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I think I’m going to vomit. I feel so sick. Beneath my desk, I clutch my sweaty palms into fists.
His eyes narrow with wickedness. “This is quite an impressive practice you’ve built here. Especially for someone likeyou.”
“Someone like me?” My jaw ticks.
The man strokes his cat, his cold eyes piercing into mine. “Someone like you,” he repeats with vitriol. “Someone who literally had to crawl out of the gutter you were born into to get here, to build all this. That takes strength of character.” His nostrils twitch as he reaches for the handle to close my office door. To trap me in here with him. “But life is so funny. It’s a pity that it could all be taken away from you in an instant, everything you worked so hard for. Y’know?”
I shiver when he says that. Because those words hit so close to home.
* * *
This isnotstandard police protocol.
After slapping handcuffs on me at the garage station, Tonya chucked me in the back of her squad car and drove me to the police station. My stomach roiled the whole time at the prospect of having to face Davis. At the prospect of bringing all my family drama to his job.
This will humiliate him. What will his coworkers think? He’s relatively new on the force. Will this affect his chances of advancement?
To my relief, Tonya hustled me in through the police station’s back door instead of ushering me in through the front door. But in my gut, I knew something was wrong.
Something shady is going on here.
She quickly got me photographed and fingerprinted and then shoved me into a dingy room downstairs all alone. I haven’t seen another soul since we came in here. Is this a storage room? I look around at the shelves, ladders, boxes. There’s a vacuum cleaner in the corner and an industrial fan. Broken desks and chairs.
I’ve never been arrested before so I’m not exactly sure how it works. But shouldn’t I be in a holding cell? Shouldn’t I get to make a phone call?
I’ve listened to Davis talk about his job. This is not how things work. Seated in a wobbly wooden chair in front of a dusty desk, I search through the archives of my anxious mind, trying to recall conversations he and I have had about arrest protocol. I come up with a blank.
All I keep thinking is, “I need my husband. Or a lawyer. Or somebody.”
It only takes a few moments for the door to swing open. Tonya hustles back inside.
She’s followed by the mayor.
Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
This is definitely not standard police protocol.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Mayor Thompson lowers into a seat across the desk from me. Tonya hands him a file and he opens it with a depraved smile. I watch as he slowly combs through the documents inside.
“That was very impulsive of you, Alana, throwing yourself on the sword for your little sister,” he muses without looking at me. The vile stench of his breath wafting across the table feels like a physical attack. “It would be noble if it weren’t so fucking stupid.”
What the fuck? He knows? He knows that it was Stacey shoplifting, not me? Then what the hell am I doing here?
His eyes finally rise to mine. “The funny thing is, pretty soon, you’re going to come to your senses. You’re going to try and tell the truth to clear your name. But it’s already too late to fix it.” He snorts.
“What am I doing here?!” I demand, my eyes zeroed in on his stupid head.
He ignores my question. “You and your sister look so much alike. I can’t even tell you apart.” He holds up grainy images from the store’s security cameras, showing my sister shoving items into her backpack. In his other hand, he holds up my mug shot. He’s right. No one will be able to tell that it’s Stacey in those photos from the store.
Even still, I can’t throw her under the bus. She’s 17. She has a baby. I can’t let them separate Louis from his mom. The way my siblings and I were separated from ours.
What the hell am I supposed to do? I have no fucking idea.
“Such a colorful past your mother has. It would be pretty easy—and so fun—to convince the town that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
The mayor reads through one document. Then he passes it to me. It’s a report from one of the rehab facilities Mom went to. Then he passes me another. This one is from a social worker. Then another. Then another. Then another. My gut fills with shame as I read through my ugly history.
