Most of the COs hated doing searches. Trying to drag a belligerent inmate out of his cell could be dangerous. The men incarcerated here didn’t have a lot to lose, which made them unpredictable. And the searches were mostly a waste of time. In Florence, a search turned up all kinds of stuff—handmade weapons, drugs, even cell phones. But the prisoners incarcerated at Hanover House didn’t have many visitors. That just left the guards and other employees to smuggle in contraband, and in an institution containing only 350 beds the risk of getting caught was too great.
Irked by Dickey’s imperial tone, Jasper felt his muscles tense, but if there was an aspect to his job he liked, it was rummaging through the inmates’ meager possessions. Threatening the men, invading their privacy, humiliating them whenever possible … Jasper found it all quite enjoyable. He figured any good sadist would. “Who should I get to work with me?”
“The same guys who helped you search the other cellblock.”
“No problem.” As far as Jasper was concerned, the sooner they started the better. He didn’t want to stay late. He had plans for after work. He had to go back to the cabin he’d been using so he could finish cleaning up.
“Then get your ass moving!” Dickey bellowed, even though Jasper was already on his way.
Jasper refused the temptation to throw him a dirty look. He hated taking direction from someone so obviously inferior to him. But most men were inferior to him, both mentally and physically—except, perhaps, Sergeant Amarok. It was because of Amarok that he’d had to kill his own parents. After all the help they’d given him over the years, that wasn’t something he’d wanted to do. They were the ones who’d gotten him out of the country in the very beginning, after he’d killed Evelyn’s three friends and tried to kill her. They’d also paid for all the plastic surgery he’d had back then, while he was in Europe. Without them, he would’ve been caught and prosecuted.
Yes, Amarok had made a brilliant move last winter. The Alaska State Trooper had forced Jasper to make a costly sacrifice. He was a worthy opponent, but this Lieutenant Dickey … he was just an asshole.
Ignore the bastard, Jasper told himself as he rounded up the other guards. Jasper had a reason for being at Hanover House, a reason to put up with Lieutenant Dickey and all the other pricks who enjoyed telling him what to do and when to do it.
He smiled as he pictured Evelyn. He certainly wasn’t working here for the money.
*
Amarok felt the tension that’d been knotting his muscles ease as soon as he saw a call from his home number come into the trooper post. “Where have you been?” he barked into the phone as soon as he picked up.
Evelyn hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“I tried calling you at work,” he replied. “I was told you never came in this morning.”
“How did you know I wasn’t at home?” she asked sheepishly.
Since he’d left before she did this morning, at first he hadn’t. That was why he’d gone back to check. “When I couldn’t reach you, I drove to the house. I’ve been in a panic ever since, trying to find you. I’ve got everyone in town on the lookout—Shorty over at the Moosehead, Garrett at the Quick Stop, all the waitresses at The Dinky Diner, even Margaret Seaver at The Shady Lady, not that I could imagine you having any reason to go to the motel.”
“You thought I might be having an affair?”
He heard the humor in her voice. “No. Considering your background, I realize that’s unlikely. Although you did eventually allow me in your pants.” They’d made love again this morning. That was why he’d called her. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. “So I guess it’s not impossible for a man to get past your defenses.”
“No one else has ever managed it—not after Jasper.”
She hadn’t had much sexual experience when she and Amarok got together, but they’d come a long way from the days when he’d had to be careful not to make her feel pinned down, overpowered or threatened. Now that she knew she could trust him, now that he’d put in the time to build that trust, she wanted to touch him or feel him inside her almost every day. Amarok couldn’t believe how lucky he was that the situation had changed. When he’d fallen in love with her, he’d decided he’d just have to cope with a difficult sex life, but the opposite was turning out to be true. “I was only being thorough, stopping by the motel,” he said. “Why would you scare me like that?”
He heard her sigh.
“What’s going on?” he pressed. “You can’t simply disappear. You’re not like other people. I can’t assume everything’s okay and go about my business, not when there’s a chance you could be in trouble. Jasper could pop up at any time. He’s done it before. And you’ve had other close calls since you moved here.”
“I know,” she said. “I just … I wasn’t gone long. I thought I could get away for a few hours.”
“Away where?”
“I went to Anchorage.”
“With a storm coming in?”
“I felt I could beat it, and I did. It’s ugly out there now, but I’m home safe.”
“Don’t tell me you went shopping.”
“No, I went to see a doctor.”
He gripped the phone tighter. “What kind of doctor?”
Another pause.
“Evelyn…”
“An ob/gyn,” she said at length.
A burst of excitement brought him to his feet. “Are you pregnant?”
“No.”
He tried to shrug off the disappointment, careful not to let even a hint of it enter his voice. “Then what?”
“I went to see if … if anything had changed with my … ability to have a child since I was last checked.”
Obviously, she was trying to figure out why she hadn’t gotten pregnant. They hadn’t been doing anything to prevent it. He’d been wondering, too—and worrying that it wouldn’t be possible to have a child with her. “And?”
“My doctor thinks fertility drugs will help. But he needs to check your sperm count before we do anything else.”
“I’m willing. When?”
“I’ll have to call him back and set up an appointment.”
“Do it.”
“Okay.”
Silence fell as he tried to get a sense of what she was feeling. “Evelyn?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the appointment?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ve got several things I need to take care of for work, so … can we talk about it later?”
“Of course. I’ll see you tonight.”
After she hung up, Amarok stared down at the phone. She loved him; he knew she did. But his mother had also loved his father, and yet she’d hated Alaska. She couldn’t tolerate the dark, the cold, the isolation. She’d broken up the family, taken his twin brother and moved to Seattle when Amarok was only two and never looked back. Amarok hadn’t even known he had a brother until his eighteenth birthday, when he received a call from his twin. They’d remained in contact ever since, but Amarok still refused to have any sort of relationship with his mother.
By falling in love with Evelyn, having a child with her, was he setting himself up for the same kind of heartbreak his father had experienced?
*
The weather was so bad that Jasper almost decided to put off returning to the cabin. After assisting with the search of Cellblock A, he wasn’t in the best mood. Tex, one of the other COs, had seen him tearing up a picture of an inmate’s grandmother and had the nerve to call him on it.
Jasper had claimed he hadn’t meant to destroy the photograph, but that was a lame excuse. It couldn’t have been torn to pieces by accident, and he could tell Tex thought the same thing. This was the first time since coming to Alaska that Jasper had done something for which he could be written up—a stupid mistake.
He scowled as he left Hilltop behind. What was the big deal, anyway? So he’d torn up a picture? The inmate’s grandmother had died of a stroke while he was incarcerated. But if his grandmother was gone, she was gone. Why would the stupid idiot be trying to sketch her photograph, especially when he didn’t have the talent to begin with?
There was no use being maudlin and sentimental over a photograph.
Hopefully Tex would let the incident go, forget about it.