out a bag for all the junk. “Better get started.”

Grey started with the newspapers. “Think he’ll want to keep the latest edition?”

Henry glanced at the headline and rolled his eyes. “Probably.”

Grey tossed it onto the cot and started putting older papers into the bag.

“Holy shit,” he said a minute later, “look at this.”

Henry stared down at the toilet paper pyramid. “I thought it was weird that he only had three tubes of toothpaste.”

In the center of each roll of toilet paper, there was a tube of toothpaste. Altogether, about a dozen.

“It’s surprising how bad his teeth are,” Grey said. “You’d think that with all this, they’d be minty fresh and sparkling.”

“Just because he hoards it doesn’t mean he actually uses it,” Henry said. One by one, he collected the tubes and tossed them into the bag. He left one out. Maybe – hopefully – Whitby would actually use it.

“Don’t forget about this.” Grey motioned toward a small box he’d set in the middle of the cot.

Henry tossed the single tube of toothpaste into it. The box was what measured the amount of personal belongings Whitby was allowed to have in his cell – since there was no way Whitby would whittle his possessions down to a selection small enough to fit in the box, Henry and Grey would just have to choose for him.

They filled the box with one or two of everything. Toothpaste, toilet paper, some snack cakes they’d found wedged under the cot mattress and the latest edition of the damned newspaper.

“I’m actually sweating,” Grey said when they were done.

They’d filled two bags completely full of junk.

They’d barely hefted them out of the cell when Liam appeared with Whitby.

Whitby froze like a deer in headlights. His mouth dropped open as he stared at his clean cell, and for a few seconds, he didn’t say anything. He stood rigidly, and his face turned a darker shade of red with each passing second. When he finally spoke, it was like an explosion. “God damn it! God fucking damn it! I’m allowed to have all this. You can’t take it from me!”

“Relax,” Grey said, “we filled a box with stuff you can keep.”

Whitby shook like a baby palm caught in a hurricane wind. “God damn it! You can’t take anything from me! I’m allowed to have it!”

He went on like that, building steam, for several seconds.

“Whitby!” Liam grimaced. “I just told you why you can’t keep all that crap. Throwing a fit isn’t going to change anything.”

Whitby glared daggers at Henry and Grey, then ground his teeth, practically frothing at the mouth. “I’m not—”

“If you don’t want what we’ve chosen for you, it can all be trashed,” Henry said.

“I don’t want what you picked!” Whitby grabbed the box and stared down at its contents. “There’s only one roll of toilet paper! What the fuck am I supposed to do with one roll?”

Grey offered a reasonable suggestion, which didn’t go over very well with Whitby.

“I want another roll!” He picked a snack cake out of the box and dropped it on the floor. “I want it instead.”

Grey made Whitby pick up the cake, then handed him a second roll of toilet paper in exchange.

Whitby looked at it like it was gum peeled off the bottom of someone’s shoe. “Not this one.”

Jesus. It was going to be a long day.

“They’re all the same,” Liam said.

“That’s all you know! Fucking thief.”

“Negotiations are over,” Liam said. “You have what you have. No more hoarding – we’re going to be inspecting your cell carefully every day.”

Whitby bared his teeth. “Fuck you!”

As soon as they’d closed and locked the cell door, Whitby started going off again.

“You’re all a bunch of fucking thieves! Fucking pussies. Stealing my shit. You belong in here too, only you have badges so you think you can just go and take other people’s personal shit whenever you feel like it!” He picked the newspaper out of his box and threw it against the bars of his cell door.

It slid to the floor and flew apart, shedding pages.

Henry looked down at the front page. The full-color headliner image showed a familiar scene: the warden’s house and its row of sentinel pines, with crime scene tape strung around their trunks.
Riley Prison Warden Killed
, the headline read.
Murderer Still at Large
.

“I hope you’re all next,” Whitby shrieked. “I hope you all get shot and strung up in fuckin’ trees!”

 “Hi, mom.” Sasha stepped over the threshold of the familiar yellow house. With just two bedrooms, it was small but still provided more space than her mother really needed, living alone.

Sasha’s sandal hit something soft and she pitched forward, catching herself on the nearest kitchen counter. “Watch it, Oscar! Mom, I think he’s making a break for it.”

Sasha’s mother – basically an older, red-haired version of her – hurried forward and scooped up the grey tabby cat. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. Maybe he’s just excited to have a visitor.”

Sasha fought the frown she felt creeping up on her and reached out to scratch Oscar between the ears. “Have you had many others, lately?”

Her mother shrugged and waved a hand. “Not really, no.”

