that’s not true. I saw your sister and Bekki King sitting over on the side at one time. I don’t think they stayed long, though. Other than that, it was the usual crowd plus a fuck ton more.”
“So, you don’t remember seeing her at all?”
“Shit, Kyle. I remember you yelled for a house white and seeing a blonde sitting on the stool next to you. But her back was to me, and I figured if you were buying her a drink, she was old enough to be in my bar.”
Shoulders slumping, he drummed his fingers on the top of the bar and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks anyway.”
Torin leaned against the back counter, his lips quirking, and Kyle groaned.
Laughing, Torin tossed the dishrag over his shoulder and stalked away. “I’ll let you cry in your beer alone, man.”
He stayed for another hour, greeting some of his friends that came in, his gaze continually scanning the bar, but Kimberly never showed. The niggle of doubt crept through his mind and he wondered if she was avoiding him. Jesus, get a grip. It was just last night. But as he walked to his truck, the question of whether she had thought of him since leaving that morning stayed with him.
For the entire two-hour drive to the women’s prison holding Beth Washington, Kyle kept up a running dialog with Alex… anything to keep from thinking of the woman they were interviewing.
“How’s your sister?”
“Hannah’s great. She’s a Police Chief in a tiny-ass town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.”
Shaking his head, Kyle asked, “How’s your dad taking that?”
“Oh, you know dad. He thinks she lost her mind when she turned down a position with the FBI to move to a no-wheres-ville place.”
“What do you think?”
“Personally, I think my sister’s the shit, man. She’s smart, not afraid to go for her own dreams, and I’m fuckin’ proud of her. I just hope dad eventually sees the same.”
Kyle pulled into the lot of the prison. After parking, he stared out the windshield, his hands still clamped onto the steering wheel. The brick buildings sat behind a wide yard of green grass. It could have been mistaken for a small college campus if it weren’t for the tall, barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding the entire area and the guard gate at the entrance.
Inside was the woman who’d held a gun to his sister’s head. It was his choice to come to see her, but it wasn’t until his gaze landed on her incarceration facility did the punch to the gut hit him.
Grateful Alex sat quietly, giving him a moment to clear his head, he finally unclenched his hands. “Let’s go.”
“You got this?”
“I got this.”
After passing through the prison’s security checkpoints, they were escorted down a long hall. An initial antiseptic smell hit, followed by the assault of stale air from an area with lots of bodies and no windows. What struck him most was the color of the cinder block walls… pale purple.
Alex caught his eye and mouthed ‘Purple?’, and he shrugged his shoulders in response. The guard escorting them down the hall must have caught the exchange and grinned.
“The color of the walls used to be yellow. Then someone read that yellow was an energetic color, and the last warden said that blues and purples were calming.” The woman snorted and added, “Can’t say I’ve seen a decrease in irritating behavior even if we do have lilac-shit walls.”
Appreciating her candor, he kept his thoughts to himself but grinned, and a little tension slid from his shoulders. Reaching a series of doors, the guard threw one open. “You can use this interview room. Ms. Washington will be escorted here in just a few minutes.”
Stepping inside the room, he noted the utilitarian interior. Grey metal table bolted to the floor. Grey plastic chairs. Bare walls except for a list of rules, the corners of the tacked poster curling and frayed. The walls were painted light grey… guess they don’t care if the prisoners are calm in here. Kyle shook his head but remained quiet. As far as he was concerned, whatever the prison officials felt they needed to do to keep the prisoners in check was up to them. Settling into a seat, he placed his forearms on the top of the cool metal of the table and clenched his hands once again. It did not escape his notice that the purple had had no calming effect on him.
Beth Washington had pleaded guilty, insisting to the end that the drug scheme was