Beast Part 3: An Erotic Fairy Tale (2 page)

“I’m the
district attorney, Miss Mitchell. I’m here for a specific purpose, and I’m enlisting the help I need, in whatever form it may present itself. Prisoner. Not. It’s all the same to me. Now why don’t you have a seat and tell me what you know about Blaine McGuire.”

I square my shoulders
and do my best to look unflappable. “I don’t know anything about Blaine McGuire. I’ve never even heard of him.”

Something bumps the back of my knees: a chair.
A glance over my shoulder has me looking into Germain’s eyes.

“Sit down, Miss Mitchell,” Robert Ryan says
.

I shake my head. “
I don’t want to talk to you, and you can’t keep me here. I’m not a prisoner. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

He arches a brow. “No?”

He pulls out an iPhone and presses something, then slides the thing across the table. I see a video start to flicker over the screen as he says, “Is this not you, entering through a rear door of the premises, an entrance at a federal prison not intended to receive visitors?”

I
realize the moving figure on the screen is Clinton, showing me to the door of the library. And—shit—that’s me. The footage ends as soon as I step inside, and I realize the camera must have been behind me somewhere. Pinned to a tree or something, I guess. The camera wasn’t inside.

Whew.

Still, the fact that he has any footage of me breaking rules here is probably bad. I blink at the phone and try to decide what I should say about it. Pretty quickly, I decide nothing. What can I say? I’m not willing to throw Clinton or Beast under the bus, so I simply bite my tongue.

The DA’s
face hardens, and he looks at me like I’m a frustrating five year old. “I’m conducting an investigation into this prison, Miss Mitchell. An investigation that’s about to be official. Into your ex-step father’s activities as warden, and into activities endeavored by the man these people know as Beast. Cal Hammond.” His jaw clenches. “That fuck. There’s something here. And it involves bank accounts and politics and bribery and a very large number of misdeeds by your father and I will get to the bottom of it. So tell me, Annabelle. What do you know about the murder of Blaine McGuire? I think you’ll find you like the outcome better if you tell me what he told you about what happened here last night. Your Beast, that is.” His upper lip curls into a sneer.

I step back
, and the chair I bump makes a screeching noise against the cement floor. “I’m not involved in this—at all—and I’m not about to let myself be talked into something I’m not comfortable with. Let me go, or my family will come looking for me.”

He laughs. “
Your dying mother? Or your little sister? What about the babysitter, Holly? She looks tough for such a skinny girl.”

My
heart stops. I swear, for a full second, every cell inside my body freezes. “How do you know that?” It’s a whisper, because I can’t seem to get my vocal cords to work.

“I’ve been investigating your ‘Dad—’”
the DA bends his fingers into air quotes— “for months. Ever since a little bird told me that a worthless, disgusting,
murdering
PRISONER
was calling all the shots here! There’s something illegal going on here, probably a very many somethings, and I intend to see them prosecuted. Before I’m finished, your father will be behind bars. Starting tomorrow, someone else is in charge here. And your Beast? Your murdering…
stud
? He’s never getting out of solitary. Not as long as I’m alive and holding this office.”

He locks his jaw so hard I c
an almost hear his teeth crack and folds his arms over his chest.

I want to yell, to
argue with him, to defend Beast somehow, or intervene on his behalf, but I can’t seem to move my mouth. At least not right away. When I can, the words just tumble out.

“It’s not going to bring her back,”
I whisper.

He leans forward.
“What did you say?”

“
Uma.” I clasp my hands together and speak softly. “I know that Uma is your granddaughter. I was there that night. I drove up on the wreck. I know how bad it was…and I know how much it hurts to lose someone you love.” I have to stop and swallow, because the time is coming soon for Mom. I know it is. “But you’re not going to get her back. Not by throwing Be— Cal Hammond into solitary. Not by doing anything.”

He throws his head back and starts laughing
. It sounds so much like a cough, I think if I had my eyes closed, I’d never know the difference. I fold my arms across my chest and watch until he shuts his mouth and the sound stops echoing through the little room. He straightens up and meets my eyes again. His are so cold. So filled with hate and bitterness. “You’re not very bright, are you?”

I blink. I’m not going to dignify this asshole with an answer.

“Honey,” he says, “I know I can’t bring the dead back. But I can add to the count. You know what I mean?” His eye quivers. Or maybe that’s him blinking. It looks like a seizure, but I think it’s just pent up fury. After just a second of that horrible, freakish, unhinged look, he stands again and thrusts his hand out. He seals the deal on freakish by giving me a phony grin that looks like it must hurt.

“Good to see you, Miss Mitchell.
Germain will see you out.”

The guard grabs my arms and snatches them behind my back,
and I jerk against him. “No! I want to know what’s going on with Beast!”

“
Germain,” the DA says. His tone is a warning:
Get her out of here
.

“I’ll tell Holt about this!”
  I cry as I’m dragged out of the room.

“That’s the point,
honey.”

*

I’m escorted all the way to the security checkpoint by the guard named Germain. When we get there, he asks one of the female checkpoint guards to see me to my car.

By the time
the guard and I are pushing through one of the glass doors that leads to the parking lot, my eyes sting with unshed tears and my chest feels uncomfortably heavy.

I step out of La Rosa, into th
e bright, pale day, and glance around the parking lot, not because I want to leave but because even my eyes aren’t sure what to do next. It’s then I remember: I don’t have a car.

Shit.

From where I’m standing, at the top of the stairs to the main entrance, I can see two guard towers, but no one is nearby except the guard who brought me out.

I
pull my phone out of my pocket and turn around to see if she’ll leave me alone now so I can call a cab or even Holly if I need to.

