Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(138)

When the doctor left, he saw the legs of the guard stationed outside his door. He wondered if they’d already notified Lilli. If so, she’d be out of her head.

Before the door could latch, though, it opened again, and there she was. She looked like she hadn’t slept or eaten in, oh, about a year. Damn. He must have been pretty close to kicking, then, if she was here, and if they were letting her through that door. He noticed that the guard wedged the door open as she came in.

“You *.” She said it sadly, with a twist of a smile, her eyes shiny and wet, and he knew what she meant.

Sorry, he mouthed.

She nodded.

“They’re only giving me fifteen minutes, and then I have to wait until the next visiting day to see you again. I swear on all that is holy, Isaac Lunden, if you die, I will dig you back up and cut your throat again.”

He laughed with his breath and nodded. Ow.

Then she pulled up a chair as close to the bed as it would go, wrapped her arms around his one free arm, linked fingers with him, and laid her head on his chest. For fifteen minutes, until the guard turned and waved her out, she did not speak. They did not move. He lay there with his throat cut, Lilli’s head on his chest, and thought that, for a shot at fifteen more minutes like this, he might well put a hit on himself.





X


The 1,681st Day



It didn’t take much to find out who’d done it. Len had seen enough of the guys to narrow down the field, and they had enough friends who had enough friends. It had to be him and Len. They couldn’t hire it out. And it had to be visible. It had to be known, or the hits on Isaac would never f*cking stop. They were going down for this retaliation.

It didn’t take much to get a couple of actual blades, either. No piece of shit shank was going to do here.

But the black market was robust in prison, and their needs were within their means.

They waited until Isaac had regained his strength. And then they took out the two contract killers from the Hermanos de los Muertos crew out of Texas. They did it at breakfast, driving the blades deep into their hearts, and they didn’t run.

As he lay on the bare slab in the hole later, bruised and bleeding in the pitch dark, Isaac wondered if they’d ever see home again.





X


The 2,008th Day



In the end, with the usual plea bullshitting, and because no guard had seen them do it, and no inmate had ratted, they’d added only a new eighteen-month bid, for intent to incite, to their standing sentence. If they could find a way to stay both safe and out of trouble, they could still get home.

But Isaac and Len were separated and transferred to high-security facilities, Len in Colorado and Isaac in Pennsylvania. Far from home. Hopefully, the message they’d sent by taking down Isaac’s attackers had gone over the national wire, because Isaac was on his own, and Len was, too.

For the three months between the retaliation and the sentence, while they’d still been fairly close to home, they’d been locked down in the Special Housing Unit and denied visitation entirely. For nearly three months after the transfer, for Isaac, it was the same. Locked down, full restriction. Then, for two more months, he’d only been able to see Lilli and the kids via video.

The eight months he’d spent without feeling the touch of Lilli’s skin had made him wish with all he had that the Hermanos had just f*cking killed him.

When he finally got to hold her again, even for a precious few seconds, he about came in his pants and wept like a baby both at the same time. But he’d held his shit together. That was all he was doing anymore.

Holding his shit together.

He’d had to fight for his place among a nastier bunch of hardened men. He’d done so—he had size, strength, skill, will, and an increasingly fragile sense of self-preservation, and that had held him in good stead in the stalls. But his victories had not come without their physical price.

He could not catch a break. He could not.

Now, he saw his family once a month, if he was lucky. Lilli was tired. She tried not to show it, but he knew her. He saw. The way his life in the Horde had constantly f*cked with their life together was beating her down. He could see it happening, even as she continued to fight like the warrior she was.

She understood why he’d done what he’d done. She’d agreed. But she was angry nonetheless. Not at him, but at the cosmos or something. Just angry and tired, and he could offer her no ease.

Bo continued to be quiet and pulled further away with every visit. He’d sit on his hands and stare around the room, wide-eyed and silent, or he’d stare at his lap, and be perfectly still for the entire visit. Lilli would try to make him engage, but he would not. Isaac never let her push him much. He didn’t want his son to feel forced to love him. Bo just wasn’t wired right to be able to cope with his father’s situation.

Isaac could look around that room, bleaker than the last, filled with even scarier people, men who made the Horde look like the Vienna Boys Choir—okay, not that, but still, not as scary as these guys—and understand. This was no place for children to spend any of their lives. He knew he should tell Lilli to keep them home. He’d tried to talk to her about it in letters, but she wouldn’t discuss it. He was their father. He was here. This is the only place they could be with him. End of story, as far as she was concerned. And honestly, he hadn’t fought as hard as he could have. He needed to see them.