Page 1 of Visions of You

Chapter One

Gabe

Wadsof gum stuck to the ceiling, but at least they looked solidly in place. Disgusting but not unexpected, given where I was. Turning my eyes from the gross, multicolored display, I held my breath, hoping the silence would last this time. The thin mattress was lumpy underneath my butt, and the cot was too short for my rangy frame. Not about to rest my head against the nasty pillow, I sat with my back against the cement wall. Staring up at the light-green ceiling and its multitude of cracks, I tried to ignore the gum.

“Six bottles of beer on the wall, six bottles of beer…” sang the guy in an off-key, warbling voice, and I resisted the urge to groan out loud, instead exhaling as I rubbed both hands over my very pronounced scruff. My rough fingers caught on the stubble—five o’clock was over twelve hours ago.

Before I’d made an idiot of myself and ended up here.

The drunk in the next cell over continued his song, and I took solace in the fact that the number of beers was nearing the end. Andthere was a certain poetic justice to being subjected to the man’s irritating rendition—I was in jail, after all.

Not a place to enjoy oneself.

But I was counting down the minutes now, and my sister was on her way to get me out of here. A short time ago, Deputy Marvin Crutchfield had allowed me my one phone call, after explaining my bail amount had been set and I’d be free to go as soon as bond had been posted.

God, my first night back home in Calypso Key, and I spent it in a jail cell.

I almost snorted at the ridiculousness of it but caught myself in time—that would hurt my bruised ribs. One might even be cracked. Off-Key and I weren’t the only two spending the night. Ben Coleridge was here too. At the opposite end of the cellblock as me. I guess the cops figured we needed to be kept far apart, even in jail.

But everyone was quiet, probably just waiting for that guy to finish his song and shut up. Like I was. As the drunk reached the proverbial final bottle of beer, I inhaled again. My lungs got tighter and tighter, then finally I expelled the held breath, relaxing in the blessed silence filling the Marathon City Jail.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine?—”

A round of swearing, shouting, and hands clanging against bars greeted this encore performance, and I hissed a sigh through my teeth. Grimacing, I pressed my hand against my sore ribs.

“Jethro, if you don’t shut your goddamn trap, I’m gonna strangle you through these bars.”

That was Ben, and I wasn’t surprised he knew the singer. No doubt he was more familiar with jail cells than I was. Which I probably should have remembered last night.

“You can’t reach me,” came the slightly slurred response. “You got arms like one of those dinosaurs—bronta, bronta, brontysaurus.”

Someone else laughed. “T. rex has the little arms, you idiot.”

Maia, hurry up.

I hadn’t enjoyed making that phone call to my little sister. Eightyears younger than me, she was twenty-eight and pregnant with her first child. But she’d always be my little sister. However, my only other choices had been our dad—hell no—or our brother, Evan. Who would have delighted in rubbing my face in this. So Maia it was.

The sound of a key turning in the metal door at the end of the cell block brought the conversation over dinosaurs and terrible songs to an end. Everyone paid attention as the heavy door swung open.

I smiled grimly.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls…

Heavy steps echoed through the cells as the person treaded along the center aisle. They stopped before my cell.

“Gabriel Markham?” Deputy Marvin Crutchfield asked, as if he hadn’t personally escorted me to make my phone call less than an hour prior, and as if we hadn’t gone to school together until we graduated.

I rubbed my tired eyes and turned an irritated stare to him. “No, I’m the tooth fairy, dumbass.”

Marvin unclipped a ring of keys and rifled through them but didn’t react to my words. Dressed in a tan button-down shirt and dark-brown slacks, a silver star-shaped badge was pinned to his breast. His clean-shaven face frowned at me as he inserted a large silver key and unlocked my cell. “Your bond has been posted, so you’re free to go.”

That was music to my ears, so I swung my legs off the cot and pushed to my feet. I still wore work boots. I wasn’t about to go shoeless in this place, and after the long night, my jeans and T-shirt were more than a little rumpled. I crossed the cell and pulled the door all the way open as Marvin backed up a step.

He was only five-foot-nine or so and had to crane his neck back to stare me in the eye. “Let’s go. You first.”

I nodded and stepped out of the cell, walking down the aisle as the singer started his tune again from the top. With Marvin there, no one challenged him.

When I walked by Ben Coleridge’s cell, he stood just behind thelocked door, hands on his hips. His light hair was disheveled, and his shirt was half untucked. I gave him a hard stare and he met it—with one eye anyway. Satisfaction filled me at the impressive shiner he sported on his right eye, which was completely swollen shut. A purple bruise adorned the left side of his mouth and dried blood covered his cracked lips.

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