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“What is it?” Rory asked.

Ollie lifted his head to steal a glance at Captain. His brown eyes were wide. “I hope I’m not sharing a cell with him.”

Rory snorted. “That’s not funny.”

“Just saying, I damn near shit myself.”

Rory sniffed loudly, frowned, then murmured, “You sure you didn’t?”

Ollie gave him a shove. “Screw you.”

There was humour in his tone, and Rory smiled. They were going on to the wing that morning, and Rory was thankful he was going with company. The three of them had only met the day before. Captain had been unnervingly quiet, but Ollie rattled with nerves and stuck close to Rory.

Ollie was in for nine years. Rory didn’t ask what for; that wasn’t the done thing. Inmates asked abouttimeand then worked out the severity of the crime from there.

Captain was in for five years and Ollie for nine. By inmates’ reasoning, Ollie must’ve done the worst crime, but looking at him—young, slim, and with a head of boyish blond hair—it was hard to imagine he had done worse than the scarred military man who’d screamed them awake and freaked out the officers.

He had told Captain and Ollie he was in for eight years.

It was a lie.

Rory didn’t need to ask what Ollie or Captain had been convicted of either.

He already knew.

Oliver Linton, the grinning blond on his right, was in for manslaughter. He’d stabbed his abusive dad to death.

Captain Benjamin Tracy was in for a drunk driving collision, the injured party not a person, but a famous war memorial, that he proceeded to urinate on in front of a group of school children.

Rory read files about them prior to his assignment, and it had been planned that the three of them would enter the prison together to squash any suspicion. They acted as Rory’s veil, his cover, and when he glanced at Ollie smiling at him, Rory was glad he was going inside with someone he could get on with.

He was an undercover police officer about to walk into a prison full of inmates.

If he hadn’t already lost his mind, he was about to.

A few hours later, the three of them walked in single file towards the wing. Captain was at the front, Rory in the middle, and Ollie at the back. The gate was unlocked and pulled open, and they stepped into the wing. The space was huge, filled with rectangular tables and hard-looking plastic chairs. The officer showed them the laundry room, the gate that led to the library, another that led to the gym, and the final one that took them into the yard. The prison was two floors high, the metal of the stairs, walkway, and cells making it feel colder and harsher than Rory had imagined. That was without looking at the faces of his fellow inmates, whose snarls and curled lips made Rory want to roll into a ball of submission.

If they found out who he was, they’d kill him.

The eyes of the inmates didn’t focus on him. Some hungry gazes fell on Ollie, and some challenging stares attached to Captain. Neither were friendly looks, and Rory grew uncomfortable for both his new companions.

Rory was largely ignored, exactly like he wanted, but then the weight of someone’s gaze made him tilt his head up, and he looked at the man hovering on the top walkway.

The one man he wanted to appear inconspicuous to was staring straight at him through slightly narrowed eyes.

Sebastian Claw.

Rory’s breath caught. He looked down again, but his skin prickled with a hot flush, and he couldn’t resist the pull of Sebastian’s stare and took another look.

Sebastian’s blue eyes were piercing, and his grey hair looked at home surrounded by metal and white walls. Even with him metres above, Rory could see the shadow on his jaw and top lip, darker than the hair on his head.

Sebastian leaned his forearms on the metal railing and tilted his head when he caught Rory looking and studied him right back. Rory steeled himself and kept his expression blank.

“Hey!”

Rory tore his gaze from the man above him and looked at the prison officer clicking his fingers in Rory’s face. “What is it?”

“What is it,sir,” the officer corrected. “And I told you to come with me. I’ll take you up to your cell.”

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