Oh my goodness. I can't tell you how excited I am. TOMORROW this book will be out and available for all to read. It was an adventure to write, and I'm looking forward to sharing this story with everyone. So today I going to share THE FIRST CHAPTER. Hope you enjoy.
A convict’s daughter should never fall for an FBI agent’s son, certainly not a feisty teenager like Julianna Schultz who is furious over her mother’s incarceration and the injustice of it all. But that’s exactly what seventeen-year-old Julianna finds herself doing when Cody Rush, the cocky son of the FBI agent who put her mom behind bars, moves into her hometown of Gilbert, Arizona.
Cody Rush—studious, principled, athletic, good looking and blond to boot—is everything Julianna hates, or so she thinks. Yet a series of ill-fated events one night brings them dangerously close, entangling the futures of two people who were never meant to be…
Chapter One
CODY
Being the son of
an FBI agent sucks.
I’ll admit there
was a time when it used to be cool. All I wanted was to wear the suit. Flash
the badge, catch bad guys, throw out words like “informant” and
“counterintelligence” and wield a gun. All in a day’s work. I used to pin that
gold paper badge on with pride, the one Jimmy and I laminated in clear duct
tape so it would hold together. Those were the good days.
I walk through the
front door behind Vic, my newest friend in this new town. We’re moving from
Scottsdale to Gilbert next weekend, a difference of about thirty miles.
“Hey, bro,” Vic
calls out, already at the fridge, framing the open door with his jacked arms.
After witnessing the way Vic held a ball in a gladiatorlike death grip during our
basketball tournament this week, I quickly assumed he could crush a human skull
in his palm.
I started playing club
ball back in third grade and I’ve worked my butt off ever since. Meanwhile, Vic
dribbled around city courts. If you know anything about Division 1 high school ball
in Arizona, you’ve heard of Vic Schultz. The guy’s a natural.
“Coke? Dew?” he
asks.
“Anything cold,” I
say, wiping perspiration from my forehead and checking for any sign of central
cooling in this apartment, townhouse, whatever it is. It’s June in Gilbert,
Arizona, and I swear these people don’t have AC on.
My eyes catch a
wall of pictures, some framed, a few not, and something catches my attention. I
step closer. A younger version of Vic stands surrounded by family: a girl with
glasses and some serious hair—his sister, I assume—and a dad with blue eyes who
looks nothing like him. Vic takes after his mom, with dark skin,
hair,
and eyes. His
mom.
I blink. Do a
double take. I swear I’ve seen her before. Can’t place her.
“Catch.”
A can of Dew
spirals toward me and I turn just in time.
Vic has already
polished his off. He crushes the can in that grip of his and adds it to the
stack of aluminum and other junk on the kitchen table. Wire, metal, and bottle
caps. Heaped up like a pile of trash on the table. But it looks intentional.
Arranged, even. Art is one thing I’ve never understood.
Vic catches my
stare.
“That’s cool,” I
lie. I pretend to analyze it, like I’m seeing a deeper meaning in the monument
of trash. “It’s kinda…abstract, you know.”
Vic lets out a
whoop of laughter. Punches my arm. “You’re such a bad liar.”
I take this as an insult.
I’m no habitual liar, but come on. This is a dis on my skills. I stare at the sculpture
of crap again, standing tall and regarding it as though it was my own.
Vic’s laughing
smile dissolves into an amused smirk. “You’re serious.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Vic cocks an eyebrow
up, totally falling for it. Guess I’m not such a bad liar after all. He shakes
his head and opens another can. “My dad’s a sculptor. Total loony. At least this
project comes with perks. An endless supply of soda. So long as I save the can.”
“Thanks for this,”
I say, holding up my Dew.
“Nah, man,” Vic
says and waggles his eyebrows. “Thank me later tonight when we get a real drink at Connor’s. We’ve got the hard
stuff.”
Vic is not my
typical friend, that much I already knew. I’m the son of two ambitious and
highly successful parents, raised to be an overachiever, if not a law-abiding
citizen. My friends up in Scottsdale are the same. It goes without saying that
no one wants to move to a new city—a new
high school—the summer before their senior year, especially when it’s their
last chance to prove themselves to college scouts.
“Lakers or Heat?” Vic asks, shoving a pile of
mail off the couch. He plops down and flips on the TV.
“Neither.”
“Either, or,” he clarifies, as though I’m dumb. “Comprende esé?”
