Doin' a Dime, Vale, Lynn [top young adult novels TXT] 📗

“Yeah,” I said. “Was it the guard that you snapped at last time?”

She grimaced. “Yeah.”

I ticked off yet another box inside of my mind that would ensure that the asshole paid for what he’d done to me. And now to her.

My rage built.

That asshole was seriously going to pay.

I was going to find a way to make his life a living hell.

I was going to ruin him.

And I was going to enjoy every fucking second of it.

• • •

Six weeks later

I was honestly worried that I’d been caught doing what I was doing on the prison computers.

What I was doing on them wasn’t meant to be done, but seriously, there was no other way to do this.

It had to be done. Now.

“Get in there,” the warden, a rather large man that never quite met my eyes, ordered.

I sighed, having a feeling I was going to hate what was about to happen.

But there was no other way for it.

I had to do it.

And I had to pay for what I’d done.

It wasn’t nearly enough, that was for sure, but it was a start.

“I’ve been monitoring you.”

I frowned, looking at the man that was sitting in the visitor’s chairs in front of the warden’s desk.

The warden who hadn’t followed me into his office, but instead had closed the door and left me here with a man I didn’t know.

“Okay,” I replied.

“I need someone with your set of skills,” he continued. “In a few days, you’re going to have a group meeting with a few fellow inmates where I’ll explain this again. But I need you on board. I want to give you a few more days to contemplate this since you’re likely the one most at risk here.”

I frowned. “You’re going to have to tell me so I can make an informed decision. Beating around the bush really isn’t my style.”

Not lately, anyway.

I’d lost the art of patience.

Now I was just pissed.

All the damn time.

“I want you on my team,” he informed me. “As of right now, you have about eight more months in your sentence before you’re eligible for parole. Sadly, all the fights with guards at your old prison will make it to where your ‘time inside’ was not with good behavior. You’ll be denied parole, and your newfound enemy, Breen, will make sure of that.”

Fucking Breen.

“Okay,” I grumbled. “And?”

“And…” The man stood up, reaching for the lapels of his really expensive suit and buttoned the first button. “I want to make you a deal. I get you out of here early, you work for me. Not all the time or anything. Just when you’re needed.”

“Do you do illegal shit?” I asked. “Because I’d rather you shoot me now than have to deal with that kind of crap.”

I was nobody’s pawn.

“Quite the opposite.” He paused. “Though, it is slightly illegal seeing as it takes away some Americans’ basic human rights. But with what they’re doing, they deserve for those to be taken away.”

I frowned.

“I brought this,” he said as he pulled up a small laptop from the second chair that’d been beside him. “I want you to look up a ‘Doris Rosen.’”

More than intrigued, I booted up the laptop and did, coming up with a young woman that’d been picked up off the side of the road and never seen again.

“I was one of a few that helped find her six months later,” the man said. “She was sold into sex trafficking. She was found nine hundred miles from her home, starved, abused, and a whole lot of other things, where she was forced to work in a brothel in Las Vegas. At the age of seventeen.”

My stomach clenched.

“She was from East Texas,” he continued. “And as I was looking into it, I realized that there were a whole lot more that’d gone missing from my neck of the woods… and I didn’t like it. So I’ve made it my personal mission to clean up my streets. And I need a few good men like you, and the others that you’ll meet in a few days, to help me accomplish that. All of you have a special set of skills. Ones that are needed to make this undertaking successful.”

I closed the laptop and handed it to him.

“You can continue doing whatever it is that you want to do. I just ask that you help on the cases that I need help with. And…” He paused. “There’s a bit of a catch.”

I knew there would be.

“You’ll have to pose as a member of a motorcycle club. To give reason to why you are all together in the small town where I’m based,” he continued. “It’ll give you a logical story to explain to people. And I have a feeling that you’ll blunder if you don’t have a prepared story. It makes it easier, I believe, in the long run if we have a devised plan.”

A motorcycle club?

“I guess,” I admitted. “I mean, I’ve never even ridden a motorcycle.”

Lynn’s eyes sparkled as he said, “You’ll have to learn. It’d look mighty odd if you didn’t do that when you’re posing as being a part of one.”

With that, he stood up.

I stood up, too, realizing that it was time to do some thinking.

“I’m married,” I said. “And I have to explain this to my wife. Is that okay?”

His head tilted slightly, as if he was a cat who’d just found something interesting. “My sources didn’t tell me that you were married.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t tell anyone before I went in, if you’re talking about my family talking about me. And if you’re not, then you are more in need of my services than you even realize. I didn’t try to hide my actions before I got into this place.”

Lynn flashed me a quick grin. “The information gatherer is me. And since you’ve so kindly offered…” He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. “This is a list of names of men that I’m considering. I would like you