Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Emily was provided a set of orange scrubs and then taken to another building by two female correction officers who wouldn't give her the time of day. It was as if she were invisible to everyone, including the legal system. Except for that man in the suit back there.

Who was he, anyway? Whom did he work for? It had to be someone powerful with very deep reach because he claimed she'd been arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned without so much as seeing a courthouse.

"I'm an American," Emily yelled at the two female guards to her sides as she stumbled along, trying to drag her feet. God only knew where they were taking her now. "I have rights!"

"Dead people don't have rights." One of them laughed.

"What do you mean?" Emily's heart pounded in her chest. Images of being hanged or shot streamed in her head. After all, she'd been taken to prison under the sketchiest of circumstances. It wasn't a stretch to imagine they intended to execute her.

The guards ignored her, leading her down a long corridor where the prisoners watched in eerie silence through the tiny windows on their cell doors.

Why were they staring like that? It couldn't mean anything good, right?

The guards stopped in front of an empty cell and pushed her in.

For one split second, Emily felt relieved it wasn't a room with an electric chair. "Please tell me what's going on?" Emily pleaded.

"You're in prison for murder. What more do you need to know, sweetheart?" said one of the guards before slamming the door in her face.

"Hey!" Emily pounded. "This is illegal! I didn't kill anyone." A lie. She most definitely had. Just not Ed or a police officer.

One of the guards opened the slot in the middle of the door. "If I were you, I'd use this time to make peace with God or the devil—whoever sick people like you worship." She closed the slot.

The guards walked away, and Emily burst into tears. This can't be happening.

Sadly, she already knew that wasn't true. It was a dirty world out there, the kind that looked the other way while the cartels had begun taking over the border communities. It was a world where big politicians cared more about their careers than for the safety of their citizens, so those communities had been forced to take matters into their own hands and seek protection from the likes of suite forty-five. It was a world that didn't care when the most violent cartel in the world recently hired the Warren Group to make their final territory grab. It was a dirty, bloody, and dangerous world. So yeah, this was happening.

A few minutes later, Emily received a tray with juice that smelled like urine—because it was—a slice of moldy bread, and a rotten apple. Warden Mitchel's special accommodations.

Fuck. I am going to die in here. But what she couldn't understand was why she'd been brought here at all. Why not kill her and dump her body in a ditch if death was the goal?

Maybe they want me to suffer. A slow, painful death. But who were "they"?

She racked her brain. The Warren Group would definitely let her starve to death. The Heroin King, too. Then there were Ed and his band of corrupt, greedy degenerates. Could this whole thing be linked to them? Was Ed even dead? Last thing she'd heard, Ed, his brother, and their entire group had left the country. Not even Charge had been able to find them. Would they really risk being caught to orchestrate this?

Not likely.

And none of it explained why Charge had handed her over.

"I'm an idiot for trusting a hit man." Because facts were facts: someone wanted her to die in here, and Charge had given the green light.

***

The next morning, Emily's empty stomach grumbled, followed by sharp stabbing sensations. She hadn't eaten in two days, and dehydration was kicking in. The faucet in her sink didn't work, but the shit-caked toilet flushed. Maybe they wanted her to drink from it, which would surely kill her. She could tell they'd put something in the water, something red and corrosive that was eating away at the metal, leaving behind patches of rust on the bowl.

Poisoned food, no clean water, and no help.

Around nine a.m., a new female guard with the last name of Roberts showed up to Emily's door and unlocked it. "Time for your exercise."

Emily sat up in her bed, her heart surging with nervous palpitations. "Please, please help me. I don't know what's happening, but if I die in here, it's on you. It's on all of you."

The heavyset woman with a hard gaze took out her baton. "Out. Now."

Emily slowly got to her feet and went out into the hallway. Strange, how Roberts hadn't cuffed Emily and that all the other cells were empty.

No witnesses. "Where're you taking me?" Emily asked.

"The yard. For your group exercise."

Supermax group exercise? According to every prison documentary she'd ever seen, these sorts of prisons were set up to prevent the inmates from mingling. She was about to be shanked.

"Can you just tell me who?" Emily asked, walking as slowly as she could down the corridor.

"Who what?" asked Roberts.

"Who wants me to die?"

"Everyone." Roberts scanned her badge at a heavy steel door and pushed it open. Outside were some of the coldest-looking women she'd ever seen, all standing in small groups. Every single one of them looked like they were jonesing to slit Emily's throat.

Emily's feet stuck to the concrete floor. "All I'm asking is to know why?"

The guard pushed Emily outside and slammed the door.

Emily stood there, meeting the predatory gazes of the dangerous animals surrounding her. So this is where I die. She exhaled slowly, preparing to be jumped.