Inside

the key.”

He whirled around. “And who’s going to give it to the wrong people? You?”

“I’m just saying you don’t create shit that can prove you’re guilty of a crime like this, man.”

“Which is why you won’t get my head in the frame, jackass!”

“Fuck you! Here, take your damn gun.” Once again Pretty Boy tried to return Ink’s pistol, but Ink wouldn’t take it.

“Film it!” Throwing her on the floor, he started pulling up her nightgown.

Laurel wasn’t going down without a fight. She was frantic—scratching and clawing and biting—but she didn’t scream. She was probably afraid that would draw the children to her, if they were still within earshot.

Pretty Boy felt just as horrified, enraged and helpless as she did. No way was he filming this. He’d seen a lot of sick shit in his life, could tolerate almost anything—except a man beating up on a woman or a child. Being part of The Crew wasn’t supposed to be like this. In prison, they targeted rapists and child molesters, punished them for their actions. Now they were becoming just like them?

“You getting this?” Ink grunted. She’d hit him, connected with his stomach, but it didn’t really faze him. He ripped her panties while trying to get them off her.

Pretty Boy opened his mouth to try and talk Ink out of what he was doing, but before he could make up his mind about what to say, Pointblank yelled from the front door.

“Found the little bastards!”

Crying filled the house. Pointblank was coming through the living room, bringing the kids to the bedroom— probably so Ink could do the honors. Pretty Boy didn’t believe Pointblank wanted to hurt those children any more than he did. But Pointblank had a better position in The Crew, greater authority, and he’d follow any kind of order before he’d lose that.

“They were standing out on the neighbor’s porch, shivering,” he explained with a laugh as they came closer. “No one was home, but they didn’t have the sense to go somewhere else. They just kept pushing the doorbell.”

What’d he expect? They were kids, man. Little kids.

God, he was in the middle of some messed up shit.

A bead of sweat rolled from Pretty Boy’s temple, stinging his eyes. He couldn’t let this happen, didn’t want any part of it or the kind of people who could do this. Ink and Pointblank—neither of them could measure up to Skin, no matter what Skin had done since being released from the joint.

Ink didn’t seem to care whether or not Pointblank had found the children. What Pointblank said, all the crying, none of it seemed to register. Now that he had Laurel’s panties off, he was too busy trying to force her legs apart to care about anything else.

From what he’d seen so far, Pretty Boy thought Ink should thank him for not filming. Ink was too stoned to do much more than punch and fumble.

“It’ll hurt less if you quit fighting,” he panted, and began to choke her.

She did what she could to free herself, but it was no use. In another second Ink would be pumping away—

A child’s voice, full of fear, broke through the melee. “Mommy? Mommy!” And that was the last thing Pretty Boy heard before he pulled the trigger.

His right arm jerked with the recoil, his ears rang from the blast and the smell of gunpowder burned his nose and throat.

Trying to convince himself that he’d really shot Ink and not just imagined it, he blinked several times to clear his vision. There was no blood, nothing like when Pointblank used his knife on the marshal, but Ink lay slumped over Laurel, motionless.

Pretty Boy expected to feel instant remorse, or maybe fear for what his actions would set in motion. Instead, he experienced a rush of satisfaction, a sense of resolution that put the conflict tearing him up to rest. He’d made his choice. Maybe he’d regret it later, but he didn’t regret it now.

“That’s what you get,” he muttered to the inert Ink. Ink was no better than all the other scumbags who’d been in the hat while he was in prison.

Pointblank came charging into the room, dragging the children behind him. “What’s going on?”

There was more blood on Laurel, who was shaking and crying, than on Ink. Pretty Boy wasn’t sure how that’d happened. The bullet must’ve gone all the way through him.

It took Pointblank a second to realize that the gunshot he’d heard had resulted in Ink’s death. When Laurel managed to escape from under his limp body, Pointblank did a double take. Then he gaped at Pretty Boy. “What did you do?”

“What I had to do.” Somehow Pretty Boy felt calmer, more like himself, than he had in weeks. But that calmness disappeared when Pointblank released the kids, who’d been tugging to get free and ran crying for their mother. “Are you crazy?” His voice ominous, Pointblank went for his knife. “Shady will kill you for saving her. He’ll kill me, too!”

Pretty Boy hadn’t thought this part through. He liked Pointblank more than Ink. No doubt Pointblank knew it. Maybe he was counting on their friendship to save him, because it didn’t make much sense to come at him with a knife when he was holding a gun. Or Pointblank understood that he’d better do what he could to defend himself because, after this, Pretty Boy had no choice but to fire. Not if he wanted to save Laurel and the kids. And not if he wanted to get safely away. “Then I guess I should do him a favor and take care of this myself,” he said, and pulled the trigger twice.

The children screamed. Laurel scrambled to her feet but was so unsteady she fell again. Still, she tried to pull her children behind her, to shield them. She didn’t understand why he’d done what he’d done, whether he’d kill again. She’d never met him before. For all she knew, he was on some murderous rampage….

Raising one hand to tell her it was over, he shoved Ink’s pistol in his waistband next to his own. Tears streaked Mia’s and Jake’s faces, but they were too terrified to cry. They’d seen more than any kids should have to see. But at least the blood staining their mother’s clothes wasn’t her own.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “You—you were with them. Wh-why did you —?” At a complete loss, she stopped talking but her meaning was clear.

Hesitating in the doorway, he glanced back at her. “Virgil was once my best friend,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, he always will be. You see him, tell him Pretty Boy sends his best.”

“Pretty Boy?” she repeated.

“Rex McCready,” he corrected. He wasn’t Pretty Boy anymore. That was the nickname he’d been given by The Crew.

She gulped for air and dashed a hand across her wet cheeks. “Why d-did you come here w-with them if —?”

“Just be glad I did,” he broke in. “And whatever you do, don’t stay in Colorado. Take your babies far away, and if you want to be safe, don’t ever come back.”

25

It was nearly one in the morning. Except for some hushed talking, the occasional flush of a toilet or the jangle of keys, the Security Housing Unit was quiet this late at night but it wasn’t dark. It was never completely dark. The lights dimmed at 2200 hours after the first-watch shift change, but that was it.

Peyton’s heels clicked as she walked down a corridor fronting eight cells. From inside one of these “pods,” the SHU appeared smaller than it was in reality. Not in terms of building size—the structure was two stories and had a central command post that sat high above both tiers—but in housing capacity. One of the largest and oldest isolation facilities in the country, Pelican Bay’s SHU housed more than twelve hundred men in gray cells made almost entirely of concrete—the bed, the chair, the desk, everything except the stainless-steel combination toilet and sink. There were no bars on these cells like in old prisons. Painted bright orange, the doors were solid steel, except for round nickel-size cutouts and a slot for the meal tray.

Most inmates in this unit lived alone, but thanks to overcrowding more than a few had cell mates. Depending