Chapter 8: What Strick Knew
She found Rosa in the yard during the afternoon break.
She didn't sit beside her.
She walked past her, close enough to speak without turning her head.
"Hargrove is transferring me Friday.
And Strick saw me coming out of the sub-level."
Rosa's pace didn't change.
"How much time do we have?"
"If Strick reports it — hours.
If he hasn't yet — until tomorrow morning at the latest."
"Then tonight," Rosa said.
"Tonight," Lexi agreed.
She kept walking.
What she needed was a way to get the evidence out of the facility before the transfer order was processed.
The cylinder was hidden in a place only she and Rosa knew — tucked inside the lining of a spare mattress in the storage room off the laundry.
Safe for now.
But safe and useful were different things.
She needed a phone.
A real one, not a contraband burner that could be traced back to a cellblock deal.
She needed to reach the one person on the outside who was waiting for exactly this call.
Brenda found her first.
She appeared at Lexi's cell door after the evening count, when the corridor was briefly unsupervised between shift changes.
"Strick talked," Brenda said.
Her voice was low and fast.
"He told Hargrove you were in the sub-level corridor.
Hargrove sent two men down there an hour ago to check the room."
"Did they find anything?"
"I don't know.
But Hargrove called me into his office after." Brenda's jaw was tight.
"He wants me to find out what you took.
He thinks you found something.
He's offering me the transfer recommendation — the real one, signed — if I deliver it to him by morning."
Lexi looked at her.
"And?"
"And I'm standing in your doorway instead of his office." Brenda's voice had an edge to it that wasn't anger — it was something more like a decision that had already been made and was only now being spoken.
"I have a daughter.
I told you that.
Eight years old.
I have missed four birthdays and I will not miss another one because of a man who has been lying to me for two years."
"If you help me get this out tonight," Lexi said, "Hargrove doesn't just lose his leverage over you.
He loses everything."
"How?"
"I need a phone.
One call.
Twelve minutes."
Brenda was quiet for a moment.
Then she reached into the front of her uniform and held out a phone.
Small, clean, the kind that cost money to get inside.
"You have ten minutes before the next pass," she said.
"After that, I don't know anything."
Lexi took the phone.
She dialed from memory.
It rang twice.
"Lexi." Her father's voice.
Steady, but she could hear the strain underneath it.
"I found it, Dad.
Everything Dani hid.
Documents and a drive.
Eleven years of records.
His name is on all of it."
A long exhale.
"Are you safe?"
"For now.
He's transferring me Friday.
I need you to call Grace tonight.
Tell her I need the federal contact, not the state one.
Tell her it has to be someone outside Hargrove's network."
"I'll call her in the next hour."
"Dad." She paused.
"Dani left a note.
At the bottom of the documents.
She wrote your name."
Silence on the line.
"She said you'd know what to do," Lexi said.
Another silence, longer this time.
When her father spoke again, his voice was different.
Quieter.
Weighted with something she recognized as grief.
"She was a good person," he said.
"She deserved better than what happened to her."
"I know," Lexi said.
"We're going to make it mean something."
She ended the call and handed the phone back to Brenda.
Brenda pocketed it without a word.
From somewhere down the corridor came the sound of boots — the next guard rotation, earlier than expected.
Brenda stepped back from the doorway.
"Get some sleep," she said, loud enough for the approaching guard to hear.
"You look terrible."
She walked away.
The guard passed without stopping.
Lexi sat down on her bunk.
The cylinder was still in the mattress storage.
The call was made.
The contact would be reached.
But Hargrove would know by morning that his room had been searched.
And if Strick had given him enough detail, he might already know what she'd found.
She lay back and stared at the ceiling.
May you like
Friday was four days away.
She had just made it feel like four hours.
