AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Maybe I'd just gotten picky.
"There's a way we can make this all go away," he said in a kindly voice. He'd been scoping me up and down and now he'd made his decision. He looked down his nose at me. "You know you're going to have a hard time getting a job now you’ve spent some time in jail."
"Yes, sir."
"Wouldn't you like to expunge your record?"
I didn't understand why he was doing this. He had me here and he'd made his decision. Once he sent me into the ring it wasn't going to matter if I was willing to get on my knees to make a petty shoplifting charge go away. The kind of jobs Lily always got stuck with didn't care about her record anyway. They were just grateful she didn't steal from her job.
I gave him a look as uncertain as I actually felt. "What would I have to do?"
I was expecting sex, a blow job, whatever his going currency was and then he'd call security because he'd sampled the merchandise as either was his prerogative or for all I knew, his job.
He had a thumb under his lower lip, pushing it up in thought, his elbow resting on his other forearm. He looked like somebody's college professor deciding if they can really go for extra credit.
"Do you like to cook, Lily?"
"What?" I blurted it out because that wasn't what I was expecting at all unless it was the world's worst sexual innuendo. "I mean, I don't know. I don't do it much."
He nodded. "There's a women's shelter in town that's chronically short-handed. I think you could deal with it because you've had kind of a rough background, haven't you?" He was actually looking at my – Lily's – file.
I nodded at him, dazed. "I don't understand what that has to do with cooking."
He glanced up at me. "Don't be smart."
I wasn't. I said so. I told him I was confused. I was confused. Because if Judge Townsend was on the up and up, everything had just gotten harder. I'd end up apparently doing community service, which was fine. Maybe I'd find someone to help there. But I'd also have lost the scent and I'd have to either create a new persona and get her in trouble, which would be hard because mug shots already existed of me as Lily, or Lily would just have to be a total idiot and get herself picked up again and somehow get a different judge.
The judge was telling me about Mi Casa where they needed help cooking for the women and started telling me about this great opportunity to give back to the community, make some money, not a lot but I'd be doing good, all women, all safe, all good stuff and the penny dropped.
They had to use different ways to get the girls out of the courthouse. He couldn't have that many girls coming to his office and developing some kind of problem that required them being taken out in an ambulance.
Like Conway was.
We hadn't guessed wrong. This was step one. The fact that I was about to be trafficked was a weird thing to feel relieved about.
"But what about the shoplifting charge?" I asked him, trying to sound as stupid as I'd actually been seconds earlier.
He slid off his desk then and walked over to me. Whether or not Townsend let me out of here unscathed, I was going somewhere bad and if I saw him again, I could figure out what happened next.
Or, shit, what did I know? Maybe he just gave off super creepy vibes while doing good.
"The shoplifting charge can be a minor incident in your life or a major one. You agree to take the job at the shelter and you stay there long enough –"
What's long enough?
Like, forever?
"And the shoplifting charge just –" He made a stupid scurrying motion with his fingers – "Goes away."
"Seriously?" I put some squeak into my voice.
"Of course."
"Oh, thank you! I'd so much like to do that! I didn't know how I could pay off a fine, I just got an apartment and I don't know anybody in town yet!" I was gushing, my hands clasped together in a ridiculous parody of girlish thankfulness.
I was gushing.
He was unzipping.
