The Fate of a Marlowe Girl by Beth Fred

Author:Beth Fred [Fred, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2012-09-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Not even two hours later, I stood with Luke in a small Mexican courthouse. To me it looked like something between a town hall, church, and a court, but Luke seemed to be at home here.

My sister stood beside me, shackled and chained with bloodshot eyes. Her face puffed out from swelling. She looked like she'd been crying for hours. Tears still rolled down her cheeks, and I felt horrible for her. But I didn't want to, because it was so not fair that she demanded we come here, went crazy as usual, left me to clean up the mess, and now she still got to be the victim.

Luke, the judge, and some man I could only assume was an attorney all went back and forth in Spanish for a while. Of course, I couldn't catch any of it.

A cop came and took Kammy away. She burst into tears and threw an accusing glare at me like, “How could you let them take me again?”

I threw my head back and sighed. I was her big sister. I was supposed to protect her, and I didn't want them to take her again. But I had no idea what was going on and no way to pay for all the damage she caused.

Luke nudged me to follow him out a different door, and I did. We approached a man sitting at a desk in a front room with a concrete floor. Luke took out his wallet and threw some currency at the man. “What was that for?” I asked once we were back in the car.

“Cell rent.”

“Cell rent?”

He chuckled. “Here, you pay for your jail cell.”

“That's horrible. You can't make money because you're locked up. How are you supposed to pay?” What I really wondered was what they did to you if you didn’t pay.

Luke shrugged. “It's not that bad. In the U.S. you have lots of petty crime, because if you're cold in New York in the winter or hot in Texas in the summer, it's better to be well fed with color TV in jail than out on the streets.”

He had a point, but I didn't want to concede to that, because my sister was locked up in some cell she’d paid for.

“So, what's the deal?”

“She pays twenty-five hundred U.S. dollars cash and gets out on Monday or she pays sixty-five hundred and gets out today. Either way, restitution must be made to the hotel, but you already knew that.”

“If the hotel hasn't charged my card yet, I might be able to make the twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“But what's going to happen when they do?”

I sighed. “I wish I hadn't been such an idiot and left my bag there. If I had my other card...”

“Tiffany, call your dad. It's not your responsibility to pay for this.”

Luke kept driving while I called home. My dad was irate, but not at me. Only at Kammy. He agreed to send me the money, but he wanted me to stay till Monday and take the cheaper bail.

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