“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.

Remembering what Peyton had said when she came to visit him in the infirmary, he let himself drift toward sleep. All I know is that I can’t stop thinking about you. Every time I close my eyes you’re there.

No matter how this ended, at least he had that.

Wallace was still up, looking annoyed as he used her remote to scan through the television stations on her TV. Peyton couldn’t help resenting his presence even more now. Why wasn’t he gone? Or at the motel?

Telling herself to be diplomatic—she or Virgil might need Rick’s support as they navigated the next few weeks—she tried to bear up under the stress of having him around, in addition to what Weston Jager had said in his note, and forced a smile as she walked in.

“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked, her tone friendly.

He dropped the remote and leaned his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been waiting for you. I felt bad I was tied up when you came home earlier. Didn’t mean to chase you off.”

“You didn’t chase me off. How’s it going with your wife?”

“You know how it is with relationships,” he said. “One minute everything’s fine and the next…” He clicked his tongue. “She’s coming up with all these stipulations and demands.”

“Divorces are never easy.”

“She wants to take the kids out of state so she can live near her parents. Can you believe that? They moved to a small town in Wyoming a couple years back and she’s trying to convince me it’ll be the perfect place to raise the girls. It might be perfect for her, because she’ll never have to deal with me, but I’ll never get to see my kids.”

“She doesn’t care about that?”

“She says I’m so busy I don’t see them, anyway. She doesn’t understand the pressure I’m under, never has.”

“It’s hard to understand unless you live it,” she said, but she suspected his tendency to put his own needs, wants and desires first was more to blame than his job. “Just a sec.” She went into the kitchen to set her purse on the counter and plug in her cell phone.

“Give me an update,” he called. “How’d it go with Skinner today?”

“Not as smoothly as I’d hoped. Can I get you a glass of wine?” she called back, but a quick glance in her fridge told her he’d already availed himself of the beer John had left behind when he’d brought dinner. “No, thanks.”

She poured herself a splash of chardonnay and carried it into the living room.

“So?” he said. “What happened?”

“Virgil’s already been shanked,” she announced.

His eyebrows shot up. “That didn’t take long. How badly is he hurt?”

She sat across from him because she couldn’t bear to sit any closer. “He’ll be okay, but the injury required twenty-six stitches.” After kicking off her heels, she tucked her feet underneath her. “Four men jumped him in the dining hall.”

“Four? He’s lucky to be alive. How’d he do?”