Love or Money by Elizabeth Roderick Read Free Book Online Page A

you,” he said.
    Her brow furrowed. “I don’t have a phone yet.”
    He smacked himself on his forehead. “Oh yeah, I forgot.” He fished in his coat pocket, pulled out what looked like a brand new Motorola cell phone, and handed it to her. “All yours. I meant to give it to you this morning. I’m in the contacts, so yeah. Text me when you get out.”
    She looked down at the phone and turned it over in her hands, wondering what the catch was. “Thanks, Isaias.”
    He grinned. “No problem.”
    He pulled away and she stood there in the misty drizzle, gathering courage to go in. It still felt strange, to be out here alone on the sidewalk, outside of prison walls and free to go wherever she wanted.
    Although she wasn’t really free. How could she think that things would have changed when she got out? Isaias kept her on a tight rein like always, and it would be easier for him than it ever had been before. Now she was an ex-con, subject to strict probation requirements, and scorned by polite society. Ashley was right; no one would give her a job with a prison record. They probably wouldn’t let her into college, either.
    Why didn’t I just leave with Evan yesterday? I could have sent word back to Lizette somehow, gotten her out of there. Maybe Evan would keep his promise and come back tonight. Would he want to risk fighting Isaias over her? Or had he just wanted someone to fuck on those long cross-border runs, and now he’d find someone else with less baggage?
    A man with hunched shoulders and a scraggly beard came out of the building. He flipped up the dirty hood of his raincoat, staring blatantly at her as he strutted down the sidewalk. Riel watched the torn hems of his jeans catch under his heels as he sloshed through the puddles. I’m a loser now, an ex-con, just like that guy probably is .
    She sighed and forced the thought away. I’m going to figure some way out of this. She squared her shoulders and headed up the steps to the front entrance.
    Her first appointment wasn’t so bad. They made her do an observed urine screen; she had to piss in a cup while a block-shaped woman stood over her, looking like a pillow shoved in a tight rayon case. But Riel had endured worse in prison.
    Her probation officer was a harried looking white guy named Carl Macias. His brown hair kept falling out of his comb-over. He pushed a lock of it off of his pasty, wrinkled forehead as he read through her paperwork.
    “Hundred grams, huh?” he said, then grinned humorlessly. “Pretty good for a first offense.”
    Riel wrinkled her nose. He didn’t know the half of it. “Yeah,” she muttered, staring at her lap. She heard Carl flipping through the papers.
    “But you say here you’ve never done drugs.”
    “No.” It wasn’t exactly the truth—she’d smoked pot a couple of times with Evan and even tried coke once, but she hadn’t liked any of it, and it would just complicate things if she mentioned it.
    “Eighteen years old, delivering coke, and you didn’t even have any sort of habit to feed,” he said. “Why did you do it?”
    “For…for the money.”
    Carl’s eyes dropped back to the paperwork. “Your parents are dead?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How did that happen?”
    Riel winced. “Crossing the desert. They were deported and were trying to get back to me and my sister, but they ran out of water or something I guess.” She swallowed hard.
    “You’re a citizen, though. Born in Seattle.”
    “Yeah.”
    “How old were you when they died?”
    “Ten.”
    Carl gazed at her for a moment, but she couldn’t read his look. “I’m not going to order you to go to drug treatment right now,” he said. “You’ll have random testing, and as long as you come up clean and keep a job, you keep me happy, okay?”
    She tried to smile. “Thanks.”
     
    ***
     
    She texted Isaias as she left the office, and about five minutes later he pulled up to the curb. She jumped back to keep from being splashed with muddy water from the