Chapter 1
Fiftyhours!
Helen Hobbs pushed through the doors of Bristol City’s law court offices and squinted into the gray afternoon light. “Bloody great. Community serviceanda fine!”
“Be grateful that’s all you’ve ended up with,” her brother Tom shot back. “That’s three arrests this year alone. You’re lucky not to have had your arse hauled to a cell for a month! You get so much as a library fine now and you’ll be back in court quicker than you can sayJaxon Bates.”
Helen glared at the mention of her ex-employer. “Leave off, Tom. How was I supposed to know he was under surveillance? I didn’t think—”
“That’s just it, you never think. Maybe that’s why I get calls from you in the middle of the night asking to bail you out of trouble.”
They stared angrily at each other.
Of course, her brother was right. In her attempt to get rich quick, Helen hadn’t thought too much about the software she’d been writing for Jaxon—only about the money she needed to earn to keep her cottage. If she didn’t come up with a large deposit soon, she’d lose the only real home she’d ever known.
Helen pressed her fingers against her eyes and dragged them down her face, Tom’s words and the judge’s voice still ringing in her ears. And just when her mood couldn’t get any gloomier, DC Almira Nazir stepped through the doors behind her.
“Helen. How are you?”
Helen stiffened. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Nazir gave her a curt little nod. “I assume the conditions of your probation were made clear?”
“Yes, crystal clear.”
“Good. We shouldn’t be seeing you here again, then.” She breezed down the steps, stopping at the bottom. “I’ll be calling you when I have questions.”
As Nazir got into an awaiting silver car, Tom turned to Helen, scowling.Great. She was really in for it now.“Who was that?”
“Detective Constable Nazir. The woman in charge of Jaxon’s case.”The woman who’d questioned her for hours about Jaxon’s cyberfraud.Helen nudged her brother’s arm. “Let’s go and fight somewhere more private.”
They headed toward the throng of the city’s main streets, Helen’s stride not as long as it usually was thanks to the three-inch heeled sandals cutting into her feet.
“I don’t want to fight, Helen.”
“I know. Neither do I.”
Pining for her running shoes, Helen went to tuck her hands into her pockets only to realize the vintage gray skirt she’d dug out of late Ada’s wardrobe had none, and neither did the prissy baby-blue blouse. She’d dressed like a frigid, turn-of-the-century school teacher today, not that it had helped in the slightest to get her off a community payback sentence.
Helen tugged at the strap of her girlie bag.Fifty hours. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Tom said, like he’d read her mind. He drew in a long breath, a sure sign another lecture was heading her way. Tom was eleven months younger than her, but since he’d married Emma and become a dad, he acted eleven years older.
“It feels to me that when Aunt Ada passed away, you reverted back to how it used to be with us.” Tom’s crisp shirt had come ever so slightly untucked at the front, a tiny, tiny glimpse of the scruffy boy he’d once been. “First, it was shoplifting—”
“Oh, come on!” Helen looked to the dull summer sky. She hadn’t been thinking straight that day, not with Ada so close to the end. “You know that wasn’t my fault.”
“Then there was the night you were arrested for being drunk and disorderly.”
“But I was putting an end to that fight, not starting it! They—”
“And now this.” Tom waved his hands to indicate the courtroom behind them. “Burglary. What the hell were you thinking?”
A lot of things, actually. Namely about the money Jaxonstillowed her for the code she’d written and how she needed that cash to pay the rent. Now, with a warrant out for Jaxon’s arrest, the large sums of money he’d promised her for future work—the massive pay out he’d often talked about over the past two years—had disappeared with him.
“Seriously, Helen, why don’t you go back to school, like I did? Get some qualifications. Stop pissing around on the internet and get a proper job.”
Pissing around?She was a highly skilled programmer! “I don’t need a certificate to tell me I know my way around a computer,” she snapped. “And working for Jaxon was aproper job.”
