Page 25 of Coach
It was different from the ones before.
It wasn’t until I was most of the way home that I realized what it was.
An alarm going off at the prison.
But I really never gave that a second thought as I got home and was greeted by a very unhappy Trix.
Her presence made it slightly more tolerable to walk through the darkened house and climb into bed.
I couldn’t stop jumping at shadows on the walls, envisioning forms stepping out of the dark corners.
Fears, I reminded myself, based in reality.
Panic gripped my system, making the air thick and my chest tight.
I clutched the flashlight to my chest as Saul’s voice rang in my ear, reminding me to breathe and telling me to ground myself in sensation.
The chirps of crickets outside the window. The scent of wet paint in the hallway. Trix’s soft fur against my leg.
And in that way, I kept Saul right by my side all night. Until the first rays of light streaked the sky, lighting up the shadows and finally letting me drift off to sleep.
But he was with me there in my dreams as well.
CHAPTER SIX
Coach
My gaze slipped from watching the taillights of Este’s car as the prison’s alarm rang out through the quiet night.
In all the years I’d been inside, I’d only ever heard that siren twice: once, during an all-out rival gang brawl in the chow hall, and once when someone tried to escape.
“Is that the prison alarm?” Colter asked, materializing out of nowhere to stand near me, his gaze trained on the place that had been our home for years.
“Yeah.”
“Cons taking advantage of the partial outage?” he asked, but there was a skeptical edge to his voice. A blackout would have meant a full lockdown. Save for people beating the shit out of each other in their cells, there was no way for anything to get that out of control.
“Maybe.”
The sirens droned on and on.
Then, not long after, the dogs.
“Oh, shit,” Colter said.
I wasn’t sure Colter had been inside with me when that last guy attempted to escape. But they’d found him in under twenty minutes. They hadn’t even needed to bring out the dogs.
Down in town, I watched several headlights turn on in the police station parking lot.
You knew it wasn’t good when the local PD was getting involved.
“Dunno how to feel about this,” Colter said. “On the one hand, as someone who was chained in there like some kind of animal, I want to cheer the fuck on.”
“On the other, you were locked inside there withactualanimals who shouldn’t be free to roam the streets.”
“Exactly,” Colter agreed.
Unbidden, my mind traveled across the town to some unknown house where Este was stuck in the dark she was so terrified of.
