PROLOGUE
ANNA
The first time they met.
Downtown Houston
September 28th
The guy was drunk.Not loud or boisterous. Not completely incoherent, because he was still upright. But if I knew anything about being on the streets, it was when to spot a drunk.
He walked the few steps out of the bar, stumbled, recovered. The light from the neon sign highlighted his hair pink and green. After a few more steps, he leaned against the brick siding to gather himself.
Across from him in the alley, I glanced up and down the street and saw there was no traffic.
It was late at night and the bars in these areas usually serviced the casual diners and work happy hours. Not the hard-core drunks or the people my age who wanted to be out clubbingand hooking up until late into the morning. The place was open but was most likely closing.
This guy was last call.
I pulled my overcoat tighter around my body and considered what I was about to do.
The math was not on my side.
Nearly twenty percent of all young adults who aged out of state foster programs found themselves incarcerated in the first year after aging out. I was actually one of the lucky ones. I’d managed to stay on in a work program until I was twenty-one, as opposed to being forced out of the state home at eighteen.
Texas, they said, was the land of opportunity. Texas, they said, was where jobs and housing abounded.
Texas, they said.
Maybetheydidn’t mean Houston.
I’d been here now for seven months and none of it was getting any easier. The diner didn’t come close to paying for an apartment, and Nico, the owner’s son, was starting to look at me funny.
I wasn’t hot. Not even close. I didn’t do enough to try and change that perception either. My hair was dark brown, that I wore in a ponytail. No makeup. I couldn’t afford much, so I didn’t eat much. I had no tits or ass to speak of. Clothes didn’t flatter me, because everything I owned was someone else’s first choice.
But I did fucking look vulnerable. And Nico could tell.
What would I do to keep my sucky waitress job at the diner?
I needed three hundred more dollars to be able to make first month’s rent on something decent instead of bouncing from motel room to motel room. Once I had that though, there was no real guarantee tips would cover rent, but at least it would be a starting place to start looking for real jobs.
An address on a resume. A place that was in my name.
I had my name in at every temp agency in the area, but so far I’d only gotten a handful of interviews, none of them leading to actual jobs.
I wasn’t sure why I blamed my sometimes homeless status…sorry, unhoused person status, for that, but I did.
One small score. Something that would separate me from desperation for five fucking minutes.
Hey, there, mister, you need some help?
It didn’t have to be stealing. I could help him call a fucking Uber. That had to be worth something?
A twenty isn’t going to cut it.
He pushed himself off the façade of the building, took a few steps and stopped.
His head fell back on his neck and his shoulders slumped. He looked like a man who was feeling profound heaviness.
