Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

slacks and jacket and intense blue blouse that fairly shouted money and class. Some kind of ID card swung on a silver chain around her neck. Just before she left the lobby area, a bellman ran up to her. She turned back toward the registration desk, where someone instantly handed her a phone.
    As Cherelle watched people scurry around for Risa, it became obvious that her old friend was a well-known and important employee in the fancy casino. And she looked good enough to leave a sour taste in the back of Cherelle’s throat.
    That was why she had stopped visiting Risa a few years back. She hated being jealous of what the big-eyed, scrawny, defiant orphan had grown up into.
    She couldn’t have done it without me, Cherelle reminded herself bitterly. I fought her fights. Now she has everything, and I have shit.
    She owes me.

Chapter 16
    Las Vegas
    November 2
    Half past noon
    M iranda Seton’s blue eyes were as faded as her dreams. Other than alcohol, there was only one source of pleasure in her life, and he was standing in her garage with an empty stomach and a garbage bag full of dirty clothes. She hugged him again and again while she fed clothes into a washing machine that was almost as old as her son.
    “I can’t believe you’re here, Timmy! You should have called. I would have bought some pork chops to fry for you and made your favorite cookies.”
    Tim patted his mother’s narrow shoulder and kissed the top of her head. He kept forgetting how small she was, how old she looked. And what a gray place she lived in. Even the Siamese cat curled up on the kitchen counter looked down on its luck.
    Anger flared. “Mama, you should make that stingy bastard treat you better.”
    Her smile quivered and flipped upside down. Tears stood in her wide-set, childlike eyes. She had a savings account just full of money given to her by her son’s father, but she was waiting for Timmy to grow up before she turned it all over to him so that he could take care of both of them.
    Even half drunk, she knew it might be a long wait. But right now that didn’t matter. Her beautiful boy was back in the house.
    “Don’t you talk about your daddy like that,” she said. “I’m happy here, and he gave me the best thing in my life. You.”
    Tim’s anger slipped away. He had never been able to hold on to it for long. The one time he’d worn his mother down enough to reveal his father’s name, she spent the next four days drunk and crying and making him promise over and over again not to contact his father, not for any reason, not ever.
    She might have loved the man once, but he had always frightened her.
    After Tim had learned more about who his father was, he knew why his mother didn’t want to rattle that cage. Once you got past the public face, that was one cold, mean son of a bitch his mother had spread her legs for.
    “Aw, don’t start in,” Tim said, hugging Miranda. “As soon as Socks gives me what he owes me, we’ll go out to dinner at that cafeteria you like so much. How about that?”
    Though she said instantly, “Don’t waste your money on me,” she was smiling again.
    When the garbage bag was empty, she opened up his backpack, knowing that he usually stuffed dirty clothes in there, too. Her groping hand found cloth wrapped around something hard. She grabbed it and hauled it out into the glare of the naked lightbulb just above the washing machine.
    “What’s this? You carrying shotgun shells or something bad?” It was her greatest fear that Tim would end up in jail again. That first time, his father had ripped her up one side and down the other for letting his son go bad. But he hadn’t threatened to stop paying her.
    The nice thing about the statute of limitations on murder was that it never ran out. Not that that was the only thing that kept the money coming in. Tim’s daddy didn’t have any children. He might not be real good when it came to loving and all that, but he sure did like owning things—even a son he couldn’t brag about.
    Tim snatched the sock before his mother could upend it on her palm and shake out the figurine. “This is just some shit Cherelle picked up from a friend. Why don’t you go and scramble me some eggs or something, and I’ll put the rest of the stuff in the washer.”
    Miranda hesitated, smoothed her hair uncertainly, and drew her faded rose housecoat more closely around her body. If she had known that her son was coming, she would have dressed up a little. Or at least