Page 113 of The Right to Remain

“I need to know that Elle’s secret is safe with Elliott,” she added.

Elliott didn’t answer. Mona’s knee burrowed so deep that Elliott thought he might cough up his spleen.

“Bad things can happen after I’m gone,” his mother said. “Much worse than this. I need to hear you say that Elle’s secret is safe with Elliott.”

The crushing pain in his back was unbearable. “Okay!” he said, but it was little more than a grunt.

“Okay what?” his mother asked.

“The secret is safe. It always has been.”

“Good,” his mother said. “My work here is done.”

Mona gave him one last knee in the spine and then rose. Elliott could breathe again, but he didn’t move, didn’t even lift his face from the floor.

His mother said something on the way out. Elliott couldn’t hear it, but it made Mona laugh. Elliott didn’t care. He just watched their footsteps at eye level as the two women left him alone in the cell.

Chapter 41

Jack cleared his Friday morning calendar and drove straight from his house on Key Biscayne to the pre-trial detention center. It had taken nearly eighteen hours for the warden’s office to inform Jack of an “incident” involving his client. The guard at the reception desk delivered the message he expected.

“Inmate Stafford doesn’t want to meet with you.”

Jack spent the next two hours in the warden’s office. The prison doctor confirmed that Elliott’s injuries were not life-threatening and that a trip to the hospital was unnecessary. Jack demanded to see the surveillance video, from which the assailants were clearly identifiable: Elliott’s cellmate, who was now in solitary confinement, and Elliott’s mother, who was being shipped out to Lowell for disciplinary measures. The video revealed one other key fact: Another cellmate had been in the top bunk directly across from Elliott the whole time. She’d never moved.

Around ten o’clock, Jack returned to the visitors’ reception desk.

“I want to see Shondra Mosely,” Jack said, meaning the potential witness.

“You’re wasting your time,” the guard said. “Mosely already told us she slept through the whole thing. Didn’t see a thing.”

“Maybe she’ll tell me something different.”

The guard shook his head, as if Jack were naïve. “No way you or anyone else is going to get her to snitch on the biggest badass bitch in the joint. And I don’t mean Elliott Stafford’s mother.”

“Tell Shondra that Theo Knight is here to see her.”

“Who?”

“Tatum Knight’s brother. He was the founding father of the Grove Lords.”

“So?”

“I checked out Shondra’s mug shot. If that tattoo on her neck is authentic, she’s also a Grove Lord. Tatum is dead, of course, like most of the old Grove Lords. But Theo is alive and well. That’s him sitting right over there.”

Jack pointed across the lobby with a jerk of his head. Theo checked back with what Jack surmised was an old Grove Lord hand signal.

“I’m sure Shondra wouldn’t want word to get around that she disrespected the last living Knight Brother,” said Jack.

The guard chuckled under his breath. “Good luck with that, counselor. I’ll tell her Mr. ‘Knight-of-the-Living-Dead’ is here.”

“I’ll need an attorney-client meeting room,” said Jack.

“You’re not her attorney.”

“I am for the purposes of this meeting,” said Jack.

“Criminal lawyers,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You people all deserve each other. Fine. You can have a room.”