I chuckle at his
slang term of endearment, esé, like I’m his Mexican homeboy. Vic is
half Mexican. Green eyes and blondish hair make me about as white as they come.
But that’s what’s so great about Vic. He treats everyone like his equal on and
off the basketball court, which is saying something, considering he’s number
two on the Tribune’s Top Boys’ Hoops
Prospects.
“I’m a Bulls fan,”
I say, remembering how loyal my little brother Jimmy was to the team of our
childhood home. “Suns aren’t bad either.”
During our
tournament in Vegas, a few of the guys on our team started joking about a
homeless guy outside the burger spot where we were eating. One comment led to
another, and eventually the guy hunched over outside begging for money was proclaimed
a mentally retarded fag. “And he’s got herpes,” Shawn said, which earned a
round of laughter from the guys in return.
Not Vic. While the
other guys pitched a porn card from the street into the guy’s hat, Vic—the big
guy, the team’s revered power forward—handed the guy an extra burger. I
followed up with spare change from my pocket. No one else saw. They were
distracted by the bright lights.
“Your dad
sculpts,” I state and glance around. Piles of junk cover counters, the smell of
dirty dishes chokes the air, the guitar in the corner gathers dust, and the inside
of the fridge is about empty. Details. Something I was taught to look for. “And
your mom?”
I grab the guitar
and blow on it, sending dust billowing up before I sit on the other couch. I
take a swig of my drink.
“She’s dead,” Vic
says.
I almost choke on
the flood of Dew. “Sorry,” I cough out.
Vic laughs. “Nah,
man, I’m kidding. She’s still kicking.”
I’m usually good
at reading people. Vic is an exception, and I don’t like it one bit. I find an
uncluttered corner of coffee table and set my drink down. Start strumming a
tune.
“She’s in prison,”
Vic offers.
I peel my eyes
away from the guitar and focus on Vic. A minor chord teeters in the air as my
fingers hover over the strings. I watch him, waiting for a crack in his façade.
But Vic merely stares at the TV, avoiding eye contact like people do when masking
how hard the truth is to admit.
Vic isn’t lying.
The doorbell
rings. Vic stands. “Jewel,” he calls up the stairs after opening the door, “for
you.”
I scoot some stuff
aside on the side table to reveal another picture of Vic’s mom. I study it, searching
for that hint of familiarity I saw earlier. At first, I figured she might be some
parent I saw in passing at a local basketball tournament. Now I wonder, the
idea of even partial recognition driving me crazy.
Someone runs down
the stairs. I quickly slide everything back into place.
“Yeah, yeah,” a
girl says. Vic’s sister, I assume. I tilt my head but can’t quite glimpse her
around the corner. “I’ll take good care of Daisy and the puppies while you’re
gone.”
The door closes
and she whirls around. She’s wearing cutoff shorts and a T-shirt, her hair in
one of those buns girls wear. She looks like she’s about to weed a garden or
clean out a toilet. Still, she sucks my attention her way. There’s something
about a girl who can wear grunge and strut around with confidence regardless.
I find myself
sitting up straighter.
“Victor Jonathan
Schultz,” she snaps. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
Vic asks, his eyes settling on the TV with obvious disregard as he sinks back
into the couch.
“You know what I’m
talking about.”
“No, drama queen,
I don’t.”
“How original,
Vic. Calling names. What are we, in junior high? Oh, yeah, you did fail eighth grade. And I’ve been
stuck with you in my class ever since.”
Vic is on his feet
now, too. “Shut up, Julianna!”
“No!” she yells,
impressively fearless at five foot five, maybe, at the mercy of Vic’s six foot
three. I’ve already sunk back into the couch, a bit intimidated myself. Of her,
not Vic. “You stole forty-five dollars from my underwear drawer and I want it
back. Now.”
“I didn’t steal
your money or your panties, tramp; get your facts straight.”
Julianna gasps.
I sit in the
middle of all this, wide eyes ping-ponging from Vic to his sister and back. I
certainly haven’t seen this side of Vic. Didn’t imagine this side of his sister
when she first walked in either.
I wisely keep my
mouth shut as Julianna digs one hand into her hip, her elbow cocked out at a determined
angle. “You didn’t steal it, huh?”
“No, but now I
know where to go looking if I need some.”
Julianna shifts
her jaw to one side and narrows her eyes. “’Fess up, Vic; it was you. Who else
in our family is a lying thief?”
