Authors: Stephanie Bond
black light, and had even managed to have a couple of
them X-rayed on an eighth-grade field trip to a vet clinic. In
hindsight, he realized there were no secret messages
between the lines of “We’re fine and we love you” or
“You’re always in our hearts,” yet he remained hopeful
that his father would someday contact him and ask for his
help now that Wesley was an adult.
Unless his parents had forgotten how old he was.
He banished the thought as soon as it entered his mind. Of
course his parents knew he was an adult now. Just
because they’d never called or sent a special message on
his birthday didn’t mean that they’d forgotten that he was
no longer a kid. Ditto for Christmas. They had sacrificed
too much to risk being caught over something stupid and
sentimental.
Yet every Christmas, in the back of his mind, he dared to
hope that they might simply show up at his bedroom
window, or maybe ring the doorbel . “We couldn’t stay
away any longer,” they would say, then gather him and his
sister in their arms.
But it never happened. Last Christmas he’d spent the day
being a jerk to Carlotta when she’d only tried to make him
happy by attempting to bake a chocolate cake with peanut
butter chips in the middle. It had been his favorite since he
was a kid, a special cake that his mother had always made
during the holidays. But Carlotta was hopeless in the
kitchen. In fact, self-preservation had forced him to take
over the cooking duties when he’d turned twelve.
Carlotta’s cake had been undercooked in the middle and
burnt around the edges. He had snapped at her and at the
time, had been unfazed by her wounded expression, just
happy to lash out at someone.
But now he felt the sting of remorse over the mean things
he’d said—that she’d never find a husband if she didn’t
learn to cook and that he hated the clothes she’d bought
and wrapped up for him and that he didn’t want to watch
the dumb Christmas movie that she’d rented. The movie,
he knew, had been her attempt to tether him, to keep him
off the streets and away from the card tables. She meant
wel , but she smothered him.
Then he sighed. Damn, no matter what he did, he seemed
to disappoint Carlotta. She’d be furious with him when she
found out about the hacking. Although, if he was careful,
he could at least keep her from finding out why he’d done
it.
A buzzing noise sounded and the door to the holding cel
slid open, revealing a uniformed officer. All the inmates
who weren’t sleeping or passed out perked up.
“On your feet, Wren. You have a visitor.”
Wesley winced. Time to face the executioner. He pushed
to his feet and waded through the jumble of funky-
smel ing bodies, enduring wolf whistles from his bigger,
brawnier cel mates while the officer handcuffed him. Then
he fol owed the officer to a room where his sister waited.
Her anxious gaze darted from his face to his handcuffs,
and she looked as if she was going to cry. God, he hoped
not. Seeing her in tears tore him up, always had. When the
officer left and closed the door, she gripped his shoulders
hard, but instead of hugging him, she shook him with more
strength than he’d known she had. “What the hel did you
do, Wesley?”
When his eyes stopped spinning in his head, he said,
“Relax, sis, no one was murdered.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yet. That Chance
Hol ander has something to do with this, doesn’t he?”
“No,” Wesley said because Carlotta already didn’t like his
best friend. And even though Chance had given him the
idea to break into the courthouse records, he was the one
who had actually done it.
“Tel me what you did. Now, Wesley.”
He swal owed. He hadn’t seen her this worked up since
he’d broken the news that he wasn’t going to apply for
col ege. “I, um, sort of stumbled into a computer database
that I wasn’t supposed to.”
One dark eyebrow arched. “Stumbled into, or hacked
into?”
“Uh, hacked.”
She crossed her arms. “Detective Terry told me that you
broke into the courthouse computer and changed some
records?”
He frowned. “That guy’s a jerk.”
His sister looked alarmed. “Did he hurt you?”
“Nah, but he gets off on that bad-cop routine.”
She frowned. “I noticed. Now, why were you messing
around in the courthouse records?”
He tried to look sheepish. “Just trying to get rid of all those
traffic tickets I accumulated so I could get my driver’s
license reinstated and I wouldn’t be such a pain to you.”
He could lie with assurance because when he suspected
his access was being tracked, he’d unleashed a virus in the
database that would be undetectable to the hil bil y
programmers in the police department. No way they’d be
able to tel what had been changed.
“Is that all?” she asked, her brown eyes hopeful.
Guilt stabbed at him, but he told himself that she wanted
to believe him, and he’d only hurt her more with the truth.
“Yeah, that’s all.”
She sighed in relief, then ran her hand over his cheek as
she used to when he was little. “What am I going to do
with you?”
His heart swel ed with affection, but he tamped down his
sissy emotions. “You have to keep me around, or you’d
starve to death.”
She smiled briefly, then sobered. “We need to get you a
lawyer.”
He shifted his feet. “I already called Liz Fischer.”
Carlotta looked horrified. “Dad’s attorney? Why?”
“Why not?”
“Wel , for one reason, she’l probably charge an arm and a
leg to represent you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not. She always told us to call her if
we needed anything, and she sounded nice on the phone.”
“I don’t like the fact that everyone wil connect her to Dad,
and then him to you.”
“Since we have the same last name, I think that’s
unavoidable, don’t you?”
Carlotta frowned, her expression suspicious. “What did Liz
say?”
“She’l be here. My bail hearing is at four this afternoon.”
He shuffled his feet again. “Can we make bail? I have six
hundred dol ars in a tennis-ball can in the garage.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You have six hundred dol ars?”
More disapproval. He owed a lot of money to a lot of
people, but he kept a secret stash in case a big card game
materialized—something tempting enough to go back on
his word to Carlotta that he wouldn’t gamble. “My
emergency fund,” he mumbled. And now he’d have to find
a new hiding place.
