Under Attack

Chapter Fourteen

I shuffled my feet and felt the prick of heat as the terror slipped down my spine. I was in jail. A holding cell, yes, but still—jail. I knew what went on in prison. I had seen Oz, the final episodes of Prison Break. I opened my mouth; felt the lightness in my head as I started to hyperventilate.

“Put your head between your knees.”

I whirled around.

“Sit down. Come on, sit down and put your head between your knees.”

I gaped at the woman relaxing on the hard metal bench behind me. She was older, probably in her late forties, with a bubbly head of slick black curls and a kindly face. Sitting primly in her housecoat and slippers, she gave off a comforting cookies-and-milk vibe. The woman slid aside, patted an open spot on the bench. I sat next to her and crumbled over, my hair swinging against the concrete as I shoved my head between my knees and tried to take deep, calming breaths while also trying not to suck in the stale air of the holding cell.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I mumbled, feeling the tears slip over my nose and plop onto the ground.

The woman patted the back of my head calmly. “None of us are,” she said.

I sat up and looked around, for the first time noticing the other women in the cell. Two girls were chatting in the back corner, dressed in thigh-highs and barely there dresses, giggling as though they were at a frat party instead of in a jail cell.

“They’re regulars,” the woman on the bench said, following my gaze. “That’s Ella and Asia,” she said.

The two girls looked at me and gave brief smiles; both were heavily made up with cheery bright red lips and streaky eye makeup in colors not found in nature.

I offered a tight smile. “They look ... nice.” My gaze trailed from Ella and Asia to the cinder-block walls of the cell, messages from past guests—EASTSIDE BITCHES! and DEATH TO PIGS!—scrawled into a semi-fresh coat of steel-grey paint. I felt the color drain from my face and my head went light again.

“Between your knees,” the woman next to me commanded. I folded forward and willed myself not to cry, but a fresh round of tears started anyway. I sniffed.

The woman next to me bent over as well, her curly black hair in an unmoving bouffant. “I’m Arletta.”

I shook the hand the woman offered and we both straightened up. “Sophie,” I said, working hard to smile.

Arletta’s dark eyes trailed over me. “Rough night, huh?”

I sniffled again and swallowed wildly, trying to squash down the lump in my throat.

Arletta scooched closer to me on the cold metal bench and patted me gently on the shoulder. “We know you didn’t mean to do it, sugar. Sometimes the devil just gets into you.”

Arletta’s words hit me like a hot stone. I stared down at my hands and gasped—they felt heavy, hot, and when I blinked, Mr. Matsura’s blood was seeping through my fingers, pooling in velvet-red spots on the cement. I gasped and rubbed my palms furiously against my jeans, feeling the friction of the denim on my skin but still unable to get the heat of Mr. Matsura’s blood off of them.

Sometimes the devil just gets into you... .

The devil wasn’t in me—he was part of me.

Arletta took my hand and laced her fingers through mine. I expected her to recoil, to scream at the sight and feel of my bloody palms, but she didn’t, and when I looked down, my hand was clean—the only color coming from leftover smears of fingerprint ink.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said with a matronly pat of my hand.

I wished I could believe her.

I leaned my head against the cold cement wall and blew out a sigh. I tried to close my eyes, to imagine a better scenario, but each time I did my mind was flooded with images of Mr. Matsura, of his gaping mouth, of his ashen lips, the marble glass of his cold, dead eyes.

“I have to get out of here,” I mumbled, springing to my feet. “Is there a guard, someone?” I went to the bars at the front of the cell and gripped them, trying my best to rattle them, to make some noise.

“Hello?”

There were answering catcalls from the surrounding holding cells and then the creak of the security door. The catcalls died down, the chatter replaced by the thunk-thunk-thunk of metal against metal, by the click of high heels walking slowly, deliberately across the hard linoleum floor. I craned my neck, pressing my forehead against the bars, and gasped.

Ophelia.

She was poured into a sexy prison guard uniform that showed off her shapely hips. Her slate-grey top was unzipped to show the top of her breasts and I wondered why the other prisoners weren’t reacting. The whole cellblock was deathly quiet; the only sound was the thunk-thunk-thunk of Ophelia as she slowly dragged a tin cup against the jailhouse bars.

