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"I hope you grabbed some video on your phone to keep you amused because your behind isn't leaving this house for two weeks." I waited for him to whine and wheedle, but he showed a bit of my maturity by simply nodding.

"Yeah. Okay, Jem."

"Go on." I gestured toward the back of our trailer. "Get cleaned up and get ready for school. You need to eat before you grab the bus. Don't forget to make your lunch. Pack your inhaler, too."

"I didn't smoke last night. I swear, Jem." He drew a little "X" over his heart. "I'm not stupid enough to put myself back in the hospital."

The last time he had lit up with a couple of friends over the summer, he had ended up in the hospital for three days after an asthma attack from hell. I was still paying off that nightmare and probably would be making payments to the hospital until late next year.

"You light up anything again, and I swear I'm going to pull a Mrs. Rodriguez and go after your behind with a sandal."

The mention of our neighborhood's matriarch and her penchant for whacking bottoms with that thick-soled
chancla
of hers made Benji smile. "I'd like to see you try and catch me."

"I might not be able to catch you, but I bet Mrs. Rodriguez's boys can. Then I'll let her apply that sandal to your backside."

"Fair enough." He said with a laugh and started across the living room. He paused at the small loveseat that was piled high with neatly tied stacks of cleaned, pressed and folded clothing. "Jem! Did you get up early to do these? Because they weren't here when I snuck out last night."

"They had to be done." I didn't mention that we needed the extra cash I earned by doing laundry for the single oilfield workers who lived in our trailer park. His magnet school was free, but all of the activities and trips and school projects he worked on were expensive. Now that our health insurance rates had gone up, our budget was even tighter than normal. Plus Christmas was right around the corner.

"At four in the morning, Jem?" He glanced back at the stacks of clothing. "I'll deliver them when I get home. Friday is early release, and there's no robotics lab today."

"Thank you." It was one less errand I had to tackle when I got home.

"I don't like the way those guys look at you anyway. I'll start doing the drop-offs from now on," he decided.

I didn't argue with him. Frankly, I was relieved. Getting invitations for private turn-down service from skeevy businessmen was bad enough, but having guys who lived down the street trying to pat my ass and making dirty remarks about their underwear was just too much. "They're all labeled. Everyone has paid up except for Jerry down on Twilight Ave. He has a balance on his receipt, but he's good for it."

"I'll take care of it. Do you want me to make dinner?"

"Sure." I glanced at my watch again and grabbed my sack lunch. "I'm going to try to pick up an extra shift at the hotel."

"Don't be too late," he warned. "We're going to see Mom tomorrow, remember?"

"I remember," I assured him. Visiting our mother up at the Henley State Jail wasn't something I was likely to forget. We tried to get up there to see her once a month, but with Benji's birthday, I had decided to take him twice this month. "Make sure you have a nice outfit. Something the duty warden will approve."

"I will," he promised. "I'll roll some change tonight."

Visitors were allowed to bring rolls of quarters to weekend visitation. Mom and Benji could burn through twenty-five dollars at those vending machines faster than any two people I had ever seen. When we had a little extra, we took it with us and gave it to other families waiting to visit their loved ones. It was hard enough for Benji to see Mom locked up in the pen. I couldn't imagine what it was like for the really little kids who had to be searched and swiped with metal detector wands before visiting their mamas. Sometimes a cold soda and a candy bar meant more than just a sugar rush.

Lunch and apron in hand, I swiped my purse from the cheap bookcase near the front door. "Be good today, Benji."

"I will."

"Try to stay awake in class."

"I will."

"Come straight home after class."

"I will, Jem." Exasperation filled his voice. "Will you just go to work already?"

To really rile him up, I leaned over and pecked his cheek. He reacted with the expected disgust. "Man, Jem! That's gross."

Laughing, I left the house and carefully descended the rickety front steps. The sun was just starting to rise and turn the horizon a soft pink. Across the street, I spotted Shay Sandoval pulling into her driveway. Like me, she worked ridiculous hours and too many jobs. Unlike me, she had managed to stay in college. Right now, she was part of a cleaning crew that tackled businesses after-hours and also waitressed third shift at a diner near some of the oil refineries. How she had the energy to do it all perplexed me.

The roar of a motorcycle drew my attention. I recognized the rider as Spider, the man who owned the trailer park. He was also the VP for the Calaveras outlaw motorcycle club and not a man I ever wanted to cross. Of course, he had only ever been kind to me.

So, when he pulled up in front of our house and motioned for me to come talk to him, I didn't dally. "Morning, Spider."

"Good morning, Jem. How's Benji?"

"He's good."

"He's staying out of trouble?"

"Mostly."

Spider laughed. "He's a teenager. That's probably the best you can hope for."

"I think you're probably right."

He toyed with his helmet strap. "Listen, I don't want to keep you. I know you've got to get to work."

"I do."

"I heard that Jackie is back in town."

I blinked at that piece of news. Benji's father and my stepfather had skipped town not long after our mother had gone to prison.

"He's in trouble, Jem."

"What kind of trouble?"

"He robbed a house where they were cooking some meth. I guess he stole a bunch of product. Needless to say, he's on a lot of shit lists today."

"Great."

"You two need to be careful, okay? I doubt anyone is stupid enough to try to make a move on my property, but you never know with these crack heads and tweakers."

"We'll be careful." I smiled at him. "Thank you for the heads-up."

"If you need anything…"

"I know where to find you." I stepped back and watched him ride away from the house before sliding behind the wheel of my vehicle. I hastily typed out a text to Benji, telling him the details about his bio-dad and urging him to be careful.

