Page 13 of Thick

“Well?” I asked. “What did he do? Have enough guts to challenge one of the snide remarks you always make?”

“Shouldn’t get attached to the inmates, Madden.”

“I’m not attached to anyone,” I snapped back, although it was a lie. “We were in the middle of a conversation about something.”

He stopped twirling his keys. After crossing his arms and looking me over, he arched an eyebrow. “What were you talking about?”

I doubted he knew anything about Tate being an author. I wasn’t about to enlighten him on the matter, either. “Nothing, really. We were just talking.”

He chuckled a laugh. “Well, that’s a conversation that’ll never go anywhere.”

“What did you do?” I asked, my voice thick with anger. “Pepper spray him and take him to the hole?”

He looked me up and down. “You better change your tone, Madden.”

I pressed my fists against my hips. “Answer me.”

“He shipped out.”

There was no way he’d gone to court, been convicted of his crime, and then been assigned to a prison since we last spoke.

I cocked a hip. “Excuse me?”

“Prosecution dropped the charges. He’s a free man. Shipped out yesterday. Sheriff gave him a ride to impound to get his bike. He rode out of here like a rocket.”

My throat tightened at the thought of never seeing him again. “He left?”

“Scurried his ass out of here like a rat from a sinking ship.”

He didn’t have any idea what manner he left in. There was no way he could have seen him. He was trying to get under my skin, and as much as I hated to admit it, he was doing just that.

“Did he say anything before he left?”

He glanced at the floor. After a moment, he looked up. “Nothing that I can remember, no.”

“He just left?” I couldn’t believe that he simply walked out without saying anything. It didn’t seem like him. “When was it?”

He unfolded his arms. “While you were doing paperwork yesterday afternoon.”

“I was right here? In this office? You didn’t think to walk him by here and let him say something to me? If they dropped the charges, he was a free man. You could have let him say something.”

He shrugged and turned away. “I wasn’t aware I needed to. I took him out through R and D.”

“The long way?” I gave him a look. It was obvious he took measures to make sure Tate didn’t see me on his way out.

It wasn’t surprising, considering the things he’d said about Tate and the men he rode motorcycles with.

Tate Reynolds’ file, or jacket as we called them, had every bit of information on him that the federal government could gather. I had access to his name, where he lived, and his closest of kin’s names and addresses.

I wasn’t about to turn into a stalker, or a creep. His personal life needed to remain just that. Personal. Despite my attraction to him, I needed to remember that he had a life before he showed up, and him returning to that life was more important to him and his family than anything.

My fleeting thoughts of there ever being anything between us were nothing more than a one-sided dream. I needed to forget about talking to him and learn to embrace the bits and pieces of him that were expressed through the characters of his books.

I had more than forty to go.

Chapter Six

Tate