Her deliberate walk slowed when she reached my holding cell. As she passed I saw that her icicle-blue eyes were dancing with a sick kind of delight. Her red lips were plumped into a wicked grin. She stopped and we were nose to nose.

“You did this,” I spat.

Ophelia just wagged her head and broadened her smile, touching my nose with her index finger. “You did this,” she said, unable to keep the glee from her voice. “I have to say, little sis, the orange jumper looks good on you. Really sets off your hair.”

Heat surged in my belly.

“Looks like you were made for prison.” Ophelia wagged her head sadly. “Have a felon for a child—big disappointment for a lot of parents.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Ophelia’s elegant fingers trailed across her neck. “Tell me, Sophie, have you had any issues with your neck lately?”

“I—” But my voice was immediately choked by the heavy band tightening around my neck. I felt my eyes start to water and I tried to cough, to scratch at the nonexistent collar.

“You look so much like your mother when you do that.”

The choking feeling intensified and I clamped my eyes shut, seeing stars—and my mother’s eyes as she stepped forward and threaded a noose around her neck.

I opened my mouth, sputtering, and tried to step back, out of her reach, and when I did I stumbled, falling hard on my butt. The noose around my neck was gone and I gasped and breathed heavily, feeling tears spill over my cheeks. I blinked and looked around me; the grey blocks of the cell were gone and I was in an attic somewhere. My mother was in front of me, young and soft, just the way I remember. A tear slipped down her cheek. I tried to reach out, to say something to her, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t get my mouth to form the words. My mother stepped forward and threaded the noose around her neck.

I started to scream.

There were voices all around me. Some laughed, some uttered things like “newbie” and “fresh meat.” Someone else told me to can it.

Arletta was kneeling next to me, her arms around me, her dark eyes full of motherly concern. Ella and Asia looked on, Ella’s purple-rimmed eyes registering boredom, Asia’s a thinly veiled sadness. “Drugs,” I heard her mumble.

“Did you see her?” I gasped. “She was here.”

“Who was here, honey?”

“Ophelia.” I kicked back against the cement floor and struggled to stand up. “And my mother.” I felt the warmth from the rope around my neck. “She made me see—she made me ...”

“No one was here, Sophie. Just the four of us.”

Ella and Asia offered patronizing smiles.

“She’s making me crazy,” I said, rubbing my temples. “She’s not going to be happy until I’m in the nuthouse.”

“Drugs are a terrible mistress.” Arletta shook her head sadly.

“It’s not drugs,” I said, sinking my hands into my back pockets. My fingers touched a piece of paper and I tugged a business card from my pocket. I gaped at it. “What the—?” I turned the card over in my hand and shook my head at the raised gold lettering: Will Sherman, Guardian. I had a vague recollection of seeing him in the vestibule, but I couldn’t recall him ever handing me a business card.

And I would have remembered if it had said Guardian. I turned the little white card over and over in my hands, then bit my lip.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said slowly.

I called out for a guard, praying that Ophelia and her sex-crazed warden outfit wouldn’t show up again. I guess I was in luck as Officer Houston ambled down the hall toward me, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his expression wary.

“You need something?”

“Can I make a phone call?”

“You got your one call.”

“But there was no answer. That doesn’t count. Right?”

“Hey, Trevor!” Asia did a delicate finger wave in Officer Houston’s direction. She batted her heavily made-up lashes, raked her talonlike fingernails through her hot-pink hair. “I didn’t know you were working tonight.”

Officer Houston offered what I supposed was a grin to the ladies. “Didn’t know you were working tonight either, Asia. Hey, Ella, Arletta.”

“Can I make that phone call now, Trev—er, Officer?” I offered my sweetest smile, batted my eyelashes.

“Got any gum?” Asia asked him, her breasts thrust out in front of her.

Officer Houston pulled a stick of gum from his pocket and fed it through the bars to Asia.

“Look,” I whispered, “if you’re going to give them special treatment ...”

“Special treatment? It’s a stick of gum. And besides—Asia didn’t kill a man.”

Asia and Ella stiffened and shrank behind me.

