Contents ( 66)
- Cover
- Books by Valerie Fraser Luesse
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Map of Florida
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- forty-nine
- fifty
- fifty-one
- Epilogue
- Keep Reading for a Preview of Valerie Luesse’s Next Book!
- Prologue
- one
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Back Ads
- Back Cover
He was thanking a deputy for letting him stay when a voice called his name. And there behind a cell door stood Will.
“What are you doin’ here?” the race car driver asked him.
“It’s kinda complicated, but the short answer is, the chief let me spend the night here so I wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel.”
“Same here,” Will said with a grin.
Peyton frowned at him. “My cell door stayed open all night. You don’t appear to have the key to yours. What happened?”
“Got into a little scrape with one o’ the other drivers.”
“Will they let you out today?”
“Doubt it. I don’t know nobody with that much bail money.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty bucks.”
Peyton whistled. “That’s a lot!”
“Not my first offense,” Will said with a shrug. “I get a little ’shine in me after a race, and next thing you know, the fists are a-flyin’. But I done it to myself, so I ain’t got nobody to blame but me.” He sat down on his cot and put his head in his hands.
Peyton propped his bike against a wall and walked over to the cell door. “Wait a minute, Will—what about all that money you won at the race?”
“Lost it at the casino—all but thirty or forty dollars.”
“Oh. Then take back the money you paid me and use it to pay your bail.”
“I can’t do that, Peyton. Bad enough I blow my own money. You done me a real good turn, and I ain’t gonna repay you by blowin’ yours.”
“Give that one money and he’d prob’ly find a way to gamble it away right here in the jail—wouldn’t even make it down the hall to the bail office,” said a deputy walking by.
“That true, Will?” Peyton asked.
His friend looked up at him from the cot. Gone was the boyish excitement from the race. Will looked empty and defeated. “Prob’ly,” he said.
Peyton thought it over. “Then I won’t give it to you. I’ll give it to the deputy.”
He took the money out of his shoe, and the deputy pointed him to an office down the hall, where he found a desk manned by a skinny little woman typing ninety miles an hour. Her hair, which was pinned into a bun, was an odd shade of fiery red—had to be dyed. She wore round, black-rimmed glasses and a sour expression.
“What?” she said without looking up from her typing.
“Uh, I’m here to pay bail for Will Fournier, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“So he can get outta jail.”
Now Peyton had her attention. She stopped typing and looked up. “I know that, dimwit. Why do you want to get him outta jail? He your daddy?”
Peyton swallowed his anger. It wouldn’t do Will any good, and it might land Peyton himself behind one of those locked cell doors. “No,” he said.
“No, what?”
He knew what she wanted. She was demanding a “ma’am,” but she didn’t deserve one.