If only I had a weapon. I wouldn’t have to be here now.

Once inside I was directed to a room full of carrels, like you might find in a university library, where students could do their work in private. But this carrel faced onto another one, the two separated by a sheet of glass. Each side had a phone, or at least the handset. No keypad. You didn’t dial out for pizza from here.

Just like in the movies.

Another guard, also a woman, said something behind me. “Everything okay here?” I must have jumped. “Just chill,” she said, smiling. Then she looked beyond me. “Hey, you’re set to go.”

I nodded, swallowed, turned back to look at the glass, and there she was, coming through the door of the room I was looking into. My friend Trixie Snelling.

Another female guard directed her to the chair on the other side of the piece of glass. She sat down, and I got my first look at her since her arrest.

I must have been expecting to see her in an orange prison jumpsuit or something, because I did a bit of a double take when she showed up in jeans (minus the belt), a pullover Gap shirt, and sneakers. Trixie, with her jet black hair, dark eyes, and trim figure, could turn heads no matter what she wore. She certainly had no trouble holding someone’s attention when, whip in hand, she donned her leather corset and boots, but that was when she was on the clock. Outside of work, even in a pair of sweats, there was no getting around the fact that she was a beautiful and alluring woman.

But I could see that a couple of days in jail had already taken a toll on her. She was without her usual makeup and her eyes were tired, her dark hair less full. I guessed she’d been managing on a lot less sleep than usual.

No surprise there.

Trixie had been a friend—and just a friend—for a few years now. We’d lived a couple of doors down from her when we still had our house in suburban Oakwood. I was working from home back then, and Trixie was operating a home-based business as well. I was naive enough, at first, to think it was accounting. I was not, at the time, a person who was very good at picking up the signals, and there were plenty of them—think of immense, flashing billboards—to indicate that Trixie was not making a living doing people’s tax returns.

We’d already established a friendship when I learned the true nature of Trixie’s business, and for reasons I can’t totally explain, we remained friends. I’m not exactly the kind of person who befriends people who live on the edge of the law.

It’s not that I think I’m better than them. It’s just that I’m the kind of guy who panics if he hasn’t paid his parking ticket on time. Or I would be, if I weren’t the kind of person who runs back to the meter five minutes ahead of time to plug in a few more nickels.