HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) (107 page)

“It’s not going to work, Mama,” he said, but it wasn’t Johnny French anymore. His face was morphing into someone I didn’t recognize, his body shrinking away from me.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“What’s happening?” the little boy in front of me asked. “Where are you going, Mama?”

Jesus. My own son. I hadn’t recognized my own son. It’d been long—too long. I didn’t want him to see me this drunk, but I couldn’t turn him away. I didn’t have any kind of choice.

“Come here, baby,” I said, holding my arms out, relieved that I wasn’t naked in front of my child. “Mama’s here. You come give your Mama a big hug. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You left before,” my sweet child said. “You left me.”

“Marshall, I left to make sure we had a good life,” I said. “I did it for you, baby.”

He shook his head. “I wanted to go with you, Mama,” he said. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”

“You couldn’t go where I was going, baby,” I said. Especially since where I was going ended up here, in prison. “I need you to understand that.”

“I want my Mama,” he said, that full bottom lip getting puffier and puffier as he pouted, the tears brimming in his eyes.

“No, no,” I said, enveloping him in my arms. “None of that. I don’t want any crying, you hear me? Not here. Not when Mama’s here. Mama’s here, baby boy. She’s here.”

I rocked my precious son in my arms, hugging him tightly. I’d left for him, tried to make a living so that we never had to worry about money again. The nightclub, everything, was for him. I wanted to make a good life for us both.

“You left me,” he sobbed. “You left me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’m right here, baby. Look at Mama. I’m right here, son.”

But he wouldn’t stop crying. It broke my heart. He clung to me, but I gently extricated myself, holding him at arm’s length to get a look at his face.

It wasn’t my son.

“Cocoa?” I asked, in absolute disbelief. “Is it you?”

“It’s me, Mama,” she sobbed, hiccupping for breath, wiping the tears from her cheeks even as they continued to fall.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. Cocoa had been something of a lieutenant to me in the nightclub. She’d been my liaison between the business side of the nightclub and the personnel—my girls. She told them things I asked her to, and became like another mother to several of them. I trusted her—I used to trust her—with everything. Whenever we took on a new girl at the boarding house, it was Cocoa I always put her with. Cocoa was patient and kind and always showed the girls what they were supposed to be doing—if not by telling them outright, then by showing them through her example. She was one of the most talented, highest paid girls in the nightclub.

But then, she betrayed me.

“You betrayed me,” I said, scooting away from her. “You fucked me over, Cocoa. Why?”

“I didn’t,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “I’d never, Mama. It was you who betrayed me.”

“Not true,” I insisted. “That’s just not true.”

“You turned your back on me,” she said. “I needed your help, Mama, and you weren’t there for me. I needed you, and you turned me out.”

“You stole from me,” I said, choking on my rage and my grief. Cocoa had been like a daughter to me. The betrayal had been absolute.

“How is collecting some of my wages stealing from you?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. “All I took from you was two grand. I bet that was what I made in a week, Mama. You knew how good I was. Why couldn’t you have helped me?”

I shook my head furiously. It didn’t make sense. Cocoa lied to me, she endangered the nightclub when she let some fool of a customer take photos of her while they were having sex. The customer’s wife found out and ended their marriage over it, and he returned to the nightclub, seeking revenge and exacting it on Cocoa. Cops had been called—cops I hadn’t known. It had put everything in danger.

“You could’ve cost me everything,” I said. “You could’ve brought the entire nightclub to its knees.”

“Where do you think the nightclub is right now?” she asked. “It’s over, Mama, and it wasn’t me. It was you. You.”

“Lies,” I said. “Pure lies. That nightclub was my life. I cared for all of you girls. I did.”

“No,” Cocoa said. Her face was dry, as if she’d never shed a tear. “The one and only thing you ever cared about ever since I first met you was money. Cash was your first and only love, Mama. We were just vehicles to get you toward what you wanted. And you’d toss us aside if you thought we were getting in your way. You tried to kill me just for asking what was rightfully mine.”

“I didn’t,” I protested. “I’d never. You—you’re lying.” Even as I tried to dispute Cocoa’s version of events, foggy memories surfaced—memories I’d tried to keep deep within myself. A gun in my hand. Cocoa running from me. The crash of glass. Cocoa jumping out of a window to get away. Rage. The chase. And absolute despair.

“Get out of here!” I screamed at her. “Get out of here!”

“You think about your sins, Mama,” Cocoa said, rising gracefully and walking toward the door to my cell. “You have plenty of time to remember each and every one, I think.”

