Letty Rose and the Mistaken Identity

Wrapped Up

Letty spent the next few days laid up in bed. The night of the incident, a field medic had pulled the bullet from her shoulder and patched her up. While Danny had commanded her to see a doctor, she felt like the onsite patching had been good enough. Doctors asked for money, and she didn't have any.

Hell, she couldn't even afford to get Scotty that toy he had begged for. The Fire Squad Hero action figure he wanted cost more than the electric bill. They needed the electricity more than the toy. He might be happier with the toy, but CPS would take him away if they knew he didn't have electricity in the apartment. Danny couldn't step in to interfere if they tried to take him.

And after everything she went through and facing death, she knew she couldn't survive without him.

So she traded the last of the contents of her baggie to get the sling for her arm. She ran out of drugs, felt pain, and went through a mild withdrawal. If she didn't get out of here in a few days and get more supplies, things would worsen. At least she could blame the injury when Scott asked why she shook on the couch at night.

The withdrawal and the pain kept her awake, but the pain and the healing made her sleep for hours. The pain in her shoulder woke her just two hours ago. She could already feel her eyes getting heavy. Just as her eyes started to close, her phone rang.

By the third ring, she opened her eyes as best she could and rolled over to get her phone off the coffee table. A jolt of pain went through her body and lingered. She cursed whoever dared to call her while she was laid up like someone on a bed of nails. She would have turned the phone off if she didn't need the work. Her last case hadn't exactly paid, what with everyone being shot, dead, or in jail. There hadn't been any reward from the police either since they didn't know anything about the theft. The company they stole from hadn't reported anything missing, lest they take a stock market hit.

"Tank, tell me something good." She gritted her teeth with each word.

"Good news, bad news, my dear. Are you alright?" She could hear his jowls bellow as he talked.

"I'll live. I think." She winced with each word. "I don't care, Tank. You pick."

"Okay." He sounded distracted. She figured he was probably a few clicks into an adult website as he talked to her. Even face-to-face, he would have porn on a screen somewhere. "I was able to access the wallet through the connection."

She stayed silent. She didn't know what this meant, so she didn't have much to say.

Tank took her silence as a hint to continue. "That means I found where he kept the money."

Thank God, Letty thought. "How much did you get?" she asked with excitement. She jolted herself into a sitting position. Moving that fast sent another jolt down her body.

"That was the good part. The bad news: It took me too long to crack the security. By the time the laptop got destroyed, I only siphoned off like three hundred dollars."

All of that work, all of the pain, all of the danger. For three. Hundred. Dollars.

"Three hundred dollars?" She asked what little strength she had drained away with the news.

"They used a complicated system. Someone had set it up to limit how much money got pulled at one time. It only let me pull one hundred at a time. I had to wait for each transfer to clear too. If I wasn't as fast as I was, we wouldn't even have that much.

"Thanks," she whispered. She didn't want to talk anymore. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep.

"At least I got us something." Tank said after the long pause. "I moved your half to your account just before I called."

"Thanks, Tank."

"I'm sorry. The code was super sophisticated—" Tank started to say as she ended the call.

Letty flipped through her phone. One hundred and fifty dollars wouldn't go far, but it would pay the electric bill and get her something that could numb some of this pain. It could get her enough to make her forget that she just did all this work for a measly couple hundred dollars. But as she flipped through her phone, she saw where she had looked up the price of the Fire Squad Heroes.

She thought about how she had put her son in jeopardy. How she had almost died, twice within minutes. Life was fleeting, especially in her line of work. If she stumbled upon the wrong husband, she knew that rage could make anyone do almost anything.

So she could pay the electric bill and use the rest to meet her dealer and get something that would numb the pain, or she could get something her son desperately wanted.

She knew which one she should buy, but her thumb hovered over the buy button. It wouldn't come down and push the virtual button.

She stared at the page for longer than she thought possible, deciding which one to spend her hard-earned money on.