Instead of leaving, s
he spits some fruit-scented chewing gum into a wrapper and puts a cigarette between her lips. It dangles there as I say, “I can’t leave right away. I don’t have a car here.”

She ignores that and holds out a pack at me. “Want to bum one?”

I shake my head, but I’m surprised she asked. Maybe I’ve finally found La Rosa’s
one friendly employee. Besides Clinton, that is.

“Do you know Clinton?” I ask as she lights up.

Her thin, dark brows draw together. “You do?”

I nod.

Her gray eyes widen. “I remember you now. You’re the riot girl! I recognize you from the cameras.” She laughs. “If Clinton is your ride, you’ll be waiting as long as the lifers. He just got escorted out like you.”

“He
did? Why?” I assume I know why—he’s part of the housecleaning that’s probably going to get rid of all Beast’s posse—but I want to hear what she says.

She tosses her gaze left, then right, like she’s trying to be sure no one is watching
us talk. She steps closer to me as she blows smoke out the side of her mouth, toward the parking lot. “He’s under investigation.”

“Why?” I breathe.
             

“That’s not something I can tell you, doll.”

I bug my eyes out, as if to say what the hell, and she laughs a little. “Mostly ’cause I don’t know.”

“Where is the warden?” I try. “Is he still away?” I know the answer, of course, but I want to see what she says. See if I can figure out more about why the DA thinks he can come in and start messing with the system here.
See if I can tell by her reaction to the question whether she knows I’m the warden’s daughter.

“You mean your dad?”

I nod. Question answered.

“I’m surprised that you don’t know. But yeah.”
She nods. “We’ve got an interim—Jenkins, one of the three wardens under your dad—but Jenkins got suspended, too. We had the DA come out. Fancy suit and all. He’s all good and pissed off. Shaking things up.” She drops her volume a notch. “Some people are saying it started with Cal Hammond. The DA thinks Beast killed his granddaughter.”

“Huh?”
I feign.

She nods solemnly. 

“Do you mean the girl in the wreck that night? Uma Whatever Her Last Name Was?”

Her brows arch up
. “You knew her?”

I shake my head. “I just remember her name.
First name.”

She shrugs, and
takes another drag, then slowly blows it out. “I don’t know much about the wreck, except some people died,” she says, still blowing smoke. “I don’t care, either. That man in there—” she jacks her thumb toward the doors— “is not Cal Hammond. They call him Beast. But then, I guess you know that…riot girl.”

I swallow, trying to loosen my throat. It feels tight. Because my body knows, a second before my brain does, what I’m about to ask her.

“Did he kill that guy tonight? The Aryan?”

“You tell me,” she says.
“You were here for him, weren’t you? Don’t you lie to Maura. I can tell.”

I nod slowly, and she smirks. “Conjugal visits at all hours, that
big fucking cock. I heard his cell is swank as shit, too. How did it go down? When they came for him, you were sucking his dick?”

I bite my lip. I’m not sur
e if I should tell her anything—definitely not whether I was sucking his dick when he got taken—but I figure if I want more information from her, I might need to give a little. “They just came and…took him. Two guys dressed in black, and one in a suit.”

“The DA,” she says, nodding. “
One of the other assistant wardens told me he had it in for Beast.”

I
grit my teeth. It’s wrong. So wrong. I don’t care if Uma was the DA’s granddaughter; he shouldn’t be allowed to pop up and start playing out his own vendetta. Not in a place like this, where Beast doesn’t have any rights. It’s abuse of power in the worst way.

“Don’t look so
upset,” the guard scoffs. “He’s killed a lot of men in here. If you ask me, he gets privileged treatment.” She leans in a little, blowing a curtain of smoke into my face. “I fucked him a few times—privacy of the kitchen—” she smiles— “and he’s got a big, pretty dick, but he’s no warden. He roams the halls with no escort or nothing. Not that I don’t like to see that pretty face, but it’s fucked up, the way things are. Probably because he killed so many people. He’s got respect from all the men. Even the gang leaders treat him like a…I dunno. Some kind of Mafioso. I heard he bribes the ranking guards with money.”

“You’re not a ranking guard?” I ask.

“I’m just a junior. New hire.”

“Did you know the guy who…died?” I brave. “The…Aryan leader, or whoever he was?”

I’m nervous about asking, because she’s white. I’m not sure how the guards and the prisoners get along. Maybe the white guards like the white prisoners, and mentioning the dead Aryan will make her angry.

I’m relieved when she takes another drag of her cigarette and shrugs. “I heard he got offed in a shower stall. Buck
ass naked. Someone squealed to someone saying it was Beast and the media found out like that.” She snaps her fingers to emphasize
fast
. “DA showed up and you know how that went down for Beast. People are saying your daddy’s gonna go when he gets back from his vacay. His head is gonna roll. There’s gonna be some changes around here. Everybody’s just a normal prisoner, and the new person is running things.”

“Who’s the new person?”

She shrugs. “Someone on the DA’s good list. He’s supposed to get here in the morning.” She looks me over and laughs, a little wryly. “Look at fucking me. I’m spilling all my fucking secrets.” She looks around, then frowns as if she’s straining to hear something.

Right about that time,
I hear the rumble of a car’s engine. I peer around her to see a yellow van bouncing down the dirt road. The gate begins to open. I wonder if whoever called the cab would mind if I rode with them.

“That’s you, doll
.”

“It is?”

She nods. “Germain, he called about thirty minutes ago. Said you’d need a ride out. Asking me to get you one.”

“How did he even know that?” I wonder aloud.

She shrugs. “Word here travels like a wildfire sometimes.”