Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
My mouth fell open.
“Is his dick…okay?”
She shook her head. “Shot him with a forty-five hollow point. His favorite gun ever. Not only doesn’t he have a dick anymore, but they also had no way to reattach it—so I hear.”
My eyes were wide.
“That’s kind of prolific…karma is a bitch and all.”
Her grin was more pronounced this time.
“I like you.”
“I l-like you, too,” I managed to say.
After all, one needed a friend in the slammer, right?
However, before I could so much as tell this woman who I was, my name was called, and I was being led to a room that was known as the ‘holding room’ for the delinquents like me who had to meet with the judge.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing where I never thought I’d be.
***
“You have a parking ticket from last year for the amount of one hundred dollars,” the judge said, tilting up his glasses so he could read the papers in his hand. “You have one from four weeks ago, for another hundred dollars.”
And so it went as he continued to read my list of transgressions.
“Is there a reason you think you don’t have to pay when everyone else in the city does?”
I bit my lip, wondering if that was a rhetorical question, or if it was one that he actually expected an answer to. There wasn’t a reason good enough in his eyes.
That much, I knew.
The judge looked mean, unapproachable and unforgiving.
“I don’t have the money,” I told him honestly. “I have enough to pay my rent and gas in my car. Rent is sometimes paid on time, but the majority of the time it is not.” I paused. “And as for the other tickets? Well, those I didn’t know about.”
I pointed to the ones in his left hand.
The one in his right hand I did know about.
“These you did know about?”
I nodded.
“Did you get it registered in your name?”
“The tickets?” I questioned in confusion.
He lifted his eyes to me and glared. “No, the car. It’s possible that some of these are from the previous owner.”
My eyes went wide.
Did Krisney have unpaid parking tickets?
“No,” I said. “The car isn’t mine. I’m only borrowing it until I can afford to buy a car again.”
“What happened to your last car?”
I bit my lip.
“The last time I had a car note, I defaulted and they took it back.” I shrugged like I wasn’t still affected by it.
Which was a total and complete lie. I was affected by it. Immensely.
Baylor had just been doing his job, but I knew he’d seen the need in my eyes. Yet, he’d ignored it.
Which still stung if I was being truthful.
Baylor was a good guy. I loved him—even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself, let alone him. But still, in the back of my mind, I wondered if he hadn’t seen me fighting with Harold, would he even be paying attention to me at this point? He’d looked straight through me when he’d been taking my car. People that were nice didn’t do that, did they?
Because I was shit at picking men, obviously.
Which led me to another problem.
My fingerprints.
They were now in the system in Hostel, Texas.
It’d take Sal less than a day to make arrangements to come get me.
He lived in Dallas. He was a police officer who knew what to do when it came to missing persons.
Seriously, I gave him eighteen hours, tops, before he was here looking for me.
And I’d hopefully be gone before that happened.
“So, these five, totaling five hundred and twenty-two dollars,” he paused, looking at me. “Can you pay for them today?”
I shook my head.
“I have three hundred on me,” I told him honestly.
Three hundred dollars was my entire paycheck from the Taco Shop. That’d take me another week of working to get that again, and that included what little tips I got, plus overtime.
I made even less than that at the grocery store, but since it was my second job, it was to be expected.
That three hundred dollars was going to go to gas and food this week, but I guess that I could raid the grocery store’s ‘old food’ bin. Normally employees only looked through it, taking out a few things of the entire bin that was set to be emptied once a week.
I’d looked in there myself a time or two, and though there were a few things in there that could be useful, most wasn’t.
A smashed tomato, a rotten potato. Milk that expired three days before. A box of Fruit Loops that exploded when it was shipped. Old meat that had expired.
But I could make do for two weeks.
I could do it.
“Will that leave you without any money?”
I shrugged.
“Not really.”
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, but there was no way I was telling this man that.
But then another thought occurred to me.