“Little patdown time,” he said. “You ladies hide shit everywhere, don’t you?”

“Do we?”

“I know your tricks.”

“Like you said, I only got four minutes.”

“I hate your kind,” he breathed into her ear.

Camels and Juicy Fruit are quite a combo. He slid a hand across her chest, squeezing hard enough to make her eyes water.

“I hate your kind,” he said again.

“Yeah, I can really tell,” she said.

“Shut up!”

One of his fingers probed up and down the cleft of her butt through her shorts.

“There’s no weapon in there, I swear.”

“I said shut up!”

“I just want to go take a shower.” Now, more than ever.

“I bet you do,” he said in his gravelly rumble. “I just bet you do.” One hand riding on her right hip, the other on her butt, he shoved his boots farther under her heels. It was like she was tottering on four-inch stilettos now. What she wouldn’t have given for a stiletto, just not the shoe kind.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of anything other than what he was doing to her. His pleasures were relatively simple: cop a feel or rub his hard-on against a chick when he got the chance. In the outside world this sort of conduct would’ve earned him a minimum of twenty years on the other side of these bars. Yet inside here it was classic he-said, she-said, and no one would believe her without some DNA trace. That’s why Beer Belly only pantomimed it through the clothes. And throwing a punch at the bastard would earn her another year.

When he was done he said, “You think you’re something, don’t you? You’re Inmate 245, that’s who you are. Cell Block B. That’s who you are. Nothing more.”

“That’s who I am,” said Mace as she straightened her clothes and prayed for an early diagnosis of lung cancer for Beer Belly. What she really wanted was to pull a gun and lay his brains-on the off chance he had any-against the gray walls.