But I didn’t go to him. I didn’t meet him halfway.

He came to me—something he’s only done a handful of times since we had started this twisted thing.

Our waiter returns to the table, and a dimpled grin slides easily over his features as he sets my orange juice down in front of me. “Need anything else?” he asks.

Heidi covers her mouth and coughs.

I ignore her. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

He asks Heidi the same but with a little less enthusiasm, and when he leaves, she eye-humps him until he turns the corner. “I swear, Kylie, you’re like sex on a—”

Chevelle blasts loudly from the inside of my pocket. I scramble to grab my phone as several people around us turn in our direction, their eyebrows gathering together at the noise. Pressing my thumb to the button on the side of the iPhone, I manage to silence it. I flip the phone over and wrinkle up my nose when I see Unknown flash on the screen.

“It might be Officer Townsend calling about our stuff.” I stand up, and Heidi bobs her head enthusiastically as if she truly believes that all our belongings have been recovered and aren’t currently in a New Orleans pawnshop. “Be right back,” I promise, leaving her at our table.

I accept the call, but I wait until I dart out of the front double doors to say hello.

“I’m trying to reach Lucas Wolfe,” a crisp female voice says.

If someone is calling this number for my brother, it’s no doubt a business call. I turn on my professional voice, smiling widely to sound more pleasant. “This is his assistant, Kylie. I’d be more than happy to help you.” As I pace back and forth in front of the bench that’s beside the cigarette receptacle, I hear the sound of the woman’s fingers rapidly flying over a keyboard. A moment later, she asks me to verify the last four digits of both my and Lucas’s social security numbers. Once I do so, she tells me who she is—a representative from his business banking account.

And then, she delivers news that I just know is going to bite me in the ass.

“Due to the most recent transaction, Mr. Wolfe’s checking account is currently overdrawn by $1,347. Would you like to transfer money from one of his other accounts to cover the overdraft?”

Chapter Twelve

“It’s going to be alright,” Heidi reassures me twenty minutes later as we hurry through the door of the room she and Cal are sharing. She’s been telling me the same thing since I sat back down for breakfast. Each time, she gives me her soothing voice that I’m sure she uses on her phone sex customers. Still, I only manage to down half of my western omelet before my stomach starts to pitch violently.

All I can think about is how Lucas will react once I break the news to him that Shiner Bock had somehow managed to break into his bank account before I canceled my cards.

“Kylie, I swear, it’s fine.” Heidi puts the small handbag she bought in the hotel’s gift shop into a compartment in the closet.

I sit down on the floor by the mini-fridge and start pulling up the bank’s website on my iPhone. “He’s going to flip the fuck out.”

She kneels down in front of me, taking my chin in her hands. “Relax. Banks fix this kind of thing all the time. Especially since you’ve got a police report. Just take a deep breath and get it figured out.”

I start to nod, but then my phone beeps three times. I drop my gaze, letting out a curse when I see the low battery indicator flashing across the screen. “Do you have a charger I can use?”

“I think Cal does.” I watch as she goes to the queen bed on the right side of the room. She glances around until she finally spots what she’s searching for on the side closest to the wall. As she brings me Cal’s phone charger, I realize that both beds look like they’ve been slept in.

When I’m not freaking out about my job, I’ll mention that to her.

Plugging my phone into the wall outlet, I log in to Lucas’s bank account, using the username and password he set up for me a few years ago. Almost immediately, I receive an error message—Incorrect Username or Password.

“Calm down,” I tell myself although my voice sounds anything but cool and collected. The last thing I want is to fumble with the keyboard so many times that I’m locked out for the next twenty-four hours.

“Yes, keep calm, babe,” Heidi says as she fishes a cigarette out of her luggage.

She hasn’t smoked in days, and I feel bad for stressing her out to the point where she needs to temporarily pick up the habit again.

As she darts out the balcony door to smoke, I try to get into the account again, typing each letter and number slowly. Once more, I’m denied access. “Shit.”

I close the Internet and open the Notes app, sorting through rows of reminders until I find the one I’m looking for—Lucas’s personal login. After I commit the details to my memory, I retry logging in to the bank account.

“Thank God,” I whisper when I’m not kicked out.

A few different accounts are listed on this page, and I click on the one the bank representative mentioned when I talked to her. I scroll through and study the recent transactions, and I feel absolutely sick to my stomach.

Several recent transfers have come into this particular account, each one from Lucas’s accounts at other banks, equaling more than $200,000 in all. At the top of the screen under pending transactions, there are two purchases—one for the flight I secured for him the other day and the other for an outbound wire transfer in the amount of $250,000.

It’s a ridiculously insane amount of money.

And deep down, I know this is something that Shiner Bock definitely has nothing to do with.

Money like this has Samantha Wolfe written all over it.

“Heidi,” I call out.

She peeks her head back inside the room. “Yeah?”

“I’m going to go back to my room to call Lucas, okay?”

“Are you sure you’re ready to talk to him?” Frowning, she steps inside. Her cigarette is still in her hand, and even though it’s one of my vices too, I cough when the smoke curls around my face. “Sorry,” she says, stretching the offending hand out the door as she waits for me to respond.

Gripping the mini-fridge, I pull myself up to my feet. “I’m sure I’m ready.” Just to reassure her, I muster a confident smile. “I think I figured things out, and we’ll probably be able to fix it fast.”

She releases a deep breath. “Thank God.”

***

As I take the stairs back to my room, I try to call Lucas. I’m not surprised when I’m redirected to his voice mail. Over the next hour, while anxiously watching a horror movie on HBO, I attempt to get in touch with my brother three additional times. I’m debating on whether or not I should call the one person Lucas will answer for—our mom—when my phone rings, and I see his name on the screen.

He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say anything, and I take it upon myself to initiate the conversation.

“Lucas,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, “why is there a huge chunk of money missing out of your business account?”

A quarter of a million dollars isn’t just a huge chunk of money though. It’s several years of my income, and it’s gone from an account that I’m supposed to be monitoring.

The man who answers me a few seconds later doesn’t sound like my older brother at all. He sounds broken, like a wounded animal. “It’s nothing. Mind your own fucking business, Kylie.”

The fear that has seized my chest for the last hour and a half suddenly shifts, and now, it feels like poison rippling through my body, wrapping around my bones, and slithering through my veins. “Not on your life, Lucas. It’s Sam, isn’t it? Are you paying that bitch off again? Where’s Sienna? What the—”

When I hear the faint click, I know that I’ve lost him. I know that whatever it is my brother’s gotten himself involved with has only gotten worse since he and Sienna took off for Atlanta.