“No more,” I say. “Mom. Listen to me. Very carefully. Now, why the fuck didn’t you bring those books to me straightaway?”
“Joe! How dare you speak to me like that! After all I’ve done for you? After raising you, looking after you, after squeezing you out of my vagina!” she shouts.
And sixteen years later I was being squeezed into my auntie’s one. I figure between them both they owe me some Goddamn consideration.
“Six months!” I shout, and I don’t even make the decision to do it, it just starts happening, my hand starts crashing the receiver against the wall. “Six months!” I scream back into it, only it’s just shattered plastic holding a string of wires and components. I smash it against the wall again. All I have now is a disconnect signal and a blossoming headache. I don’t get to speak into it again because then I’m being tackled. I’m on the ground and my arms are being pulled behind me. I’m being shouted at to stay calm. I shout six months again, and then the guard puts his knee in my back and I’m punched really hard in the kidneys, so hard that I almost throw up.
He rolls me onto my back. He’s been joined by a second guard.
“Let’s go,” he says.
They drag me to my feet. It’s Saturday night. Date night. I’m not taken back to my cell. Instead I’m taken in a different direction, through two more sets of doors that are buzzed open from a control booth somewhere. We’re watched by cameras in the ceilings. I haven’t been in this direction before, but I’m pretty sure I know where it heads. It’s solitary confinement—and my first thought is it has to be better than what I’ve had so far, then my second thought is that this has actually worked out pretty well. Not the part where my mother fucked up, but the part where I fucked up and broke the phone. I’m going to be safe here. Caleb Cole can’t get me here.
The cells are wider apart. All the doors are closed and there’s no sound coming from within any of them. There is no communal area. Everything is darker. Even the cinder-block walls seem to be a different shade of gray. The two guards march me to the end of a corridor and then we wait as a cell door is buzzed open. None of us make conversation along the way. A piece of my soul is still back at the phone, trying to figure out a way to get to my mother. The second guard disappears.
“Sleep it off,” the original guard says, and he shoves me into the cell. He takes the cuffs off. “Don’t forget you owe me two hundred bucks,” he says. Then the door is slammed behind me. There is no light. I have to walk slowly to find the edge of the bed. I lie on my side. My stomach is starting to make noises again. The darkness of the cell is going to make it all very awkward if that rumbling continues.
For the first time since being in jail I start crying. I let my face sink into the pillow and I wonder whether things would be better for me if I just buried my face into it and went to sleep and hoped the Suffocation Fairy will come and take me away.
I wonder what Melissa is doing right now, who she’s doing it to, and—as the pressure in my stomach builds—I wonder if she even thinks of me anymore.
Chapter Forty-Two
It’s cold but dry and Melissa is relieved that the weather seems like it’s going to do its part. It’s Sunday morning. People are sleeping in. Some going to church. Some hungover from the night before. Kids are climbing into bed with their parents, kids are sitting in front of TVs, kids are playing in backyards. Melissa remembers that life. She and her sister on Sunday mornings snuggled in bed with their parents. Her sister’s name was actually Melissa. That’s where she got it from. Her own name was Natalie. Was being the key word. Melissa and Natalie watching cartoons and eating cereal and, on occasion, trying to make breakfast for their parents. Once they set fire to the toaster. It was more her sister’s doing, really—she was the one on toaster duty, whereas Natalie was on cereal and orange-juice duty. Her sister had put jam on the slices before toasting them. Something caught fire. After that their parents made them promise not to try making breakfast for them again, at least not for a few more years, and that’s a promise they would keep.
Joe Victim: A Thriller
Paul Cleave's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Dark Assassin
- Death of a Stranger
- Seven Dials
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries
- Funeral in Blue
- Defend and Betray
- Cain His Brother
- A Breach of Promise
- A Dangerous Mourning
- A Sudden Fearful Death
- Dark Places
- Angels Demons
- Digital Fortress
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- A Pocket Full of Rye
- A Murder is Announced
- A Caribbean Mystery
- Ordeal by Innocence
- Lord Edgware Dies
- A Stranger in the Mirror
- After the Darkness
- Are You Afraid of the Dark
- Master of the Game
- Nothing Lasts Forever
- Rage of Angels
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Sands of Time
- The Stars Shine Down
- Pretty Little Liars #14
- Ruthless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- True Lies: A Lying Game Novella
- Everything We Ever Wanted
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- Pretty Little Liars #15: Toxic
- Pretty Little Liars
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- Homicide in Hardcover
- The Lies That Bind
- A Cookbook Conspiracy
- Charlie, Presumed Dead
- Manhattan Mayhem
- Ripped From the Pages
- Tangled Webs
- A Baby Before Dawn
- A Hidden Secret: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
- A Cry in the Night
- Breaking Silence
- Operation: Midnight Rendezvous
- Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
- Pray for Silence
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- Wherever Nina Lies
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- Never Saw It Coming
- Operation: Midnight Guardian
- Operation: Midnight Tango
- Operation: Midnight Escape
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- Eve
- Nearly Gone
- Pretty Baby
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- Bones of Betrayal
- CARVED IN BONE
- Madonna and Corpse
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- Bad Guys
- Bad Move (Zack Walker Series, Book One)
- Sin una palabra
- Stone Rain
- Broken Promise: A Thriller
- El accidente
- Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow
- Bone Island 02 - Ghost Night
- Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon
- Deadly Gift
- Deadly Harvest
- Deadly Night
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- Unhallowed Ground
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Watching
- A Grave Matter
- Alert: (Michael Bennett 8)
- In the Dark
- Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)
- Picture Me Dead
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Dead Play On
- Breakdown
- Brush Back
- Critical Mass