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happened, she wanted to be with him.
    â€˜Have you been sleeping better?’ he asked, letting the fingers of the hand not holding the phone stretch toward her as though he wished his hands weren’t cuffed so he could touch the Plexiglas, have his hand closer to hers.
    She lifted a palm to the glass, pressed it to where, if he could reach, his hand might’ve been. ‘Trying.’
    He nodded. ‘That’s good. I want you to get some rest soon so those dark circles will go away. You’re just as pretty with them, but they let me know that you’re struggling.’
    â€˜Stupid evidence,’ she laughed, moving her hand from the Plexiglas and wiping her eyes. ‘Isaac—’
    â€˜Lynz, don’t,’ he cut in. He shook his head, still smiling. ‘You’re here now, and that’s what matters.
We’re
here.’
    If I can taste the vomit when I say the words, you’d think you’d at least have a gag reflex when I say them.
    But she didn’t. She drank them up like a little plant in the desert.
    â€˜I’ve just been so worried you’d still be upset with me after I messed up—’
    â€˜Shh,’ he admonished gently. ‘I told you. It’s OK.’
    The last thing I need is for you to lose your focus and say something you shouldn’t.
    â€˜Tell me about work,’ Isaac said, the caring boyfriend. He didn’t exactly
want
to hear her ramble on about her new job and why it wasn’t the same as when she was here because he wasn’t there. But, the change of topic steered her away from talk not fit to be discussed undisguised around guards, being recorded.
    Isaac counted to one hundred and eighty in his head, careful to tune in just enough so that later whatever she told him wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass. The best plans were ruined, the most brilliant of criminals thwarted because they didn’t pay enough attention to the people weaker than them. Even more brilliant minds than his had been spoiled because they’d failed to keep their generals under control. A target with the attention he or she craved was a happy target – a pawn willing to be manipulated.
    Jenna Ramey’s face burst forth in his mind, and for a moment, he shut out Lynzee’s words. Her mother had been the smartest there was, maybe, and yet, Claudia didn’t properly attend to Jenna. Let her have too many of her own thoughts. Didn’t color enough of her perception. Claudia had been bested by Jenna, a costly mistake of his stepmother’s he was determined to learn from.
    Sure.
His
master plan had been stopped by Jenna, too, and Claudia had ended up trumping the system through a ruse he had tried and failed at himself, but his mistake had been different. He hadn’t known Jenna before they met during his interrogation following a shooting last year. His mistake had been to underestimate her.
    But the past was the past, and his tango with Jenna Ramey was far from over. She’d gotten the better of him and thrown him in prison, sentenced to life without parole, but he wasn’t about to accept this as a defeat. Oh, no. It was just the first battle in a much larger war.
    â€˜So, did Shelby admit she was the one who took your Dr Pepper out of the fridge, or is she still trying to deny she was in the break room?’ Isaac asked, latching on to Lynzee Gold’s train of thought, fooling her into thinking her workplace squabbles – her
life –
was important to him. He had to, in order to change the subject and still have her think he cared. He’d let her talk for a full three minutes about herself, but it was for naught if the transition wasn’t smooth. They had twenty minutes to visit, and that time could be plenty for his purposes if he shifted gears easily. It could also tick away fast if she became indignant.
    â€˜Of course not,’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘Nobody saw her go in