did—had to get the lipstick off.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Speaking of which, you could use a touch-up.”
She glared and snatched the hankie, then used a mirror to wipe her smeared lips and handed it back to him.
He looked at the now-pink hankie. “You can keep it.”
She shoved it into her purse and looked to the front of the courtroom.
“And the state is satisfied with the plea agreement?” the judge was asking the D.A.
Kelvin Lucas dragged himself to his feet, then gave Wesley a long, slow look, before turning back to the judge. “The state is satisfied, Your Honor.”
“Very well. The defendant is hereby sentenced to five thousand dollars in reparations, one hundred hours of community service, which will include collaboration with the city on computer security, and one year of probation.” He banged a gavel. “Next case.”
The sigh of relief she’d been saving remained pent-up in Carlotta’s chest at the realization that yet more debt had just been heaped onto their already considerable pile. Add to that her credit card balances and the miscellaneous bills that were late, and the fact that tomorrow a big, hairy guy was coming by to collect a thousand dollars they didn’t have, and she could barely push herself to her feet and toward the door. She just wanted things to be…good. She’d given up on easy years ago, but good would be nice.
To her chagrin, Detective Terry was on her heels. “Ms. Wren, I need to talk to you.”
She turned and sighed. “What do you want, Detective—to tell me more about your manly conquests?”
A whisper of a smile crossed his mouth before his eyes turned serious. “Er, no. When was the last time you heard from your parents?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember—oh, we received a postcard maybe two years ago.”
“From where?”
“Texas, maybe. I don’t recall.”
“Where is the postcard?”
“I threw it away.”
His eyebrows went up. “One of the few pieces of communication that you’ve had from your fugitive parents, and you threw it away? That’s destroying evidence.”
Anger surged in her blood. “So arrest me, Detective.”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “Ms. Wren, I think you and your brother both are keeping secrets. I think you might know where your parents are.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“I can have your cell-phone records seized. And your mail.”
For a second, she wondered if that might buy her time to pay her bills, but then she fisted her hands at her sides. “You’d be wasting your time. Besides, I figured you were too busy giving McGruff the Crime Dog speeches to salesclerks to be digging around in an old case that not even the D.A. cares about anymore.”
“Wrong, Ms. Wren.”
She turned to see Kelvin Lucas standing there, slump-shouldered, his hands in his pants pockets. “I do care. Funny thing, your brother’s arrest got me all interested in your fugitive daddy all over again. I’ve reassigned the case to Detective Terry here because he always gets his man, don’t you, Detective?”
A muscle worked in the detective’s jaw. “Yes, sir.”
Lucas smiled, but his eyes remained hard and cold. “So just in case this trouble that your delinquent brother’s gotten himself into happens to smoke out your runaway parents, Detective Terry will be watching. And if I hear that your brother does anything to violate his probation, I’ll nail his scrawny ass to the wall.”
The D.A. walked away, his hard-sole shoes clicking against the floor. Carlotta scowled at the detective and he scowled back. “I know my rights,” she said with more confidence than she felt, pulling herself up to her full height, which, even in heels, brought her only up to the man’s chin. “Stay away from me and my brother or I’ll…I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” he asked dryly.
“I’ll sic your ex-lover Liz on you.” She smirked—ten points for her.
But he barked out a laugh. “Lady, you’re way more scary than Liz, and that’s saying a lot.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like the idea of you watching me.”
“You’ll get used to it.” He gave her a little salute and walked away.
7
Wesley swung his legs over the edge of his bed, put on his glasses and stared in the predawn light at the empty wall unit where a dozen monitors, hard drives, routers, keyboards, joysticks and printers had once sat, all interconnected. Damn, the police had cleaned him out. They’d even taken his software cabinet, games and landline phones.
He smiled to himself. It was a good thing that he kept all his good equipment at his buddy Chance’s apartment.
He stood and stretched the kinks out of his neck, a bothersome side effect of spending so many hours bent over a keyboard.
Whew. Thank goodness the business with the police had been settled yesterday in court. Liz Fischer was a godsend…and a hottie. Too bad a woman like her would never take him seriously—movies like The Graduate and PS gave guys like him false hope.
Walking to the bathroom connected to his room, he rubbed his sore mouth, working his jaw. He wished he knew who had sent the guy who’d jumped him in the courthouse bathroom, but the thug seemed to prefer to talk with his hands. In truth, the guy could have been working for either one of the people that he owed—Father Thom being his biggest creditor. Then again, the guy robbing him could have been a coincidence.
But he doubted it.
The worst part was that he’d been carrying the fifteen hundred that Chance had paid him for deleting the speeding tickets—money he’d planned to take to Father Thom this morning. Instead, he’d have to scrounge together a few hundred from his various hiding places and beg for more time.
He thought about showering, but decided that fresh deodorant and mouthwash would suffice. If he got the ass-kicking he expected from Father Thom’s thugs, a soak in a hot tub of water was probably in his near future anyway.
He rooted around the floor for a cleanish pair of jeans and pulled a T-shirt from the laundry basket of clothes he hadn’t gotten around to folding. He dressed and shoved his feet into his old Merrell slip-ons, mourning his brown suede Pumas, and kicked Hubert’s decaying shoes near his trash can.
In the fifty-gallon glass aquarium on the other side of the room, a mouse scurried around, terrified. A pang of remorse hit him and he walked over, unlocked the pin and slid the screen top aside. With a practiced hand, he captured the mouse and held it up by its tail.
“Relax, buddy, you got a reprieve. Einstein must be fasting again.” He stared down at the black-and-gray
