“Who says it was me?” A flash of white told her Weston hadn’t bothered to dress for this little interview. He was wearing boxers and a T-shirt—standard apparel. Residents of the SHU hardly ever wore the yellow jump-suits they were given, even in the daytime. What Weston had on now, together with a pair of flip-flops, was pretty much what he’d have on tomorrow. There wasn’t a lot of incentive to dress when you never saw anyone. Some of the men in the psych ward refused to wear anything at all.
“You tell her, Wes!” someone shouted.
With so little sensory input, the inmates became very sensitive to any change in their surroundings—and eager for the smallest distraction. No doubt the man who’d just yelled wasn’t the only one listening in. Peyton didn’t have to worry about Detric Whitehead overhearing, though. She’d been careful to put Weston in a different pod than his fearless leader. But that didn’t necessarily mean Detric wouldn’t hear about what Weston had to say, especially if it was at all out of line. “You’re telling me it wasn’t? You didn’t start the fight?”
“No, ma’am. It was that new guy. Bennett.”
She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t even see both eyes at once, but she sensed that he was scowling. “Bennett picked a fight with you—and your three friends?”
“Yes! I’m not lyin’!”
But, of course, he was. That was what he did whenever it suited him. “On his first day inside, when he doesn’t know who you are or what you can do or what the consequences might be? I find that a little difficult to swallow.”
“Then swallow this!” someone yelled, and several others laughed, the sound of it echoing off the concrete walls.
Just as she’d thought she would, Peyton regretted coming. If not for Virgil, she wouldn’t have bothered. “I don’t know very many guys who want to walk into something like that.”
“Because other guys can’t fight like this dude can! He’s not scared of anything. You saw what he did to me, what he did to Doug and Ace.”
Peyton sighed. “You brought me all the way down here for this? So you can whine and complain?”
“To tell you this ain’t fair! Why am I the only one being punished?”
“You’re the ringleader.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Growing impatient, she said, “It’s late and I’m exhausted. Do you have anything to tell me or not?”
“Like what? What do you wanna hear? What did you think I was gonna do? Turn traitor? Snitch?” He sounded convincingly belligerent, but his eye suddenly disappeared from the hole while he slipped a folded piece of paper beneath his door.
“You’re gonna make me go J-Cat in here,” he continued, probably for the benefit of the men on either side of him. “This here is the bowels of hell.”
J-Cat was prison slang for “crazy.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I’m claustrophobic,” he insisted. “I can’t handle doin’ this kinda time.”
She retrieved his note and put it in the pocket of her skirt. “Then I suggest you curb your violent tendencies.”
“That’s all you got for me? That’s it? Oh, man, this is jacked up,” he complained, but when he shuffled back to his bunk, she knew his real message was in her pocket.
Virgil wanted to get some sleep. The painkiller the doctor had given him had made him sleepy. And he needed the rest to help him heal so he could cope with whatever came along tomorrow. But he wasn’t about to close his eyes while his little rat of a cell mate kept scurrying around, pacing and muttering. After what had happened in the dining hall, Virgil doubted Buzz would challenge him, not while they were alone. But if the Hells Fury told Buzz to shank him in his sleep, Buzz would have to do it whether he was scheduled to be paroled next month or not. Buzz had access to the gang’s new enemy, which put him in a tight spot. If he didn’t follow through, his buddies would kill him before he ever got the chance to walk out of Pelican Bay. If he did as they ordered, the authorities would charge him with murder and he’d be looking at another long stay, this time in the SHU. But that was what it meant to belong to a gang. The welfare of the group came before the welfare of the individual.
To ease the pressure on his stitches, Virgil rolled over as Buzz made another pass between the toilet and the door. “What’s your problem?” he asked at last.
Buzz’s eyes darted to him, but he didn’t stop pacing. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Then you’re tweaking, because you haven’t quit moving since I got back. Why don’t you lie down and get some sleep before you make yourself sick?”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“Think about it lying down.”
He kicked the toilet. “It’s not that easy! Havin’ you here isn’t good, man. I can feel it. And I’m sittin’ on four weeks, just four weeks, until I get outta this shit hole.”
Virgil shrugged. “So what’s the worst that can happen?”
“You act like you don’t care about your own damn welfare, but you know what? You’re gonna care when they come for you. You got my man sent to the SHU. For that, he’s gonna have you strung up by your balls.”
“I think he already tried.”
Buzz ran his fingers along the wall. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“What, he’ll bring eight guys next time? How many of you pussies does it take to get the job done?”
“Man, you got a death wish!” he cried. Then he surprised Virgil by chuckling and shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe Virgil had actually called the HF pussies.
That was the slight softening Virgil had been hoping for. “If what I saw in the dining hall is the best you got, I’m not afraid of you or your friends,” he said. “Anyway, maybe by the time you come after me again, I’ll have some support of my own.”
Buzz quit laughing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who told me to clique up. You guys want to cause me trouble? I’ll clique up with the NF and give you trouble.”
Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. “That gang’s for Mexicans. They won’t want you.”
“You sure?” Virgil felt fairly confident he could convince them. He made a better friend than he did an enemy—at least, that was what he hoped to convince Buzz of. “I could always say I have Mexican blood on my mother’s side.”
Buzz started fidgeting again. “Do you?”
“As long as I’m willing to do what needs to be done and I’m loyal, it won’t matter, right?”
“You’d be loyal to those spic assholes?”
“As long as they were loyal to me.”
“What the hell? What sort of white supremacist are you?”
“One who’ll fight as hard as necessary to come out on top. Nobody in here’s going to push me around, I can tell you that. Not even my own kind. Least of all my own kind.”
Buzz brooded on that for a few minutes, then said, “What if I talked to Weston? See what he has to say about recruitin’ you for the HF?”
A quick yes would be too suspicious. Virgil had to resist, put up a fight. “Hell, no. Your boys just shanked me.”
Buzz didn’t try to talk him out of his refusal. But he climbed up on his bunk as if he’d finally thought of a solution to his problems, which gave Virgil hope that the pain he was suffering because of that fight in the dining hall wouldn’t be wasted.