“Out!” I screamed. “Out! I don’t want you here! Get out of here! Leave me the fuck alone! I didn’t ask for this.”

I sobbed myself to sleep. What had happened? Why was everyone angry with me? I’d done nothing wrong. I’d only tried to make a business, tried to make a life for myself so that I’d never have to worry again. I was a single mother, after all, one who’d only known how to do one thing to make money. I needed the nightclub as much as it needed me, and I’d fight to protect it.

When I woke up, I wasn’t in my cell. I wasn’t anywhere I recognized.

I was sprawled on a concrete floor, my head pounding, my mouth like cotton. When I tried to stand, my world was upended. My stomach heaved and I puked on the floor before I could manage to drag myself toward a toilet. There, I emptied the contents of my stomach and then some. I dry heaved for several long minutes before I got myself back under control, flopping back down on the floor, not caring that I was lying partially in my own vomit.

I was beyond caring. I was beyond help.

What had happened?

I was battling a wicked, life-ending hangover. That much was evident. The fluorescent light in the room was too much for my tender eyes to bear. I threw an arm over my eyes and tried to remember what had happened.

Drinking. I’d been drinking. I wouldn’t have a hangover, otherwise. But where had I found the alcohol? I was in prison, after all.

The contraband. Willow’s contraband had been a potent brew of homemade prison hooch. We’d imbibed the entire bag. Where was she? Where was I? What had happened?

I had other, fainter memories. I’d been thinking of my past, thinking about Johnny French. My son. The girls at the nightclub. It was hard to think of them all, especially when I was in this strange reality of prison. My past seemed less real all the time, and my present even more far-fetched. How had I gotten here? What had I done?

I raised my arm and tried to fight the nausea as I peered around. I had to assess my surroundings. I could get this figured out if I tried.

There wasn’t a bed, just a toilet and a drain on the ground. And the door didn’t have bars—just a slot where I assumed they gave me food. I hoped I wouldn’t be getting any food. I didn’t think I could stomach it with this wretched hangover.

This was solitary, I realized. I was in solitary. I ignored the stab of anxiety in my gut—tried to, anyway. It was easy since I was so occupied with my nausea and my headache. If I was in solitary, that meant we’d been caught. Had the guards smelled the telltale stench of hooch? Had someone ratted us out? Had I done anything to compromise our little cellmate party?

I hoped Willow wasn’t too angry with me. We’d been building a good relationship, I thought. I couldn’t deal with my cellmate being shitty and angry with me. I didn’t want that drama in my life.

I slept on and off for a while. The floor was uncomfortable, but I was tired and desperate for the sleep. Sleep was the only thing that made the time pass, and the only treatment for a hangover was time. I had no idea of knowing how long I’d been in solitary. There were no windows. No clocks. Nothing to indicate any sort of passage of time. Hell. Maybe I’d just gotten here. Or maybe I’d been here for weeks.

I was awoken by the door opening. Pitt, my corrections officer, stepped in, looking down at me impassively. I’d managed to roll free of the vomit during one of my naps, but it was still covering the floor.

“This has to be a new record,” he said. “You were hardly in prison for twelve hours before you got placed in solitary. This isn’t a good way to start your stay with us, Wanda.”

“I understand,” I said. “But I don’t remember what happened.”

“No big surprise there,” Pitt said. “You drank enough hooch to kill an elephant.”

I had to bite my lip. Was this another insult at my weight? I tried to keep myself from rising to the bait.

“You had some kind of nervous breakdown or something,” he continued. “Screaming at things that weren’t there. Scared your cellmate half to death.”

“Where’s Willow?” I asked, concerned. I had a lot of explaining to do with her. She deserved to know that I was sorry for pissing on the party. I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. How had everything gone so wrong?

“Your cellmate was transferred to a maximum security facility,” Pitt said.

I had to cover my mouth to hold in the gasp. “But why? She didn’t do anything wrong. She was just trying to be my friend. Is that what you do to people who brew a little hooch?”

“That wasn’t the first time by far,” Pitt said. “That was the third time we’ve actually caught her at it, though we’re sure there’ve been plenty of other times that she’s had a successful launch party for her hooch. We’re trying to send a message to the rest of the inmates that alcoholic contraband isn’t going to be tolerated. It’s a huge problem.”

That wasn’t good news for me. As shitty as I felt, I was already looking forward to the next session. If I were back at the nightclub, waking up like this, I’d already be nipping on a bottle of whiskey to take the edge off. Life was very different now.

