Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I could feel Gabriel’s eyes following me the whole way.
4
GABRIEL
I couldn’t get her out of my head.
I was lying on my bunk in a Z shape: head and shoulders up against the wall, knees raised, a sketchpad leaning against them. Olivia gradually appeared out of the strokes of my pencil: her tightly pulled-back hair, her soft lips, those big, innocent eyes…
I don’t have much of a talent for sketching, but you can get good at anything if you sink enough time into it, and time was one thing I had plenty of. In three years, I’d learned magic tricks, a little Italian and how to draw people.
I’d wanted her since the first moment I saw her. Pure animal lust, simple to understand. But there were other feelings, too, ones that unsettled me. It had started with that protective urge but it was spreading and growing, waking parts of me I thought I’d shut down years ago. I didn’t just want her anymore. I…liked her. I liked the fact she was so good, so innocent. Naive, almost: she even thought that I could be redeemed, that I was a good guy who’d just taken a wrong turn in life.
I shifted uncomfortably on the bunk. That was wrong, of course. Ridiculous. But a traitorous part of me liked hearing it. Wished it were true, even.
I shook my head, annoyed. What I needed was to seduce her. Fuck her. Then she’d be out of my system and everything could get back to normal.
“She’s hot,” said a voice above me.
I looked up. Tobias Larson, my cellmate, was leaning down from the top bunk, looking upside down at my sketchpad. I grunted in response, not in the mood for talking.
Larson twisted his head for a better look, then frowned. “Wait, is that Doc Truesdale?” He looked at me. “You know, there are guys who’d pay good money for a picture like that. ‘Specially if you continued it on down, got her boobs and everything in.”
I turned to him, a big swell of protective fury rising up inside me. I’m not sure what was on my face, but Larson put both hands up defensively and silently withdrew to the top bunk.
What’s wrong with me? I slammed the sketchpad closed. The heat hadn’t let up and every breath was a struggle: it was too damn hot to do anything but sit in my cell. But I had to do something. I’d go and make my rounds, find out who needed what and what they were willing to bargain for it. That would get her out of my head.
I set off through the prison, nodding to gang leaders, stopping now and then to chat with people. Straightaway, something felt…off. I couldn’t put my finger on it but there was a tension building, like fans before a big game. I did a loop of the prison and with every step I took, the feeling got stronger. I began to walk faster, unsettled. Had I missed something, this last week, while I’d been distracted by Olivia? What was it?
Just as I reached the commissary, the first alarm sounded: faintly, from somewhere else in the prison. Everyone looked at each other, worried and uncertain.
Almost everyone. One group of prisoners reacted instantly, turning and moving in the same direction. Shivs and socks loaded with quarters emerged from sleeves. I recognized the men: Packard’s guys.
More alarms started blaring. The one in our area went off and guards ran in. But as soon as they entered, Packard’s men swarmed them, overwhelming them and grabbing their batons. They ran off, whooping and cheering. And other prisoners, frazzled by the weeks of soul-sapping heat, ran to join them.
It became a mob and then a crowd. I was carried along by the crush of bodies. As we neared the next cell block, I could hear a roar in front of us, like we were approaching a waterfall. As the crowd carried me inside, the noise became deafening. This must be where the disturbance had started because the whole block was in uproar: everyone out of their cells, stamping and yelling. Feet clattered on the walkways as more and more men raced downstairs to join the growing crowd. I looked around and found Packard, stripped to the waist and yelling, his bald head gleaming and his eyes bulging. He was whipping the crowd up into a frenzy, drawing in more and more men.
A riot. That’s what the tension in the air had been. Packard had organized his men to start a riot, knowing that once he got the ball rolling, others would join in. I was mad at myself: I should have known about this. Any other week, I would have. But the question now was: why? What did Packard have to gain from a riot?
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. In a hallway off to the side, a guard was edging forward, his baton drawn. He was pale-faced and sweating, just a kid, really. I pushed my way through the crowd and got to him before anyone else saw him. “What are you doing?!” I hissed.