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“And what else do you know?” Gia snapped at him.
Gia was exhausted, and her ribs were sore. The baby, as if sensing the anxiety of its momma, had been kicking up all afternoon and into the early evening. Gia rubbed her belly automatically in a soothing gesture while she willed the throbbing pain in her temple to ease.
A few moments earlier she had walked into the kitchen to find Reno at the table with his mother. Gia listened on in horror as he explained that Riker had been arrested.
“And?” Gia shot out in exasperation.
“Well…uh…like I said…Riker’s been brought in…” Reno spoke with great hesitance.
At Reno’s obvious reluctance to share, Gia finally lost the battle with her frayed nerves.
“God damn it, Reno! All this hemming and hawing is only making it worse!” Gia called him out on his bullshit evasion of the truth tactics.
Dolly interceded on Gia’s behalf and said to her son, “Full disclosure, honey. She needs to know.”
Reno’s gaze swept over Gia and stalled at her baby-belly for a few seconds before his eyes met hers. “It’s not good.”
“Really? Because I thought the ATF agents crawling like hungry ants all over this place all afternoon meant that everything was going to be just fine.” Gia’s tone bit with sarcasm. Then her shoulders slumped from carrying the weight of the world. “Reno, seriously? You think I don’t get how bad this must be?”
“The club’s on it, Gia.” Reno hastened to reassure her. “Prosper’s putting together a whole team and calling in every marker to get Riker outa this mess.”
“Okay.” Gia struggled to stay calm. “How big of a mess are we talking about?”
More bullshit hesitation from Reno.
With a sigh born out of sheer frustration and anger, Gia led with her belly as she pushed herself to stand. Her back cramped and she gasped with pain. When Reno reached to help her, she swatted his hand away. “The only help I need from you is to hear the truth.” She spat at him. “Do you not understand how much harder this is making it—this not knowing?”
“For the love of god, Reno tell the woman what is happening!” Dolly scolded her son.
“Okay, Ma. But don’t shoot the messenger.”
Then Reno began to talk.
And when he was done, both women sat at the table in stunned silence.
A deep raw panic had settled like a wet, heavy blanket on top of Gia’s chest and she couldn’t breathe. She became dimly aware that the rain that had been threatening all day had now arrived with a vengeance. Without another word, Gia headed for the door and once she got there, she kept walking. It was storm season, so the rain didn’t content itself to pour downward, but instead the torrents hit at such an angle that it crept under her collar and stung her face. Gia only stopped when she came to the edge of the lake. There she stood watching the waves batter themselves furiously against the shore as the storm gathered strength and raged around her. Rain ran unchecked down Gia’s face, coursed over her belly and streamed down between her breasts. Gia’s Catholic upbringing urged her to pray, but she didn’t have the heart to try.
Five Kilos of Heroin.
Why in the world…why? Why! Whyhad Riker agreed to transport such a large quantity of drugs when he had so much to lose? Whentheyhad so much to lose?
Gia felt Dolly cover her shoulders with a warm jacket and shelter them both under a big umbrella.
“This can’t be the end, Dolly. This can’t be the end of our story.”
“It’s not the end, honey. We won’t let it be the end.” Dolly gave Gia a fierce hug, then she led her inside and out of the storm.
What a horrible, wretched, depressing place this was.
Maybe it was different at other detention centers, Gia didn’t know. Despite her family’s criminal connections, Gia had never been allowed to visit a prison. Besides, even if she had, the federal prison where her father had been sentenced to and died in, had to have been much different than this hell hole. Hadn’t it? Even though Gia didn’t expect the day to be without its challenges, nothing in Gia’s worst imaginings could have prepared her for this.
Because Riker had been arrested crossing state lines he was being held in a prison about four and a half hours away. So, for a pregnant woman, the ride to the prison itself was a literal pain in the ass. Gia’s lumbar ached, her bum kept going numb, and she had to ask Prosper to stop and let her pee so often that after a while he just automatically pulled into any and all rest stops.
Gia and Prosper in a car alone for several hours? awkward times a million.
Considering that they barely knew each other, Gia supposed that a conversation between the two of them under any situation might have been awkward, but the circumstances under which they found themselves thrown together now, made small talk seem even more ludicrous. After a few brief attempts, they both settled into their own thoughts. Prosper kept his eye on the road, and Gia looked out the window. She watched the miles go by in long depressing stretches of nothing but colorless fields and worn out highway.
They stood in line together in the parking lot and waited with the hundreds of other visitors for the white buses that would shuttle them to the prison. Once there, they would be treated to more long, uncomfortable periods of standing, waiting, being searched, checking in and then more waiting.