“How are you feeling?” Pitt asked, his face showing just a trace of concern.

I sat up and winced. “Like I’ve had the last wild night for a long time.”

“You’ve got that right,” he said. “Do you have a problem with alcohol, Wanda?”

“No,” I said defensively, immediately. “No, of course not.”

“The reason I’m asking is that when they finally got you down to solitary last night, the guards had the medic on staff take a look at you,” Pitt said, crossing his arms. “They say that the way you reacted—the probable hallucinations, the violence—that you’d been abusing alcohol for a long time.”

That made me frown. “I’ve always enjoyed a drink,” I said. “But it’s not a problem. I’m not abusing anything.”

Pitt looked at me without saying anything for a few moments.

“I feel bad for you,” he said finally. “I know that you haven’t had any prior convictions. I know this is your first time in prison. And with a woman at your age, that’s a difficult thing, to be uprooted from your life and put here. You have rules to follow, Wanda. You need to figure that out.”

“I apologize,” I said. “I realize that I’ve gotten off to a terrible start here.”

“Use this time wisely,” Pitt said. “Prison is meant as a punishment, but you can also use it as an opportunity to reshape your life. There are resources here. Services. Training. Programs. You can leave prison with a new plan.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to take the advice to heart. Pitt wasn’t the first person who had told me this. I needed to try to make the best of my time here. I knew that.

“Now,” Pitt said. “Are you ready to get back out to the general population? You’ve been down here for two days.”

“Two days?” I repeated incredulously. “What was I doing?”

“Sleeping, mostly,” he said. “You refused food.”

I shook my head at this. Why didn’t I have any memory of this? It was utterly troubling. I tried to think back, tried to remember if that slot on the door had ever opened, but I couldn’t remember anything. Had the hooch really gotten to me that bad? Or was I dealing with something different?

I got to my feet and followed Pitt out. I smelled awful, and there was dried vomit in my hair. I was a goddamn mess. Was this rock bottom or did I have farther to fall before I could start clawing my way back up?

Farther, it turns out. Much farther.

Pitt allowed me to get my things from my old cell before he walked me to my new one.

“Marlee Fitz, this is your new cellmate,” he said, holding his arm out at me—vomit-smeared, hungover me. “Wanda Dupree.”

“Howdy,” Marlee said, looking up from her book. “Looks like you could use a shower.”

And that’s how I had my first experience with prison hygiene facilities. There were curtains separating each shower stall, which was more than I expected. And the hot water made me feel better, banishing the chunks of vomit and lingering hangover.

“That’s better,” Marlee greeted me when I got back to the room, squeaky clean and in a fresh jumpsuit.

“I agree,” I said, hanging my towel from the edge of my new bed. My memory pricked at me, as though I needed to say something. I looked at Marlee, sure that she held the answer to whatever was bothering me. She was pretty—a strawberry blonde, freckles spread across her cheeks. Her eyes were a clear, deep brown.

“Something on your mind?” Marlee asked.

“Yes, I just can’t quite remember, sugar,” I said. “Oh—are you the Marlee from the cafeteria? The one who’s in charge of the kitchen?”

“The one and same,” she said easily.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “I had dinner last night—my first meal here—and I just wanted to say how delicious is was. You really know your way around the kitchen.”

“Well, thank you,” Marlee said, beaming. “I do love hearing from happy customers.”

“How long have you been in charge of the kitchen?” I asked her.

“Nearly since I’ve been here,” she said, “so that’ll put it at about five years now.”

“Five years,” I said wonderingly. “That’s a long time?”

“I bet you’re wondering what I did to deserve to be here five years,” Marlee said, smiling.

“No,” I said quickly. “It’s just impressive that you’ve been in charge of the kitchen that whole time. You must be doing something right, sugar.”

She waved my explanation away. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. I’m doing hard time for fraud. I’d steal my boyfriends’ credit cards, run up the limits, and disappear. And I had lots of boyfriends.”

I laughed. She looked like she did—Marlee was very pretty. “What made you do it?”

She shrugged. “What made me do anything back then? Alcohol. I hated men, too. I was raped at an impressionable age. I was afraid of men for a long time, but then I figured I just needed to adjust my attitude. Recognize that I could take advantage of them just as easily as I’d been taken advantage of. Alcohol helped mask my fear, helped give me the courage to rob those poor men blind.”

“Jesus, sugar,” I said, wide eyed. “I’m sorry to hear all that.”

