Undercover Prison King novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: What Was Left
Lorena did not run.
She walked out of the laundry through the ring of men, across the yard, and past the cameras, and Sawyer went with her.
The lime pit lay behind the boiler house, a square of white crust inside a rusted fence.
Four deputies stood around it with their hats off.
A state examiner in coveralls had laid a tarp along the edge, and under the tarp lay what the lime had kept.
"Doctor," the examiner said. "You don't have to look."
"I do."
She knelt.
The ring lay on a square of cloth beside the tarp, a thin silver band gone dull, with a scratch inside it.
She picked it up and turned it to the light.
"M," she said. "I scratched it myself, with a pin, the night before his first sentencing."
Her voice did not break.
"I gave it to him in the visiting room and the guard said he couldn't wear jewelry. Dale wore it on a string inside his shirt."
She closed her hand around it.
"Six others," the examiner said quietly. "Under the same crust. We'll need the librarian's list."
"He'll give it to you," Sawyer said.
Lorena stayed on her knees in the white dust for a long while.
Sawyer stood behind her and said nothing, and it was the right thing.
They buried Dale Neumann ten days later on a hill outside Burns.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Undercover Prison King are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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