He swallowed. He hadn’t seen her this worked up since he’d broken the news that he wasn’t going to apply for college. “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 hillbilly programmers in the police department. No way they’d be able to tell 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 swelled 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?”
“Well, for one reason, she’ll 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 will 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’ll be here. My bail hearing is at four this afternoon.” He shuffled his feet again. “Can we make bail? I have six hundred dollars in a tennis-ball can in the garage.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You have six hundred dollars?”
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’ll call 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’ll 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, will you feed Einstein?”
She winced. “For that reason alone, I’ll 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’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Her expression was part dubious, part hopeful. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Wesley went back to the holding cell with mixed feelings pulling at him. For the next few hours he sat with his back in a corner trying not to attract attention from his cellmates, 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 pulled 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 skill 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 followed 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’ll want to bet. If not, you’ll want to fold.” Then he grinned. “Unless you want to bluff, and then you’ll 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’ll 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