B: We'll be fine. Jackie isn't going to come anywhere near us.

It wasn't Jackie that had me worried.

Seated behind the wheel of my rundown minivan, I prayed the damn thing would start and not act crazy every time I accelerated or the gears shifted. I needed to get it into the shop but that meant I had to have the money to pay for a mechanic and parts.
Please start. Just get me to work. Please.

The old beast started up without a fuss, and I relaxed in the lumpy seat. I had bought the minivan on one of those fly-by-night car lots. It was closing in on two hundred thousand miles, and I didn't know how many more it could handle.

Because the air conditioner was shot in the car, I rolled down the windows as I pulled out of the driveway. Fall hadn’t brought much of a reprieve from the heat, and this warm, muggy October morning was no different. I peeked at the lightening skyline as I drove away from the park and worried my lower lip. The higher the sun climbed, the more storm clouds I could see. I reached over and switched on the radio. It took a few twists of the knob to find a station giving a weather report.

"…hot and muggy today. Tropical Storm Leo made that slight left turn we had been expecting and the forecast track has shifted. We're showing a direct hit from this storm and expect landfall late Sunday afternoon. This storm has the potential to produce high, damaging winds and flash flooding…"

I grimaced and turned the radio to my favorite channel. I needed the upbeat pop music to get me through the construction traffic on I-45. As I crawled along the interstate, I ran through my mental checklist for the coming storm. We had been spared hurricanes and big storms the last few years, but it seemed that luck was about to change.

I shuddered at the memories of Tropical Storm Allison. We had lived in a different mobile home then, a really nice double wide in a different area of Houston, but Allison's storm waters had flooded and uprooted it. Mom and Jackie had been high out of their minds at a friend's house when the storm hit. Benji and I had nearly drowned.

That had been the first time DFPS was all up in our business. Not long after our parents got us out of foster care, we had done a series of midnight moves and ended up in progressively worse rent houses and apartments. Mom and Jackie had gotten dragged into the local meth trade—and—well…

But I really didn't want to think about any of
that
right now.

Already tired and so hungry, I pulled into my usual parking spot in the employee lot and headed into the hotel. After clocking in, dropping off my purse and lunch in my locker and tying my apron at the small of my back, I made my way into the employee dining room for our free continental breakfast and morning meeting. I grabbed some bacon, cold cereal, milk and a banana and went to the back table where my friends congregated.

Raucous laughter and hastily spoken Spanish fired back and forth across the table. I was welcomed with smiles and a gentle, fatherly pat on the back from Miguel, a maintenance supervisor. I tucked into my breakfast and listened to the chit-chat. Even though neither of my parents were Latino, I spoke Spanish like a natural and was soon talking to Lupe about her son who went to the same magnet school as Benji.

"
Oye
, Jem, did they tell you about the goth strippers last night?" Diego, one of the security guys who was close to my age, dropped down in the empty seat next to me and poked a straw through the foil lid on his small carton of orange juice.

"No." I finished off the last of my cereal and started peeling my banana. "What happened?"

Diego kicked back in his chair. "So I'm doing my rounds last night. It's late. You know, like, two in the morning. I'm doing my usual hooker check, right? Bouncing those girls who snuck by the front desk," he said and sipped his juice. "I'm up on sixteen dealing with a noise complaint when I get a call on my radio from Jake that there are some vampire hookers going crazy in the pool."

"Vampire hookers?" It sounded like the name of a bad straight-to-DVD movie.

"Crazy, huh?" He laughed. "So I have to see this shit with my own two eyes, right? I get down there—and no joke. These ladies are in their
chonies
in the pool. I mean—red thongs and black bras and tattoos."

As many years as I had worked at the hotel, I didn't have a hard time imagining that scene. "Were they drunk?"

"You kidding me? They were sweating tequila. They had broken into the pool bar and were raiding the cabinets for liquor. It was straight-up
Girls Gone Wild
down there!"

"So what did you do?"

"I helped Jake get them back into their clothes and into cabs. One of them went all Dracula on me and bit me!"

"What? No way!"

"Look." He pulled down his collar and showed me the nasty bite.

"Did you get that treated?"

He nodded. "I went to the ER and they gave me some antibiotics and sent me back to work. I'm on a double, and I need the hours so I didn't argue."

I understood that only too well. "Where did those women come from?"

"Hell if I know," he said with a shrug. "They probably came in the VIP entrance with one of the biggies upstairs. I'm letting the day shift sort that mess out."

Before I could ask more questions, Richard, the hotel manager, came into the canteen area to make some quick announcements. I didn’t miss the sight of Amanda, one of the newer maids who had joined us from a rival upscale downtown hotel, following a few steps behind him. Diego elbowed me and lifted his chin their direction as if to confirm the rumors about the pair.

Richard rudely quieted us in that grating way he had and then explained the hotel's plans for the storm and the changes to some of the upcoming weekend functions. When he was done, we scattered from the employee lounge and got to work.

I joined my fellow maids in our supply room-slash-headquarters and waited for my floor assignments. Juanita, our supervisor, gave out our rooms while she stood in front of the whiteboard and jotted down the number of guests in the hotel this morning and the number of checkouts. We weren't at full capacity but we were dang close. More than half of the rooms were checkouts that needed to be flipped and ready for new guests by three.

It was going to be a long effing day.

"Jemima?"

"Yes, ma'am?" I adjusted my lanyard and carefully crossed the bustling room. With their assignments in hand, my fellow maids were hurrying to get up to their floors and get started on their rooms.