Page 329 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 2

“You sure?” Eli asked.

Seeing that fist not two inches from her nose had her instantly back in survival mode. She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.” Issue resolved, he sat back down beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Everyone else faced forward as the bus pulled around in front of a massive pot field. The trees cleared to give it full sun and about eight men, with guns on their hips, were standing around, waiting for them to arrive.

The bus stopped and everyone filed out. With as many people as there were in line in front of her, she had plenty of time to get a look at her situation.

She tried to find options, but she didn’t have any. She couldn’t begin to think how to report this without getting thrown back in prison. Who would believe her? Who wouldn’t hit her to shut her up before she disrupted the status quo? She knew what their fears were. Things could always get worse.

As the line inside the bus began to thin, Eli took her hand, gave her a wink and a cheerful click of his teeth, like she was a horse. He dragged her by the limp grip with which she held onto his hand all the way to the front of the bus.

“Roll call,” one of the armed men announced as she got off the bus.

The door flap behind her immediately shut, and with a rumble, the bus drove away. It didn’t go far, just into the shade of the trees where it parked to wait out the day.

Eli let go of her, moving off to join the rough line the men were forming. She moved over by the women. They weren’t far from one another, but they were loosely gathered into separate groups with a good ten feet distance between them. She could feel every small hair rising on the back of her neck as the armed men divided too; some wandering over to the men’s group, some wandering over to stand next to her.

“We’re working in the south field today,” a man she assumed to be the boss announced. Another man with a clipboard walked in front of them, marking everyone present. When he got to her, in a hushed voice, so as not to interrupt the boss passing out assignments behind him, he asked, “Name?”

She told him, and he walked away just as the boss snapped at her, “New girl!”

She jumped and quickly faced him. “Tabitha, sir.”

He ignored that. “Pick a girl and stick with her, she’ll tell you what to do. You’ve got a quota to meet and we do not offer a learning curve. You will pull your weight, or there will be consequences.” To everyone else, he said, “You know what to do. Save the fucking for the breaks.” Pulling his wallet out, he showed them a five-dollar bill. “This and a cold beer for whoever does the most. Time starts now.”

She’d always heard the expression ‘being torn’ about something, but she’d never felt it the way she felt it now. Like a physical lightning bolt ripping into her as she saw both loose groups of men and women head for the fields, leaving her standing where she was.

On the one hand, she knew she ought to follow them, head down, survival mode all the way. That meant doing what she was told, when she was told to, and getting out with as few problems as possible.

On the other hand—she looked from the retreating women back to the boss—if she followed them, she’d be doing this job until the day she was released.

If she was ever released.

Of course they’d release her, she scoffed at herself. It wasn’t like she could just… disappear, right?

“Here we go,” one of the armed men standing by the boss muttered when her feet at last started moving. Instead of following the others into the pot field, however, Tabby made herself walk up to the boss, with his gun at his hip and his armed men standing around him. They watched her approach.

“Want me to take her to the hot house?” the armed bodyguard to his left asked, but the boss merely folded his beefy arms across his chest and waited for her to grow the balls to say what she was going to.

Her hands shook. So did her knees, but she managed to stand before him, and she kept her tone as polite as possible when she asked, “Are you Bobby?”

After a startled moment, the armed men laughed; the boss didn’t. “I am,” he said simply.

“I can’t stay. This wasn’t what I was expecting I’d have to do.” Heat burned her face as the others laughed harder, and she raised her voice just to be heard over them. “I mean, I don’t care what you do. I just don’t think I can. I don’t want to get into more trouble.”

Through it all, the boss never cracked a smile or changed his stance.

“I don’t want to go back to jail,” she pleaded. “I can’t… I can’t be here!”

The gun men weren’t laughing anymore, and Bobby was still just standing there, looking at her, unimpressed. Finally, he turned to the man at his right. That man was shaking his head now, a snort of last-minute laughter making it out of him before Bobby took a deep breath.

His was not exactly a friendly look, nor was it sympathetic, but he did shrug one shoulder and said, “Fine. Come this way.”

He didn’t head toward the house, or even to the bus. Instead, he took her to the outbuildings, and in particular, to a metal-sided structure with a camouflage roof. Shouldering the heavy door open revealed a roomful of farm equipment, blades on the wall, and a sharpening machine at one of three workstations. It was all very neat, for a shed.

Bobby nodded toward a waiting stool just inside the doorway. “Take a seat. I’ll give your ride a call.”

Fishing his cell out of a back pocket, he stood in front of her while he dialed.

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