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Jaxon doesn’t ask me anything as he escorts me down the hallway and back to my unit. I wonder if he already knows what the warden was planning. If he does, he doesn’t let on, and the silence is heavy between us as we walk.
“Hey baby.” Lace meets me at the entrance of the unit, shooting Jaxon a stink-eye as he turns to depart. “What did the Boss want?”
“I think you mean to say the warden?” Ronnie seems to appear out of nowhere. She’s got a notebook in one hand and a sharp pencil in the other. She smirks, her eyes playing over my face, trying to read my expression. “After all,” she says to Lace. “The Boss is right here.”
Lace doesn’t say anything to this, and I know she doesn’t want the drama of provoking Ronnie.
“She wanted to get to know me, is all.” I shrug and shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “A right bitch, that one is.”
Seemingly pleased with my verdict, Ronnie walks away, leaving Lace and I on our own in the common room.
“Come with me,” she murmurs, taking my hand in hers. She pulls me to her cell and we shut the door behind us. Her unit is the same as mine, except for a few personal belongings. She also has a lacy pink blanket thrown over her bed, one from home, I imagine, and a teddy bear sitting at the foot of the mattress. It’s adorably innocent, and it makes me want her even more.
I take a seat on Lace’s bed, fingering the frills from the comforter. Lace sits down next to me, placing her hand over mine. She’s warm, so warm. I feel like I can never get warm in here.
“What did the warden really want?” she asks, her voice low. I push out a deep breath and roll my eyes, tightening my fingers against hers. When I don’t answer immediately, Lace reaches one hand up and strokes my cheek with her thumb.
“She was asking about the drugs,” I say. “She knows that Ronnie is dealing and she wants help taking her down.”
Lace blows a breath of air from between pursed lips and swallows. “Did you tell her the truth?” she asks. I turn my face so that I’m staring right into Lace’s beautiful blue eyes, and I shake my head.
“I might be a noob, beautiful girl, but I’m not an idiot.”
“I never said you were.” Lace drops her fingers from my cheek and down to my lips, caressing them with a single finger. “She’s not wrong, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I believe you could help her take down Ronnie, too.”
“Lace.” I pull my head back so I can look into her eyes, and her hand drops to the bed. She looks away, unable to meet my gaze.
“Some of us are sick about it,” she says. “But when you came in here, Joey, you didn’t give a shit about the drugs or about Ronnie. There’s nothing more powerful than indifference.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, but I’m afraid to hear the answer.
“You know what I’m saying.” Lace gets to her feet and crosses the room to peer out the tiny window from the cell into the common area, probably to make sure nobody’s listening at the door. She then turns back to me, her gaze meeting mine. “You could take Ronnie, Joe. You could become the Boss.”
I smile at her and shake my head, then get to my feet and meet her in the middle of the floor. I take her waist between my two hands and draw her into me, allowing one hand to caress the small of her back as my lips tease hers, fighting for an open. Lace moans as my tongue slips between her lips and I kiss her, hard, pushing my body against her own. When I release her, Lace is smiling, too, and the anxiety she’d had moments before has seem to have melted away.
“Why would I risk that?” I ask her. “I have everything I could possibly want in here.”
Chapter Eleven
At dinnertime,I send Lace ahead with Sabine and Camilla so I can drop in and call Julie again, for the hundredth time, praying she’ll answer. In the time that I’ve been back from court, I’ve tried my sister every day, usually multiple times a day, and I still haven’t heard from her. At this point, I can only assume she’s in trouble. Julie and I have never gone this long without talking. Not ever.
She doesn’t answer. I’m not surprised. As I slam the phone back onto the receiver and begin to turn away, someone bumps into me from behind, slamming me unnecessarily hard against the brick wall. I whip my head around and see Lulu and Siv together, hands shoved in the pockets of their jackets. Lulu is scowling, but Siv seems amused.
“Fuck you,” I say, expecting one of them to retaliate. Neither of them does.
“Tough shit, are you?” sneers Lulu. “We all know you’re pretending to be the good girl here. But there are no good girls here, Josephine. Just bad girls in a bad place.” She slips a hand into her own pocket and turns her body, shielding us from any curious eyes. In her fingers is a small, tightly wrapped package. Drugs. Probably crack.
“Get that shit out of my face.” I shoulder past Lulu, but Siv steps in front of me. She’s much larger than me, and much more difficult to push out of the way, so I stop.
“Ronnie isn’t convinced you don’t want to help us out.” Lulu steps up behind me, her lips near my ear, and I flinch. She stinks, as though the drugs have convinced her she doesn’t need to shower.
“I can promise all of you I want nothing to do with that shit. Nothing.”
“She thinks you’d be good for it,” Lulu says. “You have the skills.” She drops the drugs back into her pocket and reaches out to touch my face. Her fingers are ice-cold. No circulation. I move my head away and Lulu drops her hand. “Just think about it,” she murmurs. “Something like this could give you power in a place like this. You’ll need it.”
