Chapter 4: The Name Nobody Said Out Loud
Morning came gray and cold.
Lexi was at the sink in her cell when the door opened.
Not a guard.
Rosa.
She stepped inside without asking permission, which meant she had a reason the guards had agreed to look away from.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against the wall.
"I need to know your real name," Rosa said.
"You have it.
Lexi Carver."
"That's not what I mean."
Lexi dried her hands and turned around.
"Then say what you mean."
Rosa reached into the front of her uniform and pulled out something small.
A folded piece of paper, worn at the creases like it had been opened and refolded many times.
She held it out.
Lexi took it.
Unfolded it.
It was a photograph.
Old, slightly blurred, taken with a cheap camera in bad light.
Two people standing in front of a building she recognized immediately.
A man in his forties.
A girl of maybe sixteen beside him, her arm around his waist, both of them squinting into the sun.
The man was her father.
The girl was not Lexi.
"Who is she?" Lexi said.
"Her name was Dani." Rosa's voice was flat and careful.
"She was my daughter."
The cell was very quiet.
"Was," Lexi said.
"She d*ed in here.
Four years ago.
They called it an accident." Rosa's jaw moved.
"It wasn't an accident."
Lexi looked at the photograph again.
Her father's face.
Young.
Before everything.
Before the trial, before the sentence, before she'd spent two years building a plan to get herself into this exact facility.
"He never told me about her," Lexi said.
"He wouldn't have.
He was protecting you." Rosa took the photograph back and folded it carefully.
"Your father and my daughter — they were working together.
Before she was arrested.
Before he was.
They found something inside this prison, something that went all the way to the top of the administration, and someone found out they knew."
"And Dani—"
"Was moved to isolation three days after she told me on a call that she had proof." Rosa's voice didn't break.
It had the sound of someone who had already done all her breaking in private.
"She never came out."
Lexi sat down on the edge of the bunk.
"Who?" she said.
"Who gave the order?"
Rosa looked at her steadily.
"The warden."
The word landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
Lexi had suspected the corruption was internal.
She had suspected it went high.
But hearing it said out loud, plainly, by a woman who had lost her daughter to it — that was different from suspicion.
"His name is Hargrove," Rosa said.
"Warden Dale Hargrove.
He's been running a supply operation through this facility for eleven years.
Contraband, money, favors for the right people on the outside.
Your father found the financial trail.
Dani found the physical evidence — where they were storing it, who was moving it.
She hid a copy somewhere inside this building before they took her."
"Where?"
"I don't know exactly.
She told me it was somewhere only someone who knew her would find it." Rosa paused.
"She talked about your father a lot.
She trusted him.
I think whatever she hid — she hid it for him.
Or for whoever came looking."
Lexi was quiet for a moment.
"And Brenda?"
Rosa's expression shifted.
"Brenda works for Hargrove.
Has for years.
She controls the population.
Keeps people afraid, keeps people quiet.
When a new inmate arrives who might cause a problem — Brenda finds out first."
"So yesterday wasn't random."
"No," Rosa said.
"It wasn't."
Lexi stood up.
She moved to the small window and looked out at the yard, at the gray sky and the wire and the guard tower in the distance.
"Hargrove sent her," Lexi said.
"I think he already knows who you are," Rosa said.
"I think he knew before you arrived."
Lexi turned back around.
Her face was calm, but her eyes had changed.
"Then we don't have as much time as I thought."
Rosa nodded once.
"No.
We don't."
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
Then Rosa spoke again, quietly.
"Your father — is he going to be all right?
On the outside?"
"He's safe," Lexi said.
"For now."
"For now," Rosa repeated.
The door opened.
A guard leaned in, looked at both of them, and said nothing.
Rosa straightened up and walked out.
Lexi turned back to the window.
May you like
Somewhere inside this building, Dani's evidence was waiting.
And Hargrove already knew she was here.
