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“Come over here.”
“No, John, I’m having a conversation.”
“You’re picking on him because you’re upset about something else; for heaven’s sake, Ree, you gave me almost the same speech about police killings last week. And you’re going to feel bad about how you’re behaving later. So, let’s cut out the middleman, and you and I walk over here, and you can savagely whisper your counterarguments in my ear.”
“Savagely whispering counterarguments is the title of Theo’s sex tape,” the younger man said. Then he squeaked and rubbed his leg where, Tean guessed, the man with the longish hair had pinched him.
When Tean checked Jem’s face, he was surprised to see a grin.
Jem tucked it away, expression serious again as he asked, “And?”
“And if we don’t get murdered by police officers in this hick town,” Tean said, “we’ll likely be arrested and convicted.”
“Community service,” Jem said. “Picking up trash. You know I wanted to work on my tan.”
“No, we’ll be convicted for tampering with evidence. Or destroying evidence. Or aiding and abetting.”
“Chump change.”
Tean shook his head. “Felony charges, minimum. And the girls—”
Jem made a warning noise.
The girls were off limits, so Tean corrected course. “And we won’t be getting fresh air and sunshine. We’ll be in a cell, probably for the rest of our lives, and eventually you won’t be able to stand being around me, not for that long, and you’ll drown me in a fresh batch of toilet wine, or you’ll turn your toothbrush into a shiv, or you’ll use the bedsheet to make an improvised hangman’s noose—”
“I don’t know how to tie one with rope,” Jem pointed out, “much less a bedsheet.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“And it’ll take days before they remove the body because they’ll want to teach you a lesson. And that’s how our story is going to end, with you killing me because of overexposure, and me murdered with cheap prison linens.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Emery said in a louder voice. The Black deputy, watching them from one of the desks, startled in her seat. “No, John, I will not be quiet. The term ‘prison linens’ is misleading because linen is much too costly and unable to stand up to the wear and tear of use in a penitentiary, and even ignoring the fact that they’d never incarcerate husbands together—”
“Thank God,” the blond man murmured.
“—it’s statistically impossible that you two would end up in the same cell, much less for the duration of your sentence, and that’s still leaving out time that you’d spend in the dining hall, the library, the recreation yard, etcetera.”
“Did he say etcetera out loud?” the younger man said.
The one with the longish hair shushed him.
“We’re having a conversation right now,” said the blond one—John, maybe? “You and I. About Jonas Cassidy.”
Emery shot him a dark look and opened his mouth. Then he seemed to think better about it, and he allowed himself to be led away—well, as far away as possible in the stamp-sized station house.
In a quiet voice, Jem said, “I would love to be your bunk-mate-slash-toilet-wine-hookup-slash-prison girlfriend, but it’s not going to come to that.”
Tean was running his finger up his nose before he caught himself; this pair of glasses, which Jem had given him, stayed firmly in place. He hadn’t caught himself doing that, trying to push them back up, for a long time. He set the thought aside and took a moment to consider what he wanted to say.
“Jem, there’s no way Missy could have done this. I don’t care about a t-shirt and a poncho.”
“Bloody poncho,” Jem said.
“Even so, there’s no proof that’s Yesenia’s blood. For heaven’s sake, there’s no proof Yesenia’s dead.”
“You’re looking for her too?” North asked.
