Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Anger pierced my chest, sharp and tight.
Those fucking bitches!
Seriously, all everyone in town ever did was gossip about us!
What was the big damn deal?
So we were in prison?
Whoop-de-fucking-do.
Thousands of people went to prison every year for something or another, yet those stuffy women weren’t talking about them.
Cops were being killed all over the country.
A war was going on the other side of the world.
Children were going hungry.
Animals were being abused.
Seriously, there were millions of things that they could focus on, yet they chose us.
Sawyer in particular, because she was the nice one who wouldn’t say a word in defense of herself.
And she so didn’t deserve their censure.
What she had happened to her was a complete and utter accident.
She’d been driving her drunk friends home when a Ford Bronco had pulled out in front of her.
The truck she’d been driving had pulverized the smaller vehicle, and with it the vehicle’s occupants.
None of the passenger’s survived.
And then Sawyer had been wrongfully convicted of their murders when the father of the teen who’d been in the car falsified evidence to make it look like Sawyer was over the legal blood alcohol level.
Something she hadn’t been.
After being falsely accused, tried, and convicted, she spent eight years in Huntsville Women’s Penitentiary as my cell mate, and call me selfish, but I was glad she was there.
Because if she hadn’t been, I would’ve been raped every single day that I’d been in there.
But I wasn’t.
And I would thank her daily for the rest of my life if I had to.
I owed her that much and more.
“What’d they say?” I asked worriedly.
Sawyer shrugged, flipping the eggs onto the plate in front of her as she slid them out of the bacon grease.
My mouth watered as she set the plate in front of me, but I crossed my arms and refused to eat once I realized she wasn’t going to talk.
She sighed and leaned forward on her elbows, making sure that only I would hear what she had to say.
“They said the same old thing. That I should still be in jail. That I killed four people, two of them promising college students. I don’t know. Most of it wasn’t that bad,” she admitted.
I raised a brow.
“Not that bad? What do you think Silas would do if he heard what everyone was saying?” I asked.
She grimaced. “Silas wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, because they don’t say stuff like that when he’s around. Because they know he’ll fight back. Which is what you should start doing. You, my manipulative friend, should have nothing but roses and fairy dust. Me, on the other hand, I’ve earned everything they call me. I’m a murderer. But that doesn’t mean I’ll let them sit there and talk badly about me while I’m right there. What they do when I’m not there is their own to deal with as they please, but by you not standing up for yourself, you’re basically telling them that you deserve that behavior. Which you most certainly do not,” I insisted.
She bit her lips between her teeth.
“I don’t know how to stop them,” she whispered.
The toast popped, startling us both, and I chose to keep talking while she served up Sterling’s bacon and eggs.
“You tell them to stop. And if they won’t, you call someone who will stop them,” I told her insistently.
She shrugged. “I tried that once, and they never quit.”
I crossed my arms once again and said, “Well, I’ll show you how it’s done when we get you all registered today. It should be a lot of fun.”
She snorted. “You’re lying through your teeth about it being fun. I realize that you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart.”
I winked and leaned forward, sucking half an egg into my mouth at the same moment Sterling and Loki strolled through the entrance way.
I choked, making the egg that I’d shoved into my mouth to fall to my shirt.
Completely embarrassed, I quickly wiped my shirt with the hand towel at my side, but was only effective in spreading it out even more.
Yellow yolk sank into the porous fabric, making a very noticeable stain for all to see.
“You missed your mouth,” Sterling teased as he took his seat beside me.
I flipped him off, causing him to laugh.
As did the scary guy.
“Hi, Loki. How are you?” I asked softly.
I didn’t ever know what to say to the ‘cops’ of The Dixie Wardens.
I felt like they knew I was a bad person, and generally felt the need to stay away from me.
So I came off as a standoffish type of person.
Not because I wouldn’t like to get to know Loki, as well as the other cop, Trance, but because I was trying to protect myself.
Something some people didn’t always do.
Something I hadn’t always done.
But spending all those years in prison had changed me.
Had given me a certain selfishness.
Because, beside Sawyer, I had to watch out for my own back in there.
“Hello, Ruthie,” Loki’s deep, rumbly voice, said.
I gave him a tight smile, and he moved those piercing eyes away from me and settled them on Sawyer.
“Hey, Sawyer. How’s it going, honey?” Loki asked.
See what I mean? Totally nicer to her than he was to me!
“I’m doing well, Loki. Thanks for asking. Would you like some eggs?” Sawyer asked.
I nearly choked on my coffee.
Was she really going to force me to be in Loki’s presence for more than just what I needed to deal with?
“Absolutely,” Loki said. “Love some.”
I closed my eyes and pushed my eggs around on my plate, no longer hungry at all.
It wasn’t that I hated cops.
I didn’t.
It’s just that I felt like they hated me, which was incredibly uncomfortable. Especially when they were standing next to my kitchen counter.
Although, the one cop I did like, Shaw McCormick, was pretty awesome.
He was the one to get to me when I was beaten to death and I lost my little girl.
He’d held me so tenderly, cried with me hours later in my hospital room when we found out Jade wouldn’t make it, and was such a good man and father that I was slightly jealous of his wife.