Descending

Chapter 4

"Ugh." Matthew groaned. "There's so much traffic. It'll take us forever to get to the jail!"

Marcia sulked and took another glance in the rear-view mirror.

"Matthew." Marcia said gloomily. "Do you have any sunglasses I could borrow?"

Matthew's brows furrowed, then he glanced at Marcia. "Sunglasses? Why do you need- ...whoa!"

Matthew fell silent when he noticed Marcia's bruise.

Marcia sighed. "Yeah, it's pretty bad isn't it?"

"What happened to your eye?" demanded Matthew.

Normally, when Matthew appeared to be this angry, Marcia would try to keep him from murdering whoever had pissed him off. However, this time Marcia simply pointed at the blonde in the backseat, who smiled nervously when Matthew turned to her.

For a moment, Matthew looked like he might tear through the bars and lunge into the backseat to strangle Chloe to death, but then he inhaled sharply in attempt to conceal his fury.

"Bitch, you better hope we get to jail fast." Matthew snarled through gritted teeth. "Honestly, I think you'll be much safer there with a bunch of thugs, than here in this car."

For a brief moment, Chloe stared at Matthew, wide-eyed and petrified with fear, then she gave a nervous laugh and patted the iron bars between the front and back seats with her cuffed hands.

"Wow..." Chloe smiled shakily. "I never thought I'd love a row of iron bars so much in my entire life."

Irritated, Matthew exhaled heavily and whirled around to return his focus to the road. For a moment, there was a brief silence, but it was interrupted when Matthew felt something vibrate against his leg, and heard his ringtone blare out from his pocket.

Chloe nearly fell over laughing the back seat. "Haha, is that Gangnam Style?"

Matthew flushed furiously. "SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHI- hello?"

Marcia watched as Matthew's face turned from beet red to ghost white when he realized that he had already answered the phone.

"Yeah, sorry about that..." Matthew said. "I wasn't talking to you."

Matthew seemed relieved as the static voice from the other end of the phone continued talking.

"Wait..." Matthew's brows furrowed. "are you serious?"

Matthew listened for a few more seconds.

"Ok," he said, pulling out a small notepad and pen from his pocket.

As the voice continued Matthew started to jot something down.

"Ok," Matthew repeated. "Thanks for telling me."

After Matthew ended the phone call, he groaned and buried his forehead in his palms.

"What's wrong?" Marcia asked.

"It was the police chief. Matthew said, showing Marcia the notepad that he had just written on. "Apparently the city jail is on fire, and this is the address for the only other jail that's nearby."

After reading the address Marcia gasped. "Fernswood?! That place is hours away!"

"I know." Matthew said glumly. "I didn't even know they had a jail there."

"You're sure this is the right address?" Marcia asked.

"Yup." Matthew replied.

Marcia sunk into her chair hopelessly. Out of all the days the jail could catch on fire, it just had to catch on fire today. This was going to be a long drive.