Chapter 20: Okay With This Agreement

When Sheriff Collins came back later in the day, he found me in the storage room helping Hana. I had stayed in the main area, still in my civilian clothes but locked in the transport restraints. Later that day, she started doing inventory—mostly sorting through the restraints—and I just helped her.

It was actually good.

It kept me busy, kept my mind off things. I understood why inmates work in prison—it kills the hours, the days. And by the end of it, I probably knew more about restraints than anyone outside of law enforcement should.

That’s when we came across a set of shorter-chain leg cuffs. Which, surprisingly, I liked.

I must have looked crazy, but I asked Hana to put them on me. She just stared at me, puzzled. The chains were maybe eight inches, tops—but she did it.

They were short—short compared to what they’d had me in before. They looked about the same length as Susan’s. Not short enough to trip me, but definitely short enough to force a slight hobble.

And that was ... different. Especially in the stilettos. I think Hana was afraid I was going to fall. I remember promising her I wouldn’t sue. And it was awkward—like a newborn animal taking its first steps. That kind of awkward.

I’d watched Susan do it for weeks, moving carefully at first, until eventually she walked fine in them. But watching and doing are two very different things. Feeling the pull of the chain, that constant tug at your ankles—having to plan every step, every shift of balance—it’s humbling.

But I was okay with it. It was better than constantly worrying about tripping or having to lift the connecting chain and carry it bunched up, just to keep the leg cuff chain raised so I wouldn’t fall.

And I didn’t care that people saw.

In the days that followed, Hana would take me outside, maybe just to get air, and I’d feel their eyes on me—the way they slowed their walk, the way they looked without meaning to. I could tell what they were thinking: There she is, the one who lost her shit. The one who’s been threatening those nice girls.

And still, I didn’t care.

Well ... I mean, I did. I realized that at the café. I think that was the first time I’d been out in public like that. Sure, I’d gone to the courthouse, but I was in a car, then in the building, then in a courtroom. But in public, at a coffee shop? That had bothered me.

But now ... it didn’t bother me. Or at least, it bothered me a lot less.

Because even stuck in a smaller stride—even clinking and stumbling my way along the concrete, relearning how to walk—was better than being locked inside that cell all day.

It took a few days, but I learned how to move with the chain, how to adjust my gait, how to pretend it didn’t bother me when someone glanced over and then quickly looked away.

It was humiliating, yes.

Every step was a reminder of what I’d become. But I’d take the humiliation over the silence of that cell any day. Anything was better than sitting there, doing nothing but thinking.

We also came across a pair of thumb cuffs, and I tried those on too. They just reminded me of Bambi.

Hana couldn’t really explain why they had them—maybe they’d been confiscated from someone at some point.

But the most interesting thing was a set of leg cuffs with a solid bar instead of a chain. Hana called them rigid leg irons. The bar was about a foot long, she said. They’d acquired them years ago from transporting a high-risk, violent prisoner who’d been held overnight at the station.

But when the U.S. Marshals showed up the next day to take him, they used regular leg cuffs instead, and the rigid ones ended up staying behind, and just thrown into storage.

She made it sound like they weren’t used anymore—or even made.

I ended up in those too.

Hana threaded the bar through the ring on the connecting chain, and I could feel the shift in balance right away. The first thing I realized was that I couldn’t take a normal step.

The bar held my ankles just far enough apart that I couldn’t swing one foot past the other, not without twisting. So instead, I had to sort of throw each leg forward from the hip—an awkward, side-to-side swing that felt clumsy.

The stiletto heels made it worse; they caught the floor if I didn’t lift just right, so every step became this careful, exaggerated motion. I couldn’t place the heel first and then the rest of my foot like I normally did. I had to plan each step in one slow movement—heel and sole together—because if I didn’t, I’d lose my balance completely.

It wasn’t walking so much as a slow shuffle, each leg moving in a stiff arc while the bar clinked lightly as the ring of the connecting chain slid back and forth. The metal didn’t flex or give. It just reminded me, with every uneven sway, that I was only moving because it allowed me to.

And of course, that’s when the sheriff walked in. Me, in the transport restraints, with the rigid leg irons and the thumb cuffs. I remember him just looking at Hana and raising both eyebrows.

She walked over to him and spoke quietly, and in the end, he was fine with it—fine with me being out of my cell, that is. As long as I remained restrained, which really just meant my hands cuffed either behind my back or to my waist with the belt or chain, and in leg cuffs. That’s how I stayed from that point on in the station, helping Hana with different tasks.

But right now ... she left me in the thumb cuffs and the rigid leg cuffs, even after the sheriff had left us and gone back to his office. I just stayed like that and kept helping her.

I think it was because she realized I was actually having fun with it—though I hate to admit that. Walking in those leg cuffs with heels was definitely hard, but with Hana there it somehow felt okay. She didn’t make me feel bad or awkward; it just was.

It wasn’t until she was escorting me back to my cell, through the main station, that I wished those restraints had been taken off sooner. There she was—Mrs. Langley, standing in the center of the room, her voice carrying as she complained to the sheriff. He told her to wait, that he’d call and find out where he was. I guessed he meant Hermi.

But whatever it was didn’t matter. With the rigid leg cuffs slowing me to a near crawl, she didn’t need to hurry—she just walked right up to us.

“Anne,” she said, wide-eyed. “When you said you had to be restrained when not in your cell...” Her gaze scanned me from head to toe, sharp, calculating, almost predatory. “I didn’t realize you meant this extent.”

Her words kept coming, spilling out like a siren warning of danger. “I didn’t realize the degree the sheriff’s office had to go to ... to keep the community safe.”

I just looked at her.

It didn’t matter what she said. And it wouldn’t matter if I tried to explain it. I knew she was already spinning the story to people.

But now, seeing me like this—in thumb cuffs and legs locked in rigid irons—it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Every chain, every bar, every careful, mechanical step made me look exactly like what Hana had said about the prisoner who had been in these leg cuffs: high-risk, extremely violent. Dangerous. Someone the public needed to fear.