Hello Little Girl (Hart's Ridge Book 10) by Kay Bratt

Author:Kay Bratt [Bratt, Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Thread Publishing Group
Published: 2024-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

Taylor slapped her cards down and called Spades. She was thankful to have something to use up part of the day, and the deck they played with was homemade and surprisingly well done.

Lyric had created them from notebook paper, adding the numbers and other art elements in painstakingly meticulous details. She was hiding a fantastic artistic ability under her quiet persona.

Taylor couldn't help but feel a pang of homesickness. Playing cards reminded her of game nights back home with Sam and Alice—pizza, laughter, and the simple joy of being together. She wondered if they were carrying on without her, missing her as much as she missed them.

But right now, her focus was on the precarious situation in the pod. Visitation for the week had been canceled, due to some unforeseen situation with staffing, was all that they were told. Downstairs, among other squabbles, the women had been fighting over the phones all day. Only three of the four worked, and some women stayed on them too long. The ones waiting were furious. Some inmates couldn’t make any calls, because they didn’t have money on their books. Those were the sad cases, because they wanted to talk to someone on the outside just as much as anyone did.

There’d also nearly been a fight over the dayroom television earlier. Now that the guards weren’t controlling what they watched, everyone had an opinion and a different choice.

Things weren’t going well in the experiment, but they still had a chance to make things right, to steer it away from chaos and toward a semblance of order.

"You know, Trina," Taylor began quietly, breaking the tense silence, "we need to start setting some parameters in here. This free-for-all isn't working. I grew up with several sisters, and, trust me, chaos without boundaries just breeds more chaos."

Trina glanced up from her cards, her brow furrowed in consideration. "Yeah, I see what you mean. But how do we even begin to rein things in? April has everyone convinced she's in charge and all she cares about is she and her crew getting their way."

Taylor leaned forward, her voice low but determined. "I have an idea. You should talk to Jane. She's got a lot of respect around here, but she doesn't flaunt it like April. Being older, she might have more sway with the younger ones. She can talk them into some semblance of order before Sheriff Comer shuts this experiment down."

Trina nodded slowly, absorbing Taylor's words. "You're right. Jane could help. They think of her as an OG. And, yeah, we need some kind of system for getting trays, handling issues—anything to knock April off her throne before things get worse."

Quig, perched on her bunk above them watching them play cards, chuckled cynically. "You guys are crazy if you think that'll work. They should've never unlocked these doors. Now the patients are running the asylum. I’ve seen two new tattoos just today. They think they can do anything they want now."

Taylor shot Quig a pointed look but turned back to Trina, ignoring the skepticism.

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