The Agent Next Door by Adrienne Bell Page B

with stepped up to
the driver’s window. She shouldn’t have bothered. John held out his
badge. The guard took one look and waived them through.
    Erin lifted a brow as he pulled into the
empty parking lot. “Does that thing get you in everywhere?”
    He shot her a slick smile and stepped out of
the car. “Not everywhere .”
    All right. So she was wrong about him and the
jokes. He did have a sense of humor. Sometimes she only wished he
didn’t.
    Erin took in a deep breath before opening her
car door and tried to still her anxious thoughts. She prayed she
wasn’t making a huge mistake, accomplishing nothing more than
riling up her mother and upsetting herself.
    But if she didn’t? The thought of never
seeing her mother again was just too painful. She had to do
this.
    She had to.
    John was waiting by her car door. He nodded
to the men in the black sedans who were just now pulling into the
lot. At least it didn’t look like they were getting out. Thank God
for small favors.
    John turned around and held out his hand.
Erin wrapped her fingers around his.
    “This place used to scare the hell out of me
when I was a kid,” she said nervously as they climbed the steps
that led to visitor’s entrance.
    “And now?”
    “It still does.”
    His grip on her hand tightened. She was
reluctant to let go when they stepped inside. Erin had never seen
the place so empty. She was used to wasting every Sunday standing
in a long processing line with a hundred or so other people only to
be shuffled off into a waiting tank for a couple of hours until a
visiting table became available. The stillness of the place
bordered on eerie.
    The visitor center wasn’t completely empty
though. A couple of guards still worked on the computers behind the
counter. One looked up and greeted Erin with a smile.
    “Miss Holliday,” he said, standing up.
    “How are you, Carl?”
    “Doing fine. Warden sent word you might be
coming in today.” Carl looked John up and down. “Everything all
right?”
    “Everything’s fine, Officer.” John stepped in
front of her and slid his badge across the counter. The meaning in
his tone was unmistakable. No questions.
    A part of her wanted to smack him for his
rudeness. Erin had been coming to this prison for so long she knew
just about every corrections officer in the place. She was on
friendly terms with most of them.
    Another part was grateful for John’s
intervention. She didn’t want to have to explain herself more than
she had to. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to manage
getting through the whole story with her mother. She knew she
didn’t have the energy for anyone else.
    Carl frowned, looking even more concerned
than before. “Homeland Security, eh?”
    “He's a friend, Carl,” Erin said.
    “Some friend.”
    “You don’t know the half of it.”
    Carl arched his brows, but didn’t ask any
more questions. Erin was quickly learning that one look from John
went a long way in dispelling people’s curiosity.
    “Well, then I suppose I’ll show you to the
visiting room,” Carl said.
    Carl walked ahead of them, down the long hall
of flickering fluorescent lights. Every stutter in her step on the
worn vinyl tile echoed off the concrete walls. Erin hesitated as he
opened the door to the empty visiting room, but she managed a shaky
smile as she stepped inside.
    “Your mother should be here shortly,” Carl
said, before turning and leaving her and John alone.
    Erin shifted back and forth on her feet as
time ticked by. She didn’t want to sit down. The tables and benches
bolted to the floor looked colder than usual. The room wasn’t
exactly silent. She could hear the murmur of voices, footfalls and
the occasional metallic clank.
    After what felt like the longest minute of
her life, she looked at John. His back was straight but his arms
hung loose at his side. His legs were braced apart. He reminded
Erin of an old-time gunslinger, ready for whatever came through
that door.
    “You know, you