“Don’t be,” Marlee said. “I’m not. Sure, I could’ve done without the shittier things that happened along the road. But prison has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. Really.”

I sat down on my bed and took a closer look at my new cell. Just like Willow, Marlee had amassed possessions. She had books, photographs, stationary sets, and snacks.

“You have a lot of stuff, sugar,” I said wistfully. “You have somebody on the outside?”

“A few admirers,” she laughed. “I mean, Christ, I took them for all they had, but there are three who still think they love me. It’s fucking bizarre. And the kitchen work helps. You don’t earn a lot, but over time, you earn enough to get what you need from the commissary.”

“I’m looking forward to working,” I said. “I don’t have anyone on the outside.”

“Do you have everything you need?” Marlee asked. “I can help you get things from the commissary if there’s something you don’t have.”

Unless you could get alcohol from the commissary, I could do without until I started earning wages.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I can manage until I start work. You don’t have to do anything.”

“Smart lady,” Marlee said, smiling. “Don’t be beholden to anyone. Every favor carries a price.”

I was taken aback. “And what was your price going to be?”

“I was going to make you go to a meeting with me,” she said. “Whether you wanted to or not. I’m still supposed to get you to go to a meeting, but now I don’t have any leverage.”

“What kind of meeting?” I asked, my suspicions—and curiosity—raised.

“AA,” she said. “Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course, we’re not terribly anonymous here in prison, but it doesn’t much matter. We don’t get much privacy anyway.”

“I don’t have a problem with alcohol,” I said, my hackles raised.

“Says the woman who spent the first two days in prison in solitary because she binged on so much hooch that it made her have screaming hallucinations,” Marlee said serenely. “That’s denial, Wanda.”

“You know, I’m pretty tired, sugar,” I said, having to fight to keep the acid out of my voice. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while.”

“You’re avoiding your problem,” Marlee said.

“There’s no problem to avoid!” I shouted, at the end of my rope. I didn’t like these suggestions and innuendos. I didn’t have a problem with alcohol. I didn’t. I flopped down on my bed and rolled over to face the wall, away from Marlee. One little incident with prison hooch and I had people assuming I was alcoholic. It made me defensive and irritable.

Then again, I had lost the memory of two whole days because of it, some voice inside me whispered. I’d thought I had sex with Johnny French again. I thought I was explaining myself to my son. I thought I was talking with Cocoa, whom I hadn’t seen since she left the nightclub. What had all of that been?

“Wanda, tell you what,” Marlee said, putting her arm on my shoulder gently. “I’m sorry we got off to the wrong foot. If you promise to just go to one meeting with me, I promise to never mention this again to you. I know that it can be a sensitive subject. I know that very well.”

“What if I don’t want to go to a meeting?” I asked, my pillow muffling my voice.

“Then I’ll keep bugging you about it,” Marlee said cheerfully. “What do you think is the root of your alcoholism? Family troubles? Men troubles? Women troubles? I started drinking shortly after the rape, so there’s no mystery there. It’s a lot easier once you pinpoint what made you start drinking. You want to talk about it?”

No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to talk about anything related to drinking unless it was where and when I could get my next buzz.

“One meeting,” I said. “One meeting and you won’t bother me again?”

“That’s the deal.”

“And I don’t have to talk or do anything stupid?”

“You can sit there with your eyes closed, if that’s what you want to do,” Marlee said.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go to one meeting. Is that enough to get you to stop talking about it?”

“Yep,” she said happily. “The next meeting is Tuesday afternoon—you just missed today’s. You have a week to figure out if you want to say anything. A week to look forward to learning more about your disease.”

“Super,” I lied. “Let’s stop talking about it, now.”

The next week passed by in fits and starts. I felt extremely irritable, like Marlee or Pitt were about to assault me at every turn with accusations of alcoholism, but they both stayed blissfully silent on the subject. I wondered if Marlee told my corrections officer that I’d agreed to go to a meeting.

Instead, I had a meeting with Pitt to talk about the activities I could get involved with.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said, folding his hands over my file as we sat in his office. “Not about what you’re in here for, what you did or didn’t do. About yourself. Your past.”

That made me uncomfortable. “There’s not much to tell,” I hedged. “Pretty typical upbringing, I guess.”

“What’s a typical upbringing to you?” Pitt asked.

I shrugged and shook my head, thinking about it. “I don’t know. There just wasn’t anything special about it. I did the best I could for myself. That’s it.”

