Skin Privilege

She went into the prison armed with lies and nothing else. Her Glock was hidden under the mattress back at the motel room and her folding knife was tucked in its hiding place under the front seat of her car. She'd even left her cell phone on the sink basin so it could charge. All she took into the prison with her was her ID and a tube of ChapStick.

Lena had told the warden that she was investigating threats made by one of Ethan's henchmen on the outside. The warden proved to be the picture of compliance. He'd given her transcripts of Ethan's phone records, his visitor log, copies of his outgoing mail. In addition, he had offered her the full services of the prison to do all they could to make a case against one of its most dangerous inmates.

The records were not going to get Ethan into trouble. The only person he'd called was Hank. He'd had no visitors. Ethan had neither written nor received any mail since the date of his incarceration. Not that any of this meant a damn thing. Lena knew Ethan was smart enough, charismatic enough, to get someone else to do his dirty work. According to the warden, his gang wasn't the biggest or the strongest, but Ethan managed to wield a psychological power that served to keep them high up in the prison food chain.

Lena had no trouble believing that. She hadn't seen Ethan in almost a year and still her heart had started pounding the minute she pulled into the prison parking lot.

One of the guards led Lena to the conference room they used for lawyer-inmate meetings. It was more like an interrogation room as far as she could see, little more than ten feet by twelve with a water-stained ceiling and heavy bars blocking the small windows. The table was bolted to the floor, a red line painted down its center as if to separate the good from the bad. The chairs were lightweight, unbreakable plastic so they wouldn't do much damage if they were thrown or used as a weapon. Guards were not allowed to hear exchanges between prisoners and their legal counsel, so there was a ring bolted to the wall where more violent inmates could be restrained.

'He's extremely dangerous,' the warden had told Lena. 'I'm not happy about leaving you alone in a locked room with this guy.'

The man had gone on to list suspected crimes committed by Ethan within the walls of the prison: shankings in the yard, drug trafficking, inmate shakedowns, a man who'd had his face burned off in the prison laundry. None of it could be linked back to Ethan, but the warden knew who was responsible for it all.

Lena had asked that Ethan be chained to the ring in the wall. The guard had told her that with violent prisoners, that was standard procedure.

She sat at the table and waited, her ears sensitive to every noise. Finally, the bolt slid back on the door. Lena kept her place at the table, pretending to read the records in front of her, willing her hands not to shake. She could hear chains rattling, feet sliding across the floor.

'What's this spic want with me?'

Ethan's voice; a hot knife in her ears.

'Shut the fuck up and sit down.' This from the guard, a beefy man who looked as if he enjoyed his job a little too much.

Lena sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest. She kept her eyes trained on Ethan's chest, her vision blurring into the orange of his prison uniform as the guard pushed him down into the chair and linked the chains into the bolt. Ethan tested his boundaries. He could fold his hands in front of him on the table, but the restraint would prevent him from going an inch farther.

Now Lena understood what the red line was for. Ethan's chains prevented him from crossing it.

The guard told Lena, 'Knock on the door when you're finished.' He waited for her to nod. The warden had shown her the panic button under the table a few minutes earlier. She put her hands in her lap in easy reach of the button.

The guard left and the bolts slid back on the door. There was no window in the door, no cameras the guards could watch to make sure she was okay. Lena was on her own.

Ethan smacked his lips. 'What a pleasant surprise.'

Lena looked at his hands on the table. The knuckles were red, one of them cut.

She asked, 'Why have you been calling Hank?'

He spoke softly, intimately. 'You can't even look me in the eye.'

He was right. She forced herself to meet his gaze. 'Why have you been trying to call Hank?'

He pressed his lips together, leaned back in his chair. Had his eyes always been this blue? They were like ice, but colder.

He said, 'I missed the old guy.'

'You don't even know him.'

'I thought I knew you.'

Lena let the silence build – not because she was in control of the interview but because she did not know what else to say.

He asked, 'You know what it's like in here?'

'I don't want to know. I'm just here to tell you to back off Hank.'

Was she, though? She didn't even know where her uncle was. Hank could be facedown in a sewer right now. He could be a John Doe on someone's slab at the morgue.

Ethan's chains clunked against the table as he clasped his hands in front of him. The handcuffs around his wrist were heavy-duty reinforced steel and the chain bolting him to the wall was so thick you'd need a torch to cut it off. Still, he somehow managed to seem in control. Lena could not even hold his gaze. She looked at his arms, saw that he had embellished the prison camp tattoos. Bodies were caught in the barbed-wire fence; emaciated prisoners with their mouths open in horror.

'Do you remember Shawn Cable from school?'

She shook her head.

'He was in my class at Grant Tech. Short guy, curly hair.'

She shook her head again, but she remembered the guy. They had been lab partners. Shawn had coasted by on Ethan's work.

'He's working at BASF now, in their industrial coatings division.'

Lena stared at the barbed-wire on his arm.

'That could have been my job,' Ethan said. 'But your boss jammed me up, and now I'm in here.'

Lena opened her mouth to defend Jeffrey, but stopped when she realized that she would only be implicating herself.

'I was out of it,' he said, indicating the tattoos. 'I was out of that life and starting a new one with you.'

'A new one where you beat me.'

'You hit me sometimes, too.'

Lena 's throat started to close, making it hard to breathe. She had hit him. She hadn't just rolled over and taken it. Sometimes she had even started the fights herself.

I loved you,' Ethan said. 'I loved you, and this is what you did to me.'

She found her voice. 'Did you love Evelyn Johnson, too?'

The silence between them was different this time, and when she dared look at his face, he was looking down at his chained wrists.

She said, 'You never told me she was black.'

'You never asked.'

They were talking like normal people now and it set Lena 's teeth on edge. She tried to keep reminding herself of who he really was, but all she kept coming back to was the person sitting in front of her, his eyes down, his shoulders slouched. She had loved him. She could not get around the fact that she had loved him.

She asked, 'What happened with her?'

'Are you recording this?'

'What do you think?'

He was staring at her again and Lena felt trapped in his gaze, unable to break the contact.

'Unbutton your blouse.'

'Fuck you.'

He raised his eyebrow. 'You did, baby.' The smile on his face was familiar – the old Ethan was coming out to play. 'Unbutton your blouse. Let me see if you're wired.'

'I told you I'm not.'

'I'm supposed to take you at your word?' His lips twisted into a grin. 'No dice, Lee. Last time I trusted you, I ended up in here. Show me you're not wired or I'll call the monkey back to take me to my cage.'

She fumbled with the top button, trying to make her fingers work. She looked at the door as she did this, as if she was afraid the guard would come through at any moment. She'd been sweating in the small room, and the air was cool on her skin as she opened the blouse to her waist.