“You killed a man?” Ella asked, her dishwater-blond hair straggly as it fell over her bony shoulder.

“No! No. The phone call, please?”

“Hands.”

“What?”

Officer Houston tapped his nightstick on a horizontal opening in the cell bars. “Hands.”

I set my hands through the slot and he clamped a set of handcuffs around my wrists, then sunk a key into the lock and escorted me out of the holding cell.

My heart beat with each ring of the phone. Come on, come on, answer, I silently prayed.

“’Yello?”

My heart caught in my throat. “Oh, thank God, Will.”

“Yes, this is Will. My I ask who’s speaking?”

“Will, it’s me, Sophie.”

“Sophie, Sophie ... doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Sophie Lawson!” I shouted into the phone. I lowered my voice trying to cover the mouthpiece with my shoulder. “You know, from your apartment building?”

“Oh, right! How are you, Sophie?”

“Terrible. I’m in jail.”

I heard a snort of laughter. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you. It almost sounded like you said you were in jail.”

“I did—I am!”

“In jail?”

“Yes. Look, forget the pleasantries and get me out of here!”

“Calm down, love, I’m on my way.”

I listened to the drone of the dial tone for a full minute before I let Officer Houston shuffle me back to the holding cell.

I don’t know if it was the damp cigarette smell of the holding cell or my sheer fear of being in the pokey, but it felt like it took hours for Will to arrive. Relief poured over me in waves when the heavy hallway door opened and an annoyed-looking Officer Houston, followed by a grinning Will, pushed through.

I rushed to the bars and gripped them. “Oh, Will, thank God you’re here!”

Will looked around, whistled through his teeth. “This is all right, I kind of like it.” He grinned at me. “It’s a little like picking up a puppy out at the pound, isn’t it?”

I ignored his comment and looked at Officer Houston. “He’s my friend. Do we get to talk face-to-face?”

“Better n’that,” Officer Houston said, sinking his key into the lock. “You’re free to go.”

Ella, Asia, and Arletta flooded to the front of the cell. Officer Houston held up his hand stop-sign style and inclined his head to me. “Just her.”

I beamed, but Officer Houston didn’t look happy.

“You got me out? Like, I can go out onto the street? I’m not a fugitive?”

Both men shuffled me out and I cringed in the bright light of the police vestibule, bustling with uniformed cops. “It’s so bright. I think my eyes were adjusting to my life without sunlight.”

“You were in there for two hours,” Will said.

“How did you spring me? Do I owe you for bail?”

“No. It took a lot of smooth talking but”—Will rolled up on the balls of his feet, brushed his nails across his chest—“I’ve got quite a lot of pull.”

Officer Gonzalez, the woman who had shoved me into the cell initially, bustled past us. “And they lost the body,” she said without making eye contact.

My eyes widened. “What?”

Officer Houston’s nostrils flared. “We didn’t lose the body. It just sort of ...”

“Disappeared. Vanished. Poof.” Will grinned.

I thought of the bloody scene, my soiled kitchen knife. “And the crime scene?”

“Completely clean,” Will said, while Officer Houston stewed at my shoulder.

“We think it may have been an elaborate prank,” he said finally. “But until we get concrete verification that Mr. Matsura is safe and well at his sister’s place in Pacif - ica like he says, don’t leave the city.”

“I told you I was innocent! It was Ophelia. She can make you see things. She does that. She’s gotten into your head, too!”

Officer Houston’s chubby cheeks flushed a deeply annoyed red. He looked about to blow, and Will gripped me by the shoulders, pushing me toward the door. “Let’s go before they put you on a seventy-two-hour psych hold. I promise, Officer, we’ll be of no more problems to you.”

I let Will lead me out to the parking lot, my mind working the whole time. “So if everything disappeared—and they talked to Mr. Matsura—that means he’s alive, right?”

Will looked at me, brow furrowed. “Of course, love, how many dead people sit up and answer the phone?”

I shot him my patented Are you kidding me? look and he smiled sheepishly. “Oh, right. You’re all about the walking, talking dead. Fancy a pint?”

I looked around, felt the cool night air, damp with mist from the bay as it rushed over my bare skin. “Yeah, why not. I just got out of the clink. I could go for a beer.”