to someone angrier. Someone who must be picturing the faces of his mortal enemies on every unpolished floor tile. Someone with a gray buzz cut and a burgeoning beer gut.
Officer MacArthur appears outside my door with a scowl on his leathery face and the scent of cheap whiskey emanating from his pores.
“Parker,” he snaps, addressing me like I’m one of his soldiers.
But I don’t fucking salute.
“That’s me,” I deadpan, tucking my hands behind my head.
“I’m here to take you to the showers. The governor insists on the accused looking decent for the Green Mile.”
“Did you pull the short straw or somethin’?” I ask. “Why isn’t Elliott or Hoyt takin’ me?”
“That’s Officer Elliott and Officer Hoyt to you, son,” he growls. “And I’ll be taking you because the accused tend to get a little aggressive at this point in their sentence.”
“Ah,” I say, sitting up with a stretch. “So you’re the muscle, huh?”
“Step over to the door and place your hands through the bars.”
I do as he said, my movements as slow and despondent as a caged lion’s.
He clamps a pair of handcuffs around my wrists as tight as they’ll go before saying, “Now, stick your feet out, one at a time.”
I do that, too, watching for signs of intimidation or fear. He’s not shaking, not nervous. But he’s shackling me just as tightly as he cuffed me, which tells me I haven’t fully convinced him of my apathy.
I wait for him to unlock my door and marvel at how clear-eyed he seems for somebody who smells like the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam.
“You former military?” I ask as he guides me by the bicep into the hall.
He grumbles in response but eventually spits out, “Army. Special Forces.”
“No shit? That’s pretty badass, man. Were you, like, a paratrooper or something?”
“Sniper,” he mutters under his breath.
Sniper. My fists flex, and blood surges to my extremities. There’s only one thing they need a sniper for around here.
We walk past an open office door, and the image of my own face stops me in my tracks. There’s a monitor above the desk broadcasting the interview Rain did earlier. I watch myself lean against the bars, orange polyester from the neck down, poorly masked shock and awe from the neck up. The back of Rain’s head and a sliver of the side of her face are visible on the screen. I want to reach out and run my fingers through her slicked-back black hair as she stutters and stumbles over her first question to me.
“Mr. Parker—”
“Please, call me Wes.”
“Wes … how are you? I mean, in here. How are you holding up in here?”
My throat tightens at the sound of her shaky voice. On camera, she looks fucking amazing, but from where I was standing, she was all teary eyes and trembling hands.
And red fucking lips.
“How am I? I’m … I’m better than I was a few minutes ago.”
Mac coughs out a laugh and claps me on the shoulder. “Pretty smooth, boy. That replacement they got for Michelle Ling was a stone-cold fox, wasn’t she?” He tugs me by the arm down the hall, coughing and chuckling and coughing some more.
I grind my teeth and try to concentrate on keeping my breathing even. I want to put my fist through the guy’s face, but I can’t let him see me sweat.
I try to figure out an angle as we turn down the next hallway and stop in front of the cabinet where they keep the soap and towels. I can’t play on his guilty conscience like Hoyt because this dude is literally a trained killer. I can’t play to his vanity like Elliott because … fucking look at him. But maybe, since he’s a military guy, I can appeal to his sense of justice. Make him see that what they’re doing here is wrong.
That what he’s doing is wrong.
“Michelle Ling looked pretty roughed up, huh? I wonder what happened to her.”
“Probably got jumped by a meth-head or a Bony.” Mac shrugs, pulling a towel out of the cabinet and draping it over his arm.
“That has to be hard for a guy like you … seeing all that crime happening right outside your door and not being able to do anything about it.”
Mac grabs a nondescript white bottle, which I assume has some kind of shampoo in it, and closes the cabinet. “It’s not a crime if it’s legal,” he mutters, but there’s no conviction in his voice. It sounds rehearsed, like it’s just