I Ran Home With My Baby to My Brother's Biker Friends, and the Three Who Tormented Me Said I Was Theirs to Guard novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Box

Mason's POV

I waited two days, because she told me to.

Then I drove to the county jail with a folded paper from Cyrus's lawyer in my jacket pocket and my lip still split, and I did not tell anyone where I was going.

Not Dutch.

Not Dirk, who would have come with me and stood in the lobby like a locked gate.

Not Nik, who would have talked.

I am the one who doesn't talk.

It turns out that is a use.

The lawyer had said it on the phone in four sentences.

An inmate may request his own recorded calls.

A written request goes to the records desk.

The desk has to answer in writing, or hand them over.

She had filed it on Tuesday.

On Thursday the answer had not come.

Cyrus's calls to his sister had been sitting in a file at the jail for three months.

I was twenty-eight, and I had never in my life walked up to a desk and asked for what was owed.

I walked up to the desk.

It was the middle of the afternoon.

A deputy sat behind the glass with a coffee and a crossword.

He was fifty or so, heavy, with a gray mustache and a face that had stopped being surprised by anything in about 2006.

"Help you?" he said.

"I'm here for a records request," I said.

"Mayfield.

"Cyrus Mayfield, inmate.

"His lawyer filed it Tuesday."

He looked at me.

He looked at my lip.

"You his lawyer?" the deputy said.

"No, sir," I said.

"Then who?"

"I'm a friend.

"I tow cars."

"I'll bet you do," he said, and went back to his crossword.

My hands were sweating.

I stood there and counted the ceiling tiles.

Forty-two across.

After a minute the deputy said, without looking up, "There's a deputy in the mail room I don't like."

I said nothing.

"Fella named after a pastry," he said.

"Real tight with a sergeant over at the city.

"Gets here early.

"Eats lunch at the mail desk, which nobody does.

"Has a locked drawer.

"I've worked here nineteen years, and I never saw a mail room with a locked drawer."

He turned a page.

"Funny thing," he said.

"I'm on records Thursdays."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Funny that your lawyer picked a Thursday."

He stood up.

His knees cracked.

He went through a door in the back of the booth and was gone for what felt like an hour.

I looked at the glass.

I looked at the door that Cyrus came through every Friday.

I thought of Zo, in the steel chair, with her palm flat on the Plexiglas.

I thought, if this is a trap, it will be the kind with a sergeant's smile.

The door opened.

The deputy came back with a banker's box in his arms.

He set it on the counter.

It was open at the top.

I saw envelopes.

Dozens, in a rubber band, in Cyrus's square printing, addressed to Zora Pellerin in Fargo, North Dakota.

Every one had been slit along the top and put back.

On top of the envelopes sat a small black thumb drive, taped to an index card that said MAYFIELD C. CALLS, 11.

"Those were in a drawer in the mail room," the deputy said.

← Chapter 16 · All chapters · Chapter 18 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend