Page 80 of Worth of Waste

Perhaps that was why, after dropping her son off at daycare for the day, she had called into work sick, lying that some awful stomach bug had crept up on her overnight. Then, she waffled again. Two hours of going back and forth, of walking down the same Chicago city block, drinking a cold coffee and staring at nothing but the bricks beneath her shoes.

She knew better.

She did.

Knowing better didn’t stop her from hailing a cab on her third trip of the block, and telling the driver where to take her—the jail.

She only knew which jail was housing Dino because she had made a few calls, looking for the specific detective that had come looking for her. She never left her name or a reason for why she was calling, but she figured if that was the station the man was working out of, that would probably be the same jail Dino was being housed in.

A quick call to the jail at the station confirmed there was a prisoner being housed with the name Dino DeLuca.

She figured she could excuse the visit if asked by detectives. She could lie and say she wanted to know why she was being questioned when she hadn’t been an employee of Dino’s for well over two years. It was a good excuse, she thought.

Karen knew it was stupid.

That still didn’t stop her.

She only really realized the gravity of her choice as she stood on the precinct’s steps, staring at the large gold lettering above the front entrance. The wide wall-to-wall windows and revolving doors each held the precinct’s emblem in the middle, reminding her once again where she was and why she had come there.

While the voice inside told her to turn around and leave while she still could, Karen took a step forward. Then another, and another. She was more focused on making her feet move forward and convincing her inner voice to shut the hell up, rather than staring at what was in front of her.

It was only when a slightly amused, but familiar voice echoed in front of her that Karen finally stopped and looked up.

“Seems it would have been your fault for running into me this time,” Theo DeLuca said.

Karen froze on the spot.

To the police, she could have lied.

To Theo?

Probably not so much.

“I—”

Theo’s slow smile stopped her from saying something—a lie, probably, as she was getting too good at telling those—but also somehow managed to come off as sympathetic.

“What are you doing here?” Theo asked.

Karen swallowed the sudden lump forming in her throat. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re making a stupid mistake.”

Ouch.

“You don’t know anything, Theo.”

He nodded, silently agreeing. “You’re right—I don’t know very much about my brother at all.”

As he said that, he gave her a quick once over, as if to say without actually saying anything at all that he would put her straight into the category of things he didn’t know anything about. Karen knew he would be right to do so, too.

“But I do know,” Theo continued, “that Dino has made a very careful effort to keep certain things in his life private, and let me say he has done a fucking great job of it.”

Her, he meant.

Karen understood his underlying, unspoken words.

“So?” Karen asked.