“Mom,” Vic says.
Shock and rage
tighten the small features of her face. That’s when I notice her eyes—blue. A
shocking contrast to her dark hair and golden tan. Something about her eyes
reaches through me, puncturing all barriers. “How dare you,” she says, her eyes
glossing over. “Mom wouldn’t even be…be…where she is if it weren’t for you.”
“Prison, Julianna.
Just say it. Mom. Is. In. Prison.”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up. You still think Mom’s
perfect. She stole hundreds of thousands—”
“Because of you,” Julianna shouts over him.
Something kicks on
inside me; shock for sure, and a gut instinct that launches my brain into
action. Vic’s mom, a convict. She stole money. Lots of it. And my dad works in
white-collar crime. I dig through my mind for tidbits of her story. And that’s
the worst part. There’s a good chance I might
know it.
I fling a glance
toward the door. Even if I could slip out discreetly—which I can’t—I’m not sure
I want to.
Vic’s last name: Schultz. Dad always uses the offender’s
last name to identify his cases once they go public and he can tell us about
them. The Miller case, the Baer case, the Howard case. I rake through my memory.
The Schultz case?
“Well,” Julianna
says, jerking me out of the chaotic sea of thoughts. She buttons it up, an
invisible mask hiding her emotions as she holds her chin high. “Don’t forget to
water Mom’s lantanas. It’s your turn. And don’t miss any of the bushes.”
Vic stands and puts
on a mocking grin. “As you wish.”
“And next time you
come back from a tournament,” Julianna calls after him, “don’t leave a trail of
gym socks all the way up the stairs. This place stank when I got home, stank!”
She turns to the
mirror on the wall and whips something out of her purse. Standing on her toes,
she puts mascara on her eyelashes. Vic mutters something, whispered curses that
peter out as he slams the patio door behind him. Julianna finishes both sets of
eyelashes before I consciously realize I haven’t looked away.
She yanks out
whatever is holding her hair up and it all tumbles down her back. I soak in everything
about her. Her lips visible in the reflection of the mirror as she puckers to wipe
some glossy pink stuff on. Her hair: long, dark, thick. It swooshes around as
she straightens up. My eyes follow her hair all the way down her shoulders,
down her back, and keep on traveling down toward those cutoff shorts until she
spins around.
My eyes snap up.
I put on my best
smile and offer a wave, a casual flick of the hand.
She snags her
purse without so much as a glance my way and vanishes out the front door.
The water spigot
outside lets out a high-pitched hum. I peek through the blinds. Vic sprays
water at full blast from the hose onto the plants. Mud splashes up on the
window. I seize the moment.
I slip my iPhone
out and pull up the Arizona Republic
news site. Type in Schultz.
Injured rock climber chooses to end life
support.
Deadly crash in Phoenix, authorities report.
Too vague. I need
a first name.
Dad’s a bit of a
fanatic when it comes to details. Always told us that having an eye for key facts
is invaluable. “Open your eyes”—one of his favorite sayings, always delivered
with a wink—“See everything.”
My eyes settle on
a magazine on the coffee table. I pluck it out of the mess and search for the
addressee’s name. Jonathan Schultz. Dang.
Then I see it, a corner of leather visible beneath the pile. I shift things aside.
Bingo. A wedding album.
I pull it from the
pile, praying Vic doesn’t pop his head in. Hoping Julianna doesn’t dash back
for something she forgot. I flip it open.
Jonathan and Sonia
I close the album
and slip it back under, my heart hammering a guilty beat. Snooping. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
My thumbs fly over
my iPhone. Sonia Schultz.
This time, my
query nails it.
Woman indicted on fraud charges. I scan
the blurb. Sonia Ana Schultz. The
hairs on my arms stand up as I take in the keywords. Arrested on charges of mortgage fraud. $300,000. FBI.
Clicking on the article
link pulls up one last irrefutable piece of evidence: her picture.
I sit alone in the
Schultzs’ living room, like prey in a den with lions who haven’t yet realized
I’m not one of them.
The glass door
slides open. I jolt.
“Hey, man,” Vic
says.
I close the
article and sit back. Relax. Fake it.
Vic shuts the door
behind him. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” I say and stand,
trying my best to smile. I slide my phone in my pocket, the image of that
article seared in my memory, an article I’ve seen before.
I know Vic’s mom
all right. My dad put her behind bars.
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