Page 54 of A Dirty Business
I nodded, but slowly because this was opening Pandora’s box. “I know.”
“Why are you still working there?”
“Because.” Because I liked Anthony. Because I’d worked there so long. Because ... because if I left, then I’d have no contact with Trace, even though he’d followed my warning. I never saw him, but I swear, Iswearthat he was there and that he was watching me. I just never asked, and I never looked. It was a sick obsession at this point. “You know how it is. Work somewhere so long it becomes too familiar to leave. I know the workers. I like my supervisor, for the most part.”
Isaac grunted. “That guy I was telling you about? The one who knows Anthony, he says he knows dirt on your supervisor. He’s not the good guy you think he is.”
I gave him a look. “Anthony? A good guy?” I raised an eyebrow.
He laughed, sitting back. His shoulders lowered, and he rolled forward again, his head bobbing up and down. “Yeah. Yeah. I know. You know him. I didn’t tell that guy about you, though. Don’t want it getting around—”
I hit the intercom. “Hey.”
He stopped, looking up.
“I know.” Everyone had relatives, but sometimes a guy just needed to look for something to target another guy, and finding out his sister worked on the other team could make him an easy target. “It’s okay.”
He went back to bobbing up and down again, a steady nodding movement, before he propped an elbow on the table and raked his hand over his head. “There’s stuff coming down the pipeline in here, and it’s got to do with, you know, your other boss’s family. Anthony’s boss. They put out an order of protection on me.”
“They did what?”
He stopped, his eyes widening at my tone. “I thought you knew. It came out the day after I found out who your real bosses at the club were. I thought ... Was I wrong?”
My stomach was twisted up in a knot again, one big motherfucker. The truth was that I had no idea.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire.
I cursed at my own inner voice calling me out.
You do too know. He said he’d help your aunt. He’s helping your brother too.
“You okay, Jess?”
I realized I’d been sitting here, quiet, glaring at my brother while I was having an argument in my own head, against myself. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m fine. I don’t know why they did that.”
He looked over his shoulder, checking the inmates and their visitors next to us. No one was paying attention, and he leaned closer to the plexiglass. “You think it’s about Dad? Because he was involved with them?”
My stomach rolled over, not wanting to hear about those days. I shook my head. “No. That was too long ago.”
“But—”
“If that was the case, you would’ve been protected since your first day here. You haven’t been, right?”
He shook his head. “No, just that one guard who looks out for me because of you.”
I clipped my head in another fast nod, because that didn’t need to be spoken out loud either. It was a corrections officer—or CO, as we referred to them. I knew him from taking the same parole officer training. He hadn’t passed, and I had. We got close anyway because we were from the same neighborhood. I gave him a call when my brother ended up in this prison, and he’d asked if I could keep an eye out for his family. It was an easy “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” sort of situation. His wife was a sweetheart, and the only time I had to look out for them was when their little boy got into trouble at school. I gave him a sort of “scared straight” scenario, one that didn’t break any rules. He met some parolees who never violated and remained on good terms with us, but their little boy hadn’t known that fact when he met them.
“Fill me in. How are things with you?”
“I don’t want to do that. You tell me about Ma, tell me about Kelly. She still ask about me?”
I laughed, but I told him. I left out the part about Justin and the part where Mom was herself.
When it was my time to leave, he stopped me. “Hey.”
“Yeah?” My gut sharpened again, because that tone was serious.
“Quit working at that nightclub. They’re protecting me for a reason, and I don’t know it. That gives me a bad feeling.”