“This isn’t meant to be an interrogation,” he said, “and I’m not trying to pry. I’m just trying to assess where you’d work best here at the prison, and what other service you might benefit from.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s easy, then. I really like cooking and I’m good at it, too. I’d do really well in the kitchen, I think.”

Pitt hesitated. “Wanda, the thing is, we need to be able to trust the inmates who work in the kitchen the most,” he said. “You don’t really inspire a lot of confidence after your stunt with the hooch.”

Shit. That drunken night was going to haunt me. I started to curse Willow and her brewing prowess until I remembered that she was locked up in a maximum security facility. From what I heard, that was no fieldtrip. Inmates there had to stay in their cells for nearly the entire day.

“What else could I do if not that?” I asked. “Cooking’s what I can do.”

“What are your other skills?” Pitt asked.

I pressed my lips together. I could run a brothel. I could turn a trick. But I don’t think that’s what he wanted to hear.

“Really, cooking’s it,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m a one-trick pony.”

“What did you do for work before you came here?” Pitt asked.

“That’s kind of why I’m here,” I admitted. “It wasn’t legal.”

“Well, let’s try to ferret out the legal skills you might have gleaned from it,” he said. “Did you manage people?”

If we were being totally honest, Cocoa did most of the managing. I was her manager, though, and I kept the bouncers in line and the entertainment lined up.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did. Sort of.”

“Management experience,” Pitt said, writing it down. “Perfect. What else? Did you organize things? Keep files? Anything like that?”

“I managed the money coming in,” I said. “Is that something?”

“Yes, of course,” Pitt said. “Money skills. Excellent. Now, talk to me about your education. Any time in college?”

I snorted. “I dropped out,” I said. “So zero college. Barely any high school.”

“I bet you’d be interested in our GED program,” Pitt said, making a note in my file.

“What’s that?”

“GED,” he said. “It’s the equivalent to getting a high school diploma, once you complete the program and the tests. Would you like to do that?”

Back in my youth, street smarts had been much more important than book smarts. I’d never seen a need to get my high school diploma, which is why I dropped out to pursue … other matters. But there was something interesting about getting the equivalent of my diploma now. I figured prison was the place to do it. What else would I be doing instead?

“Okay,” I said. “Sure. That sounds good.”

“And once you get your GED, you can start taking other courses,” Pitt said. “We have accounting classes, business classes, anything you’re interested in. There’s also a pretty good creative writing class that’s really popular with the rest of the inmates. We can see if there’s any room for you in that.”

“I don’t do creative writing,” I said, shaking my head quickly. “I don’t really do any writing.”

“There’ll be some writing involved for the GED,” Pitt said. “Who knows? You might figure out that you like it.”

“We’ll see,” I said doubtfully.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Pitt said, tapping his pen against the desk. “I’d like to start you off in a position in the commissary. You said you’re good with money and numbers.”

“Yes ….”

“There would be no money changing hands,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. There are accounts for inmates’ money, but it’s all virtual. Like a bank account.”

“I understand.”

“There aren’t many inmates with that kind of skill set,” Pitt continued. “Try working at the commissary. If you can prove yourself there, maybe we’ll think about moving you to kitchen. I know that’s what you really want, but you have to sort of prove yourself, Wanda. Prove that you’re not just someone who gets wasted off of hooch and makes scenes.”

I flushed. I would never, never escape this. “I’m um, going to a meeting with Marlee,” I offered. Anything to keep him from mentioning my transgression again.

“That’s wonderful,” Pitt said, sounding genuinely pleased. “That’s a good first step, Wanda. Just get yourself there. You’ll see. AA has changed lives. It changed my life.”

“You, too?”

Pitt nodded. “It’s a pretty stressful job being a corrections officer,” he said. “Maybe not as stressful as being an inmate, but pretty close. I was relying on alcohol too much to relax, and my family was suffering.”

My eyes fell to the photograph of the happy, smiling family on Pitt’s desk. Every family had its problems, it seemed.

“Admitting there’s a problem is the first step,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve made it.”

I held my hands up. “I’m just going to a meeting to see what it’s all about,” I said. “I’m not sure that there’s a problem at this point.”

“That’s fine,” Pitt said, the beginnings of a smile curving the corners of his mouth upward. “You just get yourself to a meeting. See what you think.”

“All right,” I said, trying to tamp down the squirming feeling inside of me. I’d do anything for some more hooch. There had to be someone else brewing it somewhere. It was a big prison.