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“This way,” Aimee said, leading him up the stairs.
A quick scan of the gruff and scarred faces in the room didn’t reveal Bang Bang. He wasn’t a hard one to spot, either. If he were there, Roman would have seen him.
“Hey, fresh meat!” The yell came from a locked cell Roman crossed in front of. “Pretty boy, look over here, look this way.”
Roman glanced to his left. The man yelling at him was tattooed from head to toe, the hands gripping onto the bars inked so that they looked like bones. The man blew Roman a kiss and grabbed his crotch, earning a bang against his cell from Aimee with her bully stick. “None of that,” she said, moving Roman down toward the last cell.
Thank God it’s me in here and not Wyatt.
If Roman hadn’t rescued Wyatt in the museum, then it would be him walking down this path right now, and Roman wasn’t sure if Wyatt would have even made it to his cell. That twinky, smiley, positive guy with a bubble butt and bright eyes would have been eaten alive inside of these four walls. Even the thought alone made Roman’s blood boil. It made him want to knock out the guy’s teeth even though he’d done nothing but heckle Roman.
He knew, though, that if the man got a chance, he’d attack Wyatt like a rabid animal, horned up and looking for only one single thing.
And that really pissed him off. Even fictional situations were enough to get Roman riled up, but only for his Salt. The man he’d almost lost after being a dumb and selfish kid, only looking out for his best interests without realizing what interested him best had been standing in front of him that entire time.
“In here,” Aimee said, tapping her key card against a panel and causing the door to slide open. “Looks like they already moved your cellmate in. Congrats.” She spoke with a deadpan tone, her expression blank of anything except slight annoyance.
Roman braced himself, getting ready for the posturing. Would his cellmate be an aggressive and testosterone-infused meathead, or would he be a more cunning manipulator? One of the leaders of the many gangs that circulated through this prison? He’d be able to handle either but preferred the meathead, if only to outsmart him and find a way to use him in an escape plan. The smarter guys were harder to use, but Roman would find a way if he had to.
He looked into the cell, unable to comprehend just what he was seeing—who he was looking at. It was impossible. The tall and burly-framed man standing in front of him had to be a ghost, a hologram, a hallucination. There was no way… unless. Salt. He must have done this. He’d figured out a way, and he’d earn a knee-shaking kiss from Roman the second he broke free.
“Inside,” Aimee said. Roman kept his face neutral even though he wanted to run up and grab Bang Bang in a tight hug. Relief flooded through him, but he kept that from showing, too. The last thing he wanted to do was tip Aimee off that they knew each other. Bang Bang seemed to be on the same page, zero recognition showing.
“Yard time is in an hour, and dinner is after that.” Aimee crossed her arms, looking between Roman and Bang Bang, thin brows slinking together.
Shit, is she figuring it out?
Bang Bang turned away from her gaze and made himself busy with a book he had left open on his cot. Aimee stayed for a couple more seconds that seemed to stretch into infinity. A sequence of aggressive and slightly unhinged shouts from a couple of cells down seemed to break her train of thought. She turned and hurried toward the noise, bully stick in hand.
Roman waited until the coast was clear before going in for that hug. Bang Bang grabbed him in those massive arms of his, crushing him tightly.
“Broki, oh man is it good seeing you here.”
“How are you?” Roman asked, stepping back and taking stock of his best friend. He looked a little thinner, his cheeks dipping in more than Roman was used to seeing. There were bags under his eyes, and his normally buzzed hair was growing in, a cowlick on the back of his head sticking straight up. His light blue jumpsuit appeared clean and a size too big, adding to whatever weight Bang Bang had lost inside of solitary.
“Better now, broki. Shit, this has been rough. I’ve spent time in jail before but never in the shoe. It was driving me crazy.”
“Same here. I kept going over what I could have done differently instead of what I could do now. The museum played on a loop, and there were no distractions.”
“How’d we get out?” Bang Bang asked, sitting back down on the bed and causing the springs to screech in protest. “And how’d we land together like this? Seems like a fucking miracle.”
