Auctioned to the Prisoners (Auctioned #4)

18

ROCK

TAKING CHANCES

This situation is getting to Hyde, and he’s talking crazy. It was always my worry that he’d get attached and start to feel things that weren’t real. I keep telling myself that the warmth I feel in my chest when I look at Lory is just about circumstances. I’m holding tight to the truth that she’s doing what she’s getting paid to do because that keeps us all where we’re supposed to be. I’m sure she’s a great woman in real life, a woman I could love, but if we were free and she met us all in a dark alley, she’d probably run for her life. She’d swipe left on any dating app if she read our sorry profiles. Collectively, we’ve all spent more time in correctional facilities than in education and have no business imagining she could want us back.

After our conversation, Hyde stormed off, then grabbed Lory as soon as she’d showered and disappeared to fuck her noisily. Kinkaid’s pacing again, his mind tangled up in everything that’s out of his control.

I keep circling back to what it will be like to return to our cells, and the thought makes me sick. Even though we’ve been holed up in this strange, abandoned prison unit, it’s felt almost like a retreat. We’ve all slept better here. We’ve all had a chance to unwind, but soon it’ll be over.

When Grady appears at the door again, he's not bringing good news. “I have to take her,” he tells us. “I’ve put it off for as long as I can, but he’s going open his mouth. There’s no controlling men like Wilson.”

“There is,” Hyde growls. “There are plenty of ways to control men like that.”

Grady loses the color in his face at the veiled threat. Whitaker Evan’s found out the hard way just how easily Hyde can control a bad man.

“Okay.” Kinkaid says the word with determination and resignation before Hyde can go any further.

“Warden…” I pause, trying to straighten out the scrambled thoughts in my head. “We want to get out of here. What can you do to help us with that?”

I haven’t said, ‘You still owe us,’ but he’s not a stupid man. He’ll understand my intent.

“When you come up for parole, you’ll have my seal of approval.”

“He’s innocent, and you know it,” Kinkaid says. Grady sighs like he’s carrying the world on his shoulders, and every joint in his body is screaming in agony.

“I’ll do my best.”

What does that even mean?

“What about Kinkaid? His sentence is ridiculous. There are pedophiles in this place serving less time.”

“I know.” The warden rubs his face. “No one said it’s fair.”

“An unfair system deserves to be challenged unfairly.” I shove my hands in my pockets, twisting my thoughts into something safe to say without directly asking what I’m asking. “Like Dannemora”

Warden stiffens and presses his lips between his teeth. There aren’t many escape attempts more famous than that. They made a show about it so he should understand what I’m suggesting. But will he agree?

Grady rubs at the edges of his mustache, widening his stance. He’s actually giving my covert suggestion some, though. Hope mushrooms into something that presses against the inside of each rib, expanding my chest.

“The owner of the laundry company is a good friend of mine. A relative by marriage.”

Kinkaid glances at me, then back at the warden. Did we just hear that right?

He clears his throat and then continues. “One could work. Three is too much of a risk.”

“You’re serious?” I’m not a betting man, but if I was, I wouldn’t have risked a nickel on the odds that he’d help with something like this.

Grady nods. “This place... it wears me down like water dripping on a rock… it’s incessant. There’s no rehabilitation. Nothing to stop the ones who leave from coming back. You guys, you did what I couldn’t because I’m not built that way… to take revenge. It makes me sick with myself because I’d die in this place if I was on your side of the bars. I couldn’t handle it. That’s my weakness. I owe you more than just a pretty girl for a few days. I owe you my peace of mind and my freedom.”

“Kinkaid will go,” I say. “Me and Hyde will wait it out.”

“I’ll push as much as I can on your sentences,” Grady says.

“When?” Kinkaid asks, his voice tight and icy, a gravelly edge betraying the tension he’s holding back. This is beyond his control and his posture has stiffened with the knowledge that he'll have to take risks with real, tangible consequences if things go wrong. The punishment for an escape attempt is brutal for a reason.

“I’ll take Lory tomorrow and move you back upstairs one by one tomorrow night. Give it three weeks.”

Three weeks and then Kinkaid will get his chance at freedom. He can go to Lory and find out if there’s really something between them on the outside. And when it’s my time to leave, he could be waiting with our girl. My fantasy is a bubble that could easily burst, one that Hyde shares. But keeping hopeful is the only way I’ll get through each day that stretches before me in this cage without Lory. It’s the only way I’ll be able to let Lory leave without dropping to my fucking knees.

Grady leaves before Hyde emerges, looking sex-drunk and desperate.

“She’s sleeping,” he says.

“I’m not surprised.”

He smirks at me, then collapses into a chair. “He’s taking her, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Hyde’s head falls.

“But we have a plan.”

We outline everything that was spoken out. Although Hyde retains some of his dark aura, some hope irons out his frown.

“We can’t tell her,” I say at the end.

“But…”

I cut off Hyde before he can finish, raising a hand. “We can’t jeopardize Kinkaid’s chance. All it would take is for her to tell one person, and everything would unravel.”

“But how will he find her on the outside?”

“We ask for an address… say we want to write her.”

“Have you noticed that she hasn’t shared much about herself since she’s been here? I don’t even know her last name.”

“Then we ask her. If she doesn’t want us to know, she’ll make an excuse, and we’ll let her go.”

“I want to tell her how I feel,” Hyde insists.

“You shouldn’t,” I say. “Not before she leaves. Save it for the letters. The rest we have to keep to ourselves.”

“I’m not a fucking patient man.” Hyde stands and strides back towards the bedroom where Lory’s sleeping. “I can’t wait.”

“You’ll have to, Hyde. You’ve got to keep it together. It’s the only way this has a chance of working.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” Kinkaid says, stopping Hyde in his tracks, paused with his hand on the door.

“You’d stay?” He turns and his face tight with shock.

“I won’t leave you to spin out and do something that will keep you in here for longer. I’ll wait.”

“No fucking way,” Hyde growls. “You take your chance.” He stares at Kinkaid, really stares. “I’ll be fine.” He disappears inside the room and closes the door.

I meet Kinkaid’s worried eyes, shaking my head. “You’d give up your chance?”

“We’re a team,” he says. “That doesn’t end now.”

“It has to be every man for himself,” I say. “We have to take our chances when they come. This place, it doesn’t give us the luxury of choices.”

“If I go, I’ll do whatever it takes to get ready for you when you’re released. I’ll protect Lory.”

“I know you will.”

Before he has the chance to respond, the sound of the bed smacking rhythmically against the wall interrupts our flow. Hyde is taking his chances now. We all have to because this isn’t a thirty-day gratitude-enabled paradise anymore. Things are about to get real.