Chapter 14

Alex woke up suddenly. Violently. His heart jackhammered so hard in his chest that it felt as if it would catapult into his throat. He’d dreamed that the former sheriff knew he’d found him.

Looking at his alarm clock, Alex saw it was already 8:15 a.m. The day had begun without him, but it could wait. He had to work out what to do about his subconscious freaking out.

His problem was that even though he knew Sheriff Calhoun had been indirectly involved in dosing his friends with a bad batch of the designer drug, Alex wouldn’t turn him in. That was, unless the former sheriff threatened him or someone he cared about.

Alex was fully aware that he sounded unbalanced because the former sheriff had been a part of something that had caused him great bodily harm when the Russians kidnapped him. Just as important, both his girlfriend and his partner in crime, Lauren and Maddie, had been hospitalized when they were slipped one of the many test runs of Moondust.

That alone should have been enough for Alex to decide to help the police.

But the former sheriff had been a peripheral actor; he hadn’t been the one calling the shots. Did he help facilitate? Hell, yes. Why it mattered was because Alex grew up around criminals. None of them were good actors in the community; they did bad stuff for a living. So he drew his response to the sheriff based on how his old crew would have looked at it. Live and let live, so long as you didn’t cross a line.

He also knew that if his former crew began to see a problem with someone, they would have a sit-down to make everything clear. If someone wanted to rob little old ladies or deal drugs to kids, they didn’t do it in South Philly.

Alex had a responsibility to confront the former sheriff. Honestly, that scared the shit out of him. Alex didn’t have a crew to back him up. He would be going into the lion’s den, so to speak, with only his wits and bluster to back him up.

The reason he had to do it was Conclave had become his home turf. If Alex allowed Mr. Calhoun to operate in his town without a challenge, then Alex might as well leave. If he didn’t have the cojones to face down a small-town sheriff, his father would disown him.

Alex, being Alex, needed to create a plan to give him the best chance for success. He would work on such a plan as soon as he cleared a few items off his to-do list.

Lyric bit the bullet and begged Grace for her job back. Grace informed her there would be conditions.

“This is a place of business, and I expect you to remember that. I don’t want to hear any more of your cutting comments or have you take any task lightly, even if you deem it to be beneath you. If you can agree to that, I’ll let you come back.”

A couple of choice comments almost spilled out of her lips, but Lyric had read the brochure for church camp. There would be choir singing. In third grade, she’d been told that when she tried to sing, it sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment. You had to love Oklahoma.

When she read that one of the ‘fun’ activities was going door-to-door and sharing the word of God, that was the final straw that brought her to her knees.

When she told Alex, he said Janice was bluffing. Lyric agreed that she most likely was but didn’t want to chance it.

That was why she said, “Yes, ma’am,” and looked contrite.

That was something else Alex had helped her with before she met with Grace. She must have nailed it because Grace nodded her approval of the new and improved hacker. Lyric just prayed she would survive another week because it would then be too late to go camping.

Grace and Alex traveled to the Hogsbane World Casino. Alex had some questions he needed answered so he could finish his plans for how to rob them. His hope was that his plans would give them a place to start uncovering how the casino was losing money. He had two plans, one for the table games and the other for the slot machines.

“Is Orin meeting us?” Alex asked.

“Orin doesn’t know we’re coming. We’re actually meeting Nancy.”

“Why the big boss?”

“I want to talk to her about my suspicions that the thefts are internal.”

“Where does that leave me? Should I continue to make my plans or not?” Alex asked.

“I shared some of your ideas with Nancy, and she’s intrigued, so much so that she contacted the Oklahoma Gaming Commission. They’ll be there to help flesh out your ideas. Their goal is to make gaming safer all over the state. If you can beat the bank, so to speak, they want to put in controls to stop someone like you,” Grace said.

“They’re scared a kid can steal from them?”

“Well,” she drawled. “I didn’t tell them you were only fifteen.”

“What’s our cover so they don’t dismiss me out of hand?” Alex asked.

“Nancy and I thought it would best if you were the little brainiac who does the legwork for the person who creates the plan to rob the casino.”

Alex really didn’t have a problem with that because his dad had used his youth in scouting jobs. No one suspected a ‘kid’ to be casing the joint.

“No problem. I’m not really looking to be the center of attention.”

In all honesty, he would never have agreed to this kind of job a year ago. Working with a former FBI agent who was working hand-in-hand with law enforcement would’ve had him running. But he was smart enough to know that, in many ways, this was the only game in town for him. Grace was no longer trying to put people in jail, and they were doing stuff that helped people. His dad tried to do good for his community to balance out the karma of planning heists.

Alex always reasoned that doing jobs was preferable to selling drugs, running prostitutes, or whacking people. Those had all been in his dad’s crew’s wheelhouse before they’d switched to heists.

By working with Grace, he was still able to work on the giant puzzle that was doing a job. Alex loved planning, though it wasn’t nearly as exciting when he knew his plans would never be used. But his dad always said that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing well. And creating a sloppy plan was something that would turn Alex’s stomach.

“I hear you had a bit of drama with Lyric,” Alex said to change the topic.

Grace glanced over and then back at the road before she said, “I fired her and rehired her.”

“I give it a week,” Alex predicted.