“I bet Nelson would be really interested to hear about that,” he muses. “I’d sort of like to see the look on his face, you know?”

“Please don’t tell him,” I gasp. “Please.”

Hunt flashes me a smile that makes me want to punch him in the nose. “Don’t worry, Brooke,” he says. “Your secrets are safe with me. But you better be a little nicer to me. For starters, from now on, you can bring coffee to me every morning.”

“Fine,” I snap.

He gives me a long look, and I brace myself for more demands. But they don’t come. He just shakes his head at me.

“What a waste, Brooke,” he mutters. “All for that scumbag.”

With those words, he jerks open the door to the examining room and storms out.

Chapter 33

My daily goal is to get Correctional Officer Steve Benton to smile.

Officer Benton is my first stop every day when I enter the penitentiary. I can’t say that I still don’t get a little jolt of fear when I walk past the prison yard with the guard towers lining the fence. I’ve never seen any of the guards up there with their rifles, but I know they are up there. Ready to shoot if they need to.

But once I’m inside, it’s the same old routine. I pass the waiting area, and Jan at the front desk knows my face by now, so she immediately hits the buzzer to open the metal bars and waves me inside—I barely even jump anymore at the sound. And my next stop is the security check-in with Officer Benton.

“Good morning!” I chirp as I lay my purse down on the table in front of him to go through the metal detector. “How are you?”

Benton grunts. “Fine. You?”

“Oh, the usual.” I step through the metal detector, holding my breath like I always do. It doesn’t make sense, but I do it automatically. “I had a visit with Mr. Barrett yesterday—you know, the guy who was an English teacher on the outside? He’s such a flirt.”

He looks up with mild interest. “Oh yeah?”

I nod. “He told me he wanted to marry me when he gets out of here.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, but unfortunately, you can’t end a sentence with a proposition.”

It’s such a cheesy joke. It’s true on some level—Mr. Barrett was an English teacher, and he does flirt with me shamelessly. But the corny dad joke was entirely for Benton’s benefit—and it pays off when his lips twitch just a bit. An almost smile. I’ll count it as a win, and I have a little extra skip in my step as I walk down the hallway to the examining room/office.

Until I find Dorothy waiting for me outside the room, her beefy arms folded across her chest.

Great. What now?