A cool breeze whipped around her as she got out of the car and approached the machine. She'd withdraw a couple of hundred to replace what she'd given Michelle, and that would be more than enough to tide her over the weekend. She tapped in her account number, and PIN.
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.
She stared at the little screen, blinking at the words as she tried to make sense of them. She knew, roughly, how much she had in her account, but she hadn't balanced it in over a week. Still, there should be around twenty-five thousand, give or take a few hundred.
She was tired, though, and upset; she'd probably punched in the wrong number. She tried again, and this time she was very careful, making certain every number was correct.
The same message flashed on the screen: INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.
At this hour, the bank was dark and there was no one to help her. She thought a moment, then entered a different request, this time to see her account balance. Probably this machine was malfunctioning, and was giving the same message to everyone who tried to get money from it. For that matter, maybe the machine was empty, and it was telling her it had insufficient funds. The idea was almost funny, and she smiled a little, but then the smile froze on her lips.
Three dollars and twenty-two cents?
She stared at the impossible number. She knew she had more than that, thousands more than that. What had happened?
Automatically she got back in the car and started it, put it in gear. All the way home she turned the situation over in her mind, feeling sick as she worked through details.
Someone - and she had only two someones whom she suspected - had gotten his hands on her checkbook and written himself a check for twenty-five odd thousand. Dylan, or Jerry? It had to be one of them. They knew where she lived, and they were both determined to get something from her. They both wanted their cut of her good fortune, their fair share for - what? Breathing?
She'd tagged Dylan for a moocher, but she wasn't sure he'd steal. Even if he did, he wouldn't be bold enough to take it all. He'd steal a few checks, write one here and there for a couple hundred dollars, hoping she wouldn't notice, and if she did then he'd hope she'd cut him some slack instead of going to the cops. That was Dylan.
But her dad ... Jerry Redwine would take all he could get and then he'd run.
She felt that inner door slam that signaled yet another end. She wouldn't hear from him again. He wouldn't call. There would be no more awkward lunches, no more offers to get in on the ground floor of some great opportunity he'd dreamed up. Her latest refusal had evidently convinced him she couldn't be fleeced, so instead he'd stolen from her. He was gone for good this time, because he'd known there was no getting past this.
The certainty that he was the culprit ate through her like acid. How had he done it? He couldn't have gotten her ATM code - and besides, ATMs would dispense only a limited amount of cash from an account - but somehow he must have gotten his hands on her checkbook.
She'd been so careful whenever he was in the house, always taking her purse with her if she went into another room, or locking it in the trunk of the car if she'd known ahead of time that he was coming over. But what if she hadn't known he was there? What if he'd lurked outside, waited until she was in the shower or even in bed asleep, then quietly slipped the lock and let himself in? She could easily see him doing that. In hindsight she realized she should have installed an alarm, but she hadn't wanted to spend any money on a place where she wasn't going to be living much longer, and she'd let it slide. She was still in the habit of avoiding relatively small expenses, because they were outside her experience, and now it had cost her big time.
When she got home she took out her checkbook and carefully went through it, looking at the numbers to make sure none were missing. The books each had twenty-five checks in them, and she kept only one book at a time; the others were in the safe deposit box. She knew what checks she'd written, because she kept a careful record. The blank check on top was the next one in sequence. They were all there ... except for the very last one in the book.
She looked up the last time she'd balanced the account, and carefully began subtracting the amount of each check she'd written. The total was more than she'd thought. She'd had a balance of twenty-seven thousand, four hundred three dollars and twenty-two cents. Jerry had even taken the four hundred. Heck, he'd evidently even done the math himself, to see how much he could write the check to himself for. If he hadn't, if he'd left her a few hundred, it might have taken her days longer to realize what he'd done.
And this was it. He'd finally done it, finally gone past her limit. This was turning out to be a hell of a day. First Michelle, and now Jerry, though actually Jerry had made his move first, even though she'd just found out about it. She hadn't seen him since Wednesday. Two days, then. He'd have left immediately because he wouldn't be certain she wouldn't turn him over to the cops for forgery.
She wouldn't. Let him have the money. Let this mark the complete end. She'd been waiting for this moment from the second she realized she'd won the lottery, wondering how much it would cost her, and now she knew: twenty-seven thousand, four hundred dollars.
She sat in the silent duplex, feeling exhausted and empty, and suddenly she had a moment of clarity. She'd known all along that winning the lottery would change her life, known that some of the changes would be jarring, but she hadn't expected how complete the change would be.
Part Two
BAD LUCK
Chapter Six
Seven years later
"WE HAVE A SITUATION DEVELOPING," THE FAMILIAR voice said on Cael Traylor's secure, encrypted cell phone.
Cael could put both a name and a face to the voice, because he'd made a point of being able to do so. Finding out what he wanted to know had required a cross-country drive, but driving had kept him off the radar, which he wouldn't have been if he'd flown. Any time his name showed up on a passenger list, certain elements of the U.S. government learned of it. Not Homeland Security, not the State Department, but certain people who handled black ops, such as the man who was currently talking to him on his phone.