A twinge of guilt hit Sasha in the center of her chest. It’d been months since she’d visited her mom. She should make it a point to do so more often. The drive wasn’t that long.

She hated the thought of her mom feeling lonely, and the occasion reminded her that that was likely.

“There’s just no point in inviting the girls from the watercolor club over this time of year,” her mother continued, depositing Oscar on the kitchen floor. “Not when Anna has a pool at her place. I think I’ve been over there every week since summer started.”

“You’re still doing the watercolor club?” Sasha breathed a sigh of relief.

“Yes.” Her mother nodded. “I’d show you some of my artwork, but then you’d have blackmail material. Anyway, I may not be the next Georgia O’Keeffe, but it’s still fun.”

“Oh, come on. Your paintings can’t be
that
bad.”

Actually, if Sasha had inherited her artistic skills – or lack thereof – from her mother, they could very well be that bad. But she wasn’t about to say that out loud. She was just relieved that her mom hadn’t spent the summer holed up in the house with Oscar.

Her mother just waved a hand. “They really are, but never mind. How was your drive?”

Sasha averted her gaze to the counter, where a beautiful memorial wreath had been propped up. It was bursting with flowers and she reached out to touch one, fingertips brushing the edge of an ivory petal. She didn’t know what the bloom was called – that was something her friend Alicia would know.

“It was fine,” she said as reality hit her again, driving away thoughts of watercolors and summertime dips in the pool. “I hit the road early enough that traffic wasn’t too bad.”

She never got any better at this: dealing with this day, trying to be stable, mature and strong for her mom while letting the appropriate amount of grief show through. As a teenager, it had never occurred to her to try to rein in her emotions, to tuck her heart beneath her sleeve and give her mom a chance to grieve and face her own emotions without having to constantly worry about her daughter’s.

Now, as a 30 year old woman, she felt the guilt of having added to her mother’s burden, selfishly demanding emotional energy she hadn’t had to spare. She longed to make up for it now – to shoulder the weight of her father’s death and be a strong shoulder her mother could cry on.

The problem was, her mother never cried. She had at the time, of course, though in retrospect, she’d probably shed most of her tears alone, saving them for when she wasn’t around her daughter. The times she’d cried in front of Sasha had probably been occasions when she hadn’t been able to help it, when it’d just been too much to take.

The last time Sasha had seen her mother shed a tear had been on the first anniversary of her father’s death – fourteen years ago. Now, she wanted to let her mother know she didn’t need to keep up the strong front anymore, but she didn’t know how.

“Are you ready to leave now,” her mother asked, “or do you need to unwind a little after all that time on the road?”

“I’m ready. Don’t worry about me.” Sasha picked up the wreath, careful not to damage the blossoms. It had probably cost hundreds of dollars.

“I’ll drive,” she added, silently vowing to provide the flowers next year.

The small town her mother called home flashed by in a blur as they headed for the cemetery. Sasha gripped the wheel a little more tightly than necessary and drew a deep breath. She knew she wasn’t exactly the most reserved woman to ever walk the face of the planet. She liked to talk and her thoughts had a tendency to fly right out of her mouth.

Not all of them, though. Not the important ones – the kind of words that bridged gaps between hearts and built bonds didn’t come easily.

“You know mom,” she finally said when the memorial gardens were within sight, “I can’t help thinking of how hard it was for you, losing dad and having to deal with an emotional teenager at the same time. It just doesn’t seem fair that you had to put my feelings before your own during a time like that. I feel bad about it.”

There, it was out. She breathed a little sigh of relief, then held her breath as she waited for a reply.

“You feel bad about what – that your father died, or that you had strong feelings about it?”

“Well.” She made it sound so simple. “Both and neither. What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry you had to invest so much energy in me when you’d just lost the love of your life.”

Her mother shook her head. “I lost
one
of them. I love you just as much as I loved your father, Sasha. Do you really think I would’ve been happier or healthier grieving alone?”

Sasha slowed the car and turned into the cemetery grounds as she mulled that over.

“I was glad to have you,” her mother continued. “And although it wasn’t easy to see you hurt so badly, it just went to prove what a good father he’d been. In a way, I think it would’ve pained me more if you
hadn’t
been so affected.”

“Of course he was a good dad,” Sasha agreed. “The best.”

“When things were at their worst, you were my reason to keep going. Even though he was gone, I still had you – don’t ever think I wasn’t grateful for that.”

Sasha’s heart lightened just a little. “Still. I just wish I’d been mature enough to make it easier for you.”

“It’s never easy losing someone you love. Once you give someone a piece of your heart, that’s it – you don’t get it back, and when they go, it goes with them. The most you can hope for is having someone else to share what’s left of it with.”

