The phone rang at eleven. I was already in bed.

“Mrs. Hart? This is the county jail. We’ve got your husband here.”

Gary. He’d gone to the bar after his shift. I told him not to drive. He drove anyway.

“He blew way over,” the voice said. “Bail’s set at two thousand. Cash or bond.”

Two thousand. We didn’t have two hundred. Rent was due Monday. My card was maxed.

“I don’t have it,” I said quietly.

“Then he sits till his court date. Could be weeks.”

I drove there anyway, in my sleep shirt and jeans, hoping there was something I could sign, something I could do. The county jail was a concrete box on the edge of town, one buzzing light over the door.

The night jailer was alone at the desk. Big man. Late thirties. Short dark hair gray at the sides. His uniform shirt pulled tight across his chest. The name tag said COLE.

He walked me back to the holding cell. Fluorescent lights buzzed. The place smelled like bleach and piss. Gary sat on the concrete bench, red-eyed.

“Denise,” he said. “Did you bring —”

“We don’t have it,” I whispered. “Gary, we don’t have two thousand dollars.”

Gary put his head in his hands.

Cole unlocked the cell door, stepped inside, and cuffed Gary’s wrists to the bench rail. “Policy,” he said.

Then he turned to me. Looked me up and down — my thin sleep shirt, no bra, my nipples hard in the cold air. He didn’t hide it.

“Walk with me,” he said.

In the hallway, his voice dropped. “There’s another way he walks out tonight. But it costs.”

I knew what he meant. My stomach turned.

“No,” I said. “No way.”

“Then he sits.” Cole shrugged. “Weeks. He’ll lose that warehouse job. You know he will.”

I looked through the bars at Gary — cuffed, miserable, about to lose everything.

“Please,” I whispered. “There has to be something else.”

“There isn’t.” Cole’s eyes were flat. “You want him out tonight, you pay my price. All of it. Whatever I want.”