seeing as Officer Cuffs was trying to tug the phone away.
“That was not two minutes,” Fancy Pants said, no longer cowering. “I timed it.” She tapped her very expensive gold watch.
She’d just got done calling me crazy, so I hadn’t expected her to stand up for me. Then, as he jerked the phone away from me anyway, it hit me—we were all locked in here together, being treated like shit, and it had formed a weird kind of sisterhood. Even if one of us was dead, and one of us was about to be dead, we were tied together in this place of in-between. In between life and death, in between the outside world and being locked up . . . almost like a fae in between.
I blew out a breath as the officer stormed off, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed through the room, and I stepped away from the bars, my cuffs clinking.
Corb thought he had a loophole? If there was one, why hadn’t Crash thought of it? Of the two of them, I had more faith in Crash despite our rocky whatever-the-hell-was-going-on-between-us situation. Corb was young, and he cared too much about earning the praise of his superiors and the council. It had driven him to lie about things he really shouldn’t have.
Then again, Crash had been less than forthcoming too.
Jaysus on high, maybe I liked liars? I wrinkled up my nose and pursed my lips. I was going to have to dissect that at a later date, when my head wasn’t on the chopping block.
The creak of the outer door turned all our heads. A new guy swept into the room, his hair smoothed back in a swooshing pompadour style that made me think he was going to whip out a bright red cape and flap it at an oncoming bull. Hell, he was lean and lanky enough that he could have pulled it off.
He drew close enough that I could have reached through the bars to shake hands with him. A bright citrusy cologne drifted into the cell, not the kind of scent I’d have paired with a guy like him. His dark eyes narrowed on me, and his mouth thinned even as his nostrils flared. Like he really didn’t like what he was looking at. Or maybe he could smell the poo?
“I am the district prosecutor. Mr. Langley. What did Corb Walker mean when he said, ‘look for Kink’?” When he spoke, his mouth barely moved, almost as if he were a ventriloquist. It was all kinds of weird, and a warning shot down my spine that this one was trouble. “Is this some sort of sex cult you’re involved in? Is that why you killed your ex-husband? Did he discover your depraved ways?”
He tucked his hands behind him and stepped back as if he thought my supposed depravity might be contagious.
So the phone was tapped, no surprise there.
“Are you afraid of me?” I’d purposefully answered his question with a question, something Alan had hated—mostly because it worked so well with men who had outsized egos.
Speaking of, Alan swooped in beside me. “Yes, keep him on his toes. Don’t give him anything.”
I wanted to point out to Alan that it didn’t really matter what I said. They fully intended to string me up for his murder and gawd only knew what other charges they’d trump up along the way.
Mr. Langley shook his head. “You are not in a position to be asking questions. I would think you’d want to answer them and gain some—”
I raised my cuffed hands, palms facing him, effectively shutting him up. And put on my I-used-to-be-married-to-a-lawyer-and-helped-him-in-his-office persona. “Let’s be straight with each other, Mr. Langley. You and your boys are back there spreading Alan’s blood all over my things to make a case against me that is not real. You and I both know that. Whatever your reason for wanting me dead, you’re so committed to it that you’ve bumped up the trial to—” I waited for Alan to whisper the new date in my ear, “—tomorrow at nine in the morning.”
Mr. Langley paled. “You can’t know that. Only I know that.”
“Can’t I? I would think someone being charged with such a serious crime should at least know when her trial is. Or do you mean I can’t know that because you hadn’t told anyone else yet?”
I smiled, and Alan grunted beside me. “Maybe you could have been a lawyer.” That from him was a high compliment. “He’s