“Mom, that’s…” Sasha searched for the right word. Her mother and father had always been close, and she didn’t want to downplay the strength of their bond or the potency of her mother’s grief, even after fourteen long years. In a way, what she’d said was touching. But it was also unnerving.

“I don’t mean to scare you Sasha,” her mother continued, “but if you ever fall in love, you’ll know it’s true.”

Maybe. But just the thought of finding out what it felt like to fall in love and then lose that person made her throat feel tight – almost too tight to breathe. The pain of losing her dad was still clear in her memory and fresh in her heart. Would falling in love mean having to relive that agony, someday?

“It’s okay, mom – you can tell me how you feel. I’m an adult now.” She flashed her mother what was hopefully a reassuring smile, even though she didn’t feel it inside.

Inside, she kept thinking back to that morning, and the night before. She kept thinking of Henry, and what it would feel like to love and lose him. The possibility already felt unnervingly real, and although she’d been trying to keep her heart in check, she couldn’t escape the feeling that if anything happened to him, he’d take a piece of it with him.

One she wouldn’t get back.

* * * * *

“No Sasha, we can’t have sex. You can’t touch me like that, either. As long as Randy Levinson is out there, I need to keep a clear head.”

Henry leaned back against the truck seat with a groan. No matter how many times he practiced saying it, it wasn’t going to be easy to carry out.

For fuck’s sake, he’d just finished a shift at work and he was just as hard driving home as he’d been on the way there. The only relief he experienced was when he was actually at work. Even then, his balls ached. And as soon as he stepped foot out of Riley, his dick sprang back to full attention.

If Randy Levinson didn’t kill him, celibacy just might.

“I can’t protect you if I’m inside you,” he murmured, mired in the depths of a fantasy that involved being back in his bed with Sasha, this time with her on top of him. Thinking about saying no had conjured up thoughts of exactly what he’d have to say no
to
.

Lack of sex was turning him into a complete idiot. If he didn’t know any better, he’d resolve to pull her into bed as soon as he saw her and get it out of his system.

Realistically, he knew there was no getting Sasha out of his system.

No matter how many times they did it, no matter how loudly she screamed. He was doomed to a lifetime of blue-balled idiocy, at least until Levinson was caught and he could afford to let his guard down a little, take time to enjoy Sasha.

For now, he’d just have to suffer.

As thoughts of her luscious body chased themselves through his head, he passed the warden’s place. There was no body hanging from a tree this time, just some crime scene tape that sectioned off the place where it’d happened. He could still see the scene clearly inside his head, though.

His mind seemed to be a breeding ground for stuff like that: blood and loss and things he just couldn’t let go.

Things that kept him up at night, and affected every little thing he did, from triple-locking his doors to the way he laid in bed, listening for strange noises instead of counting sheep. The ugly things he’d seen were a part of him, had altered the way he lived daily. All the little things that collectively formed what Grey liked to call his ‘paranoia’ were the legacy his dead friends had left him.

Now, the warden was part of that too, would live on for as long as Henry walked the earth, locking every door behind himself. He’d probably live longer because of it – because of those deaths. Maybe that was twisted, but so was the world. He’d seen that proven time and time again.

The worst part was that he couldn’t do anything about what’d happened to the warden. The police had investigated the scene of his death, but Riley’s PERT officers hadn’t been called out for any type of search. Apparently there hadn’t been any conclusive forensic evidence left at the scene of the crime. No fingerprints. No hairs with roots conveniently attached. No blood, besides the warden’s.

Unlike many murders, the victim hadn’t had a chance to put up a fight. He’d been shot in the back, then his throat had been cut. Afterward, the killer had apparently taken pains not to leave any incriminating physical evidence behind.

So Henry had been forced to stay inside the prison all day, dealing with the criminals who were behind bars, where they belonged. It’d been an epic pain in the ass, especially in light of the ongoing lockdown.

Of course, the inmates were taking it about as well as cats took to water. Furious over the temporary ban on their usual recreational privileges, many of them went out of their way to make their displeasure known. Another officer on Henry’s shift had had piss thrown on his uniform.

Piss and angry felons aside, it’d been torture to stay within prison walls knowing that Randy Levinson was on the outside, along with every innocent person in Riley County. He’d felt just as trapped as the prisoners.

Now, he was finally done with work for the day and was free to do what he wanted.

Of course, what he really wanted to be doing was suiting up in his PERT gear and starting the search for Randy Levinson’s sorry ass. He tried not to be too bitter as he pulled into his driveway. He
did
want to be there for Sasha when she arrived back in Riley County after her daytrip to visit her mother. He’d managed to convince her to drive straight to his place instead of heading home.