Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: County

"This is a terrible idea," Tim said for the fourth time.

He'd driven me, because I couldn't work a stick shift with fourteen stitches, and because he'd refused to let me take a cab.

We were sitting in his truck in the parking lot of the county detention center.

"He tried to kill you," Tim said. "Nine days ago."

"He tried to kill the doctor whose name they wrote on a card."

"That doctor was you."

"That doctor was a lie. He should get to hear the truth from somebody who isn't a lawyer."

Tim drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

"You know how this looks, right? The suspended resident visiting the man who attacked her. Your brother's going to say you're trying to buy him off."

"With what? I have three hundred dollars and a sheet cake."

"Half a sheet cake."

"You ate the other half."

"I was being supportive."

I almost smiled.

"I need Kelly's phone, Tim. The stream was on her phone. The nurse's notebook is my word against the log. The stream is three hundred people."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I'm coming in."

"They only let one visitor at a time."

"Then I'm sitting right outside the door, and if he so much as breathes wrong, I'm tackling the glass."

"You can't tackle glass."

"Watch me."

The visiting room was a row of booths with scratched plexiglass and black phones on cords.

They brought him in wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles at his ankles.

Ronnie Beal.

He looked worse than he had in the hallway. His red beard had been hacked short by somebody who didn't care.

He sat down. He looked at me through the glass.

Then he leaned forward and spat.

It hit the plexiglass right over my face and slid down slowly.

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