Buried Biker Read Online Free PDF Page A

on your wrist, and no one can mess with it. Want me to fasten it tight so it don’t come off easy?”
    “Yeah.”
    The nurse on duty wasn’t gentle as he treated the injuries to my face, but he wasn’t unnecessarily rough, either, and I was grateful for that. I endured the standard body cavity search, went through the delousing and shower, and was issued underwear, shower shoes, and a jumpsuit designed for someone three times my size. I wondered when I’d get a chance to shave. Not until tomorrow, if then. No way would I get to use a razor without obnoxiously close supervision.
    I shuffled off—no other way to walk in those shower shoes—to be assigned a bunk and issued bedding. It was late, after the nighttime lockdown. The long grey hallway was well lit, but in the housing units that opened off it, the lights were off in the cells and glaring security lights threw grotesque shadows into the corners of the dayroom.
    The cells were designed as two-man, but when the place became overcrowded, which tended to happen within months of their construction, they were changed to four-man cells by the simple expedient of moving two sets of double-tiered bunks into each one. Unlike the holding cell, the fronts of the ones here in the housing unit were made of barred grills, open to a central dayroom. A pass-through port for meal trays was in the center of the door. Both were securely locked.
    My assignment was K-Pod, the high security cellblock. The cell only had one other occupant, a scared kid who sat nervously on the lower bunk of one set, slapping his shower shoe on the floor. They were the only footwear we’d been issued, and his were so loose they fell off when he tried to lift his foot.
    I stowed my bedding on the top of the opposite set of bunks and sat down on the lower one. Pressure was still rising in my chest, and I felt even more like crying or screaming than I had in the holding cell. Then, there’d been some possibility I would be released. Now, I was a processed jail inmate. With no possibility of finding out how Kelly was really doing. I reminded myself that causing a disturbance would just get me restrained and might earn me with an appointment with the psychiatrist. Which might land me on suicide watch. I had no desire to make a bad situation worse.
    Only one good thought came to me. At least I didn’t have any pets to worry about. A few months ago, I’d found a cat in my stairwell and taken her in. She’d had two kittens. I’d enjoyed the company, but decided my situation was too risky to keep them myself. If I got locked up, like I was now, they’d starve to death if no one went to get them. Kelly’s school age kids, Brianna and Chris, had been begging for a pet, and she took the whole little family in.
    I wondered how the cats were doing with Kelly in the hospital. Kelly shouldn’t be gone that long, and if the bikers just left them alone, they should be okay.
    And the kids. How were they dealing with this whole thing? Had to be tough on them. I needed to think about something else. I tried to size up my cellmate.
    He didn’t show any reaction at all, just stared at the wall and ignored me. I held out my hand to the kid. He was tall and lanky, his shoulders hunched dejectedly. “Jesse,” I said.
    He turned away from me.
    Shrugging, I said, “Suit yourself.”
    “You just better leave me alone,” he said, his voice harsh. “I didn’t get picked up on no stupid possession charges like most of the guys in here. I’m looking at assault charges.”
    Tough guy wannabe, I thought. He was right about most of the inmates in the jail being held on CDS—controlled dangerous substance, mostly narcotics—charges, but one thing about a county lockup is that often no one knows whether they were dealing with a kid who did something stupid or a true psychopath. We were in high security housing, and they must have had a reason for putting him here. CDS charges alone wouldn’t justify that.
    “How about