Some of the men chuckled.
“Can’t say as I know him,” she said, giving the man a little smile, grateful for the lightening of the charged atmosphere.
“Heard you ran into some trouble there,” Hedron said softly.
She blinked and raised her glance to his. “Caught a shank,” she said, referring to the makeshift knife that had pierced her lung and spleen. She shrugged, deciding to tell the story rather than have another one of them work up the gumption to ask her more. “I was on the floor. A group of prisoners playing dominoes started slapping the tables with the tiles. Figured they were gambling and decided to break it up. I signaled to control what I was gonna to do, but the guy told another officer nearby to take it. When the inmates jumped him, I was ready. But before I knew it, I was on the floor, my face slamming concrete. Someone else jumped me from behind.”
She didn’t mention that when she looked back at control, the officer in the booth had his back to her. She didn’t need to by the looks on the faces of the officers sitting around her.
“Now, some folks would think that after something like that happened,” Hedron said slowly and deliberately, “the last thing a pretty girl like you would do is want to work in another prison.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Well, they’d be wrong.”
Hedron snorted, and then signaled to the waitress. “Two coffees, Marla?”
“Sure, sugar,” Marla said with a wink.
“I like mine black,” Gillian said, wishing she hadn’t reacted to the waitress’s flirting. The woman might think she was jealous.
Hedron’s lips twitched.
Tension eased gradually as conversation, most of it about hunting or mutual friends that she didn’t know, flowed around her.
Hedron leaned over the table. “We don’t operate like that here.”
She lifted her eyebrows as she took a sip of the coffee.
“Even if we have a problem with someone, we wouldn’t let them take a knife. We wouldn’t just let it happen.”
“Good to know.” She took a bigger sip and winced as the coffee burned her tongue.
“The new man you brought in today. Sure had a lot say about you.”
Gillian bristled at the way his gaze bored into hers. “We hardly exchanged two words.”
“You made an impression. Might want to steer clear of him.”
“I’m not a hug-a-thug. I don’t make friends with them, but I don’t run from them either.” She took another sip and began to stand. “Can I get your coffee, boys?”
There was laughter. “We don’t pay for coffee here.”
She nodded, breaking into a smile. “My kind of place.”
Hedron sat back and gave her a long measured look. “Guess I’ll see you later tonight.”
She nodded to the table and headed to her car without a backward glance.
So, maybe she hadn’t won them over, but at least they knew she planned to stay, and they better get used to it.
She drove back through town, turned onto the street of the house she’d rented, when a pale glimmer in the tree line caught her attention. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a man in white coveralls, but when she jerked her head toward him, there was nothing there.
Gillian pulled into her drive, set her car into park, and walked behind her house, wishing now that she hadn’t been so pleased about the deep ravine behind her yard that assured her privacy.
Although she knew she hadn’t seen a prisoner and was likely just a little wired from a lack of sleep and her jolt of java, still she couldn’t shrug off the eerie feeling that something wasn’t right.
She returned to her car, locked it and let herself into her house. The empty walls echoed as she strode inside and laid her keys on the kitchen counter. She headed straight to the bedroom, deciding to skip a shower until after she’d slept. She stripped and fell across the mattress, asleep the second after her head hit the pillow.
* * *