Her gapped front teeth worried her lower lip, then she
sighed. “If the bail is set too high for us to pay cash, then
I’l cal a bail bondsman, assuming we can cough up ten
percent.”
“And if we can’t come up with ten percent?”
“I’ll have to put up the house.”
Wesley’s intestines cramped. For the first time, he
doubted his plan. He hadn’t counted on the trouble it
would cause his sister.
Then she gave him a shaky smile. “Don’t worry, we’l figure
it out.” She looked down and gasped. “Where did you get
those revolting shoes?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving off her concern. “If
I have to spend the night here, wil you feed Einstein?”
She winced. “For that reason alone, I’l make sure you get
out of here.”
He grinned, glad to see she was back in good humor. His
sister was a pretty woman, especially when she smiled.
She was self-conscious about the gap between her two
front teeth, but he thought it gave her character, made
her look like a dark-haired Lauren Hutton…and his mother.
He worried about Carlotta. He’d seen men’s eyes light up
when she walked into a room, but she hadn’t had a serious
relationship since their parents had left, since that bastard
Peter Ashford had dumped her. She’d never said so, but
Wesley knew that he himself was much of the reason that
his sister hadn’t settled down. Not too many guys were
keen on a kid brother as a package deal. Just one more
thing for him to feel guilty over. “Thanks for coming, sis. I’l
make it up to you, I promise.”
Her expression was part dubious, part hopeful. “I’l hold
you to that.”
Wesley went back to the holding cel with mixed feelings
pul ing at him. For the next few hours he sat with his back
in a corner trying not to attract attention from his
cel mates, many of whom were finally rousing from
hangovers and were spoiling for trouble…or romance. A
muscle-bound guy wearing a headband and leg warmers
kept looking his way and licking his lips. In desperation,
Wesley pul ed out a deck of cards he’d been allowed to
keep and announced he was giving a clinic on how to play
the ultimate game of skil and luck, Texas Hold ’Em Poker.
His audience seemed suspicious at first, then crowded
around. He sat cross-legged and dealt the four men closest
to him two cards each facedown on the gritty concrete
floor. Just the feel of the waxy cards in his hands sent a
flutter of excitement to his chest.
“Those cards are your pocket cards,” he explained. “I’m
going to deal five community cards faceup—three, then
one, then one more—and the object is to create the best
hand possible from your two cards and the five community
cards. Bets are made between rounds of revealing the
community cards.”
“We need chips,” one guy said, then started ripping the
buttons off his shirt. Everyone fol owed suit and within five
minutes, a pile of mismatched buttons lay in the middle.
Impressed with their resourcefulness, Wesley divided the
buttons among the four players and gave them tips on
betting. “If you have strong pocket cards, you’l want to
bet. If not, you’l want to fold.” Then he grinned. “Unless
you want to bluff, and then you’l want to bet.”
“What’s a strong card?” a man asked.
“Any face card, or an ace,” Wesley said. “Two of a kind is
great, two cards of the same suit can put you on your way
to a flush, and two neighboring cards, like a nine and a ten
can put you on your way to a straight.” He went around,
taking button bets on the pocket cards. “Now I’l deal
what’s called the flop cards.” He tossed a discard card to
the side, then dealt three cards faceup—a three of spades,
a five of hearts and a queen of hearts. “We got a possible
straight going with the three and the five, and a possible
heart flush with the five and the queen.”
Excitement built among the players and spectators as they
studied the cards, creating possible hands. Wesley smiled
to himself. There was something so sweet about
evangelizing the game of games…and training potential
players that he might someday face across the table and
rob of every penny they had.
He tossed the top card onto the discard pile, then dealt
another card faceup. “This is called the ‘turn’ card.”
An ace of hearts. A murmur went up among the men.
Wesley studied the players’ “tel s,” the body language and
betting techniques that told a more experienced player
what the person was holding as surely as if the cards were
transparent. The big guy on the far left was holding crap—
probably a ten and a deuce, but he wasn’t going to fold
and look bad to the other guys. The guy next to him was
grinning like a fool after the turn card, so he probably had
a pocket ace to make it two of a kind. Beginners thought
that aces beat everything else, no matter what.
The third guy also had nothing, else he wouldn’t be
gnawing on his nails and staring at the community cards as
if he could wil them to change. The fourth guy, though—
he had something because he was holding his cards close
to his chest as if they were winning lottery tickets. Wesley
guessed he had pocket queens and was looking at three of
a kind, which so far was “the nuts”—the best hand in the
game.
“Here comes the river card,” he said, and dealt a nine of
clubs—not much good to anyone, he guessed, although
the bidding was brisk. The aces guy was all in with his six
wooden buttons and a jeans rivet. Pretty soon, everyone
was all in, and Wesley asked, “Whad’ya have?”
The first guy turned over his ten of spades and four of
clubs and took some ribbing from the other guys. The
grinning aces guy turned over his ace of diamonds and
seven of spades, giving him the expected pair of aces. The
third guy cursed his mother and tossed in his jack of
diamonds and six of spades, then stomped away as if they
had been playing for real money instead of sewing
notions. The last guy turned over his pocket queens to the
cheers of the men behind him, and raked all the raggedy
buttons toward him triumphantly.
While Wesley was shuffling for another hand, the cel door
buzzed and slid open and he was being summoned again.
“Your lawyer’s here,” the guard informed him.
Wesley handed off the deck of cards, stood and allowed