Page 90 of Prey for You

I just had to pray they wouldn’t be checking logs to see who I visited.

I was nervous as I got out of the car. Coming here after I got out had always made me a little tense, even when I hadn’t had pending charges. Once you’d lived as a prisoner there was always a part of your body convinced that when those doors clanged shut behind you they’d never open up again.

But I had to do this.

Because I was an ordained minister and Gordon was immuno-compromised, we’d get a private roomifthere was one available. I hoped by meeting him early, we could dodge any potential clashes. The prison only had half a dozen of those rooms.

I had to sign in and walk deeper and deeper into the facility, my hackles rising higher every time another door slammed and locked behind me. I had to be frisked, and sign a security disclaimer—yes, they’d have officers in the hallway and a window-view of us. But they weren’t liable if he throttled me before the guards could get to the room.

It didn’t say that, but that’s what it meant.

By the time I made it to the room I was sweating. It hadn’t been more than a few days since I’d been there, but between my tensions about Bridget and the subconscious impact of knowing I could end up back here in a few months… God, my stomach was churning.

I nervously scratched at the wooden tabletop while I waited, praying that I’d keep it together—and that he’d be calm too.

Gordon Reynolds and I had never had a beef, and neither of us had been aligned with people who hated the other. But we weren’t friends or allies either. We’d existed in different spheres when I was here.

From his side of the table I understood that speaking to someone who was a former inmate made it easier in some ways—they understood what you were going through. But sometimes all it did was slap you in the face with the cage you were still locked in. After all, here was someone who’d been inside. And now they were in the same room as you smelling of fresh air and gasoline. And when you were done, they got to leave.

But I also knew that Gordon Reynolds had expressed skepticism about my reformation in prison. As one of the Old Guys, he’d made it known at some point that the changes in me were just a ruse to get myself paroled earlier. He didn’t care. But he didn’t trust me, either.

Let him be desperate enough to be honest.

Or sick enough to not care about lying anymore.

Please.

Then the door opened and he shuffled in.

There was a surreal moment where the images in my mind and the one in front of me just didn’t match. I’d known him several years earlier, before he became ill. Then I’d spent most of the night before looking at pictures of him twenty years earlier—when he had more hair, and it was still mostly dark likeBridget’s. But now, just past sixty, he was smokey gray all over, white at the temples. And his body was weak. His prison scrubs hung off his narrow shoulders like he’d been given a size too big. He had the droopy jowls of a man who’d lost a lot of weight quickly.

Cancer treatment would do that to you, I supposed.

I stood up when he shuffled in, but I wasn’t supposed to cross the table or to other side of the room once he was there. So, I just nodded to him and told the guards to take off his cuffs.

I saw his eyes flash at that. He thought I was trying to get on his good side. Actually, I was just trying to get him as comfortable as possible.

When the guards left the room with a warning that we had an hour, I nodded and waved, but Gordon turned slowly to face me, then walked to the chair with the rolling gait of a man much older than his early sixties.

He sat down in the chair stiffly and took a moment to get comfortable before sitting back in the chair and looking me right in the eye.

“Good morning, Gordon.”

His expression didn’t change. “Sam. You here about my girl, or because you’re a snitch too?”

The wordsmy girlset my teeth and made the skin on my spine crawl, but I stretched my neck and didn’t comment.

“I came to ask you some questions, if you’ll let me.”

Gordon’s eyes were cloudy and his lower lids sagged a little, leaving those pink spots in the corners that spoke of old age and a bad liver.

He raised his brows. “So polite. I suppose you god guys have to do that, right?”

“I mean, it’s recommended.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t have it in me.

“I know they said I’m dying, but if you’re here to try and convert me, you can forget it. I’ve had all the talks. If god wanted to talk to me, he should have done it a lot earlier before everything fucked up.”

I swallowed and nodded like I was thinking, but inside it grated.

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