Page 31 of Wife Number One

Chaos rolled his eyes from where he leaned against the wall on the other side of the cell. “Wouldn’t have picked you to be OCD about germs. Shame you don’t have your purse here. I bet you have sanitizer in it.”

Behind my back, my fingers flipped him off, even though he couldn’t see it. “My OCD about germs is the only reason you’re even fucking alive to give me shit right now. Remember how you didn’t get an infection and die after we picked your broken ass up off the side of the road and nursed you back to health? Remember how I washed my hands so you didn’t get sepsis? Oh! Oh!” I glared at him. “Remember how you shot me, but I cleaned the fucking wound and stitched it up, so I didn’t die either? That was fucking fun.”

Chaos raised an eyebrow. “Do you want a medal?”

I glared at him. “Actually, maybe I fucking do. Or even better, how about you just shut up about me complaining about the germs crawling all over this place?” I shuddered and squinted at the toilet again. “Fuck, it’s like I can see them.”

The urge to gag rose in my chest.

“Just stop thinking about it,” Chaos advised.

God, I fucking hated him. “Don’t talk to me.”

Chaos huffed out a breath. “Fine by me.”

We stood in silence for all of thirty seconds before I couldn’t stand it. I’d never liked long silences. They left me too much room for my head to fill in the blanks. “You think they arrested the others too?”

Chaos shrugged. “Probably. It’s not like any of us are particularly well-liked by cops round here. Any excuse for them to—”

A guard opened the door to our cell, cutting off whatever Chaos was going to say. “The two of you are up. Get going.”

Chaos pushed off the wall, but I beat him to the cell door. I couldn’t stand being anywhere near that filthy fucking toilet for another second. “Did someone come to bail me out?”

The guard glanced up from a file folder. “Not yet.”

Damn. We had only been here twenty minutes so that was probably too much to hope for. “Where are we going then?”

“The boss wants you both searched and your belongings removed.”

Yeah, how about no. “What the fuck for?”

The cop shrugged and looked over at me. “You had a gun on you. Boss wants to see what else you might be hiding.”

“We were patted down when we came in,” Chaos argued. “Why are they doing it again?”

“Strip search,” the cop said. “You’re both known gang members. It’s standard procedure to check for concealed drugs.”

“Concealed drugs?” I asked. “Concealed where?”

The cop just stared at me.

I stopped walking. “No. No fucking way are you checking my ass for drugs.”

The cop shoved me in the back. “I don’t remember asking for your permission. Just shut up and move. You think I want to check your ass any more than you want me to? Trust me, I don’t. But like I said, it’s standard procedure.”

“Since fucking when?” Chaos snapped. “I’m not exactly a stranger to getting arrested, I think we both know that. I’ve never been strip searched before.”

The cop tapped his pass to a security panel, and it opened the door in front of us. He waited while Chaos and I passed by. “Take it up with the chief when you’re released if you want to make a complaint.”

Relief sank in. “Let me talk to old Barry.” I turned around and walked backward so I could smile at the cop. “We’re old friends.”

Which was true. We’d been bribing the old ass to look the other way for years. War dropped him the occasional freebie at his sex club, Psychos, and everyone was happy. Barry got his rocks off, and we did our thing without the cops giving us too much hassle.

The officer shook his head. “Barry’s gone. Got caught taking bribes. We got a new chief last month. He’s from one of the gang taskforces in the city, so guys like you two are a personal pet peeve of his and he’s changed the way we do everything around here.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Guess you haven’t had a chance to try to bribe him yet, huh?”

Well, shit. A new chief? That was an oversight War probably should have been on top of.

But War’s woman was due to have another baby any day now, and he hadn’t exactly been around much. Fuck. I was VP. I should have been the one to pick up the slack.

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