AUSTIN

A SNEAK PEEK

An exclusive preview for Clovis Club readers.

PROLOGUE

CADENCE

“I will, Dad.  I promise.”

I’d written to him.  Ironically four years ago today.  On the back of the only note he left for me.  

Underneath is my little ten-year-old signature—Cadence Amina Kohl—my handwriting looking every bit as mature as I felt at that age.  I had even dated it the very day I found and read his note—May 28, 2012—because I had agreed immediately, like I was signing a contract.  I’m surprised I didn’t glob a bloody thumbprint down next to it to really seal the deal.  Because that was years ago and I fulfilled my promise, hoping beyond hope it could be the single, solitary thing that could change my sad, drab world at the time, even though I was too smart to believe in magic.  I learned everything I possibly could, Dad I send out to him—in fury but also futility—knowing there’s nothing he can do for me in here.  Fourteen years old—still a child in so many ways, but shouldering the weight of an adult—and here I am.  

Sitting.

In jail.

With only my memories and waning sanity to keep me company, I realize he was wrong.  Even though he’d been in jail for a time, too, and has much more life experience than me, I know, in this situation, my dad is still wrong.  Because there’s no amount of learning that will change this outcome.  At least not alone.  There’s another thing you need, Dad.  You need love.  People.  As I flip the note over and over in my hand, I let my brain fall gently back to the night I found this tiny little lifeline.  To a dirty little bulb-lit lean-to in Sacramento and a time when my little-kid worries felt far less worrisome than all this.  

I pull my thick braid over my shoulder and wince at the pain in my knee when I raise it up onto the bench.  I barely felt the injury at all during the altercation but now it’s come searing back.  Adrenaline is a gift.  My head thuds against the cinderblock as I drift back—smelling the musty paper of the old books on my warped plywood shelf, feeling the gumminess of the ancient rag rug I sat so many hours cross-legged on, closing my eyelids to the shaft of light that soaked the wood pallets I’d used to make the floor.  As I step into the memory, the eager, naive little girl who signed that note starts giving me a tour of her lean-to.  She’s glad I came, and I long for her bright-eyedness, her innocence.  I have so much to show you. Come.

I slip my hand into hers and let every sense in my body slowly melt back into her, to then, to four years ago, when this tidal wave of change first began.  

__________________

There’s no way I could have memorized everything in these encyclopedias, if I hadn’t started when I was five.  It’s a worn, yellowed Britannica set of twenty-six books, A through Z, each about the size of a textbook, sitting slumped on a bent piece of plywood in my room.  There’s a round patch worn into the yellow rug by the shelf where I sit and read them constantly.  I also sleep with a different letter each night, comforted by the fact it would also make a decent surprise weapon if I had to throw it at someone’s face, although I would hate to do that.  To the encyclopedia.  

I have to think my dad knew the encyclopedias would do that.  Ignite me.  That’s why he made Mom promise she would keep the complete set for me and make me read them as soon as I was able.  As angry and hurt as I knew Mom was over what Dad did to us by abandoning our family—the fact that she chose to keep that particular promise to him, told me the books were bigger somehow, more sacred, than their decades-long fight even.  I’ve watched Mom box them up and cart them around in her trunk, to every little trailer and rental we’ve moved to over the last ten years.

Maybe that was the reason I didn’t tell Mom, straight away, when I first found the hidden note in them.  

And I did feel bad about it as we share just about everything, every day.  When she gets home from work at night, she’ll throw her greasy P.F. Chang’s shirt in the hamper with a dramatic flourish, whip her thick mahogany hair up in this glorious pile, then start kicking her feet like she’s a racehorse in the shoot.  Although, to be fair, she does have to back up a few extra paces because she’s short and has more air to clear.  Fully clothed she and I then leap into the air and hit her bed with a muffled clomp to vent about our day.  

First, we gripe about everything—shamelessly, callously, like we’re shallow, rich super models.  Good Valley Girl fun.  Then, we both take a deep breath in and share three serious things: 1) something kind of magical that happened to us that day; 2) someone who intrigued or surprised us; and 3) something we did that day we were proud of.  

Mom and I have been doing it so long I can’t even remember how it started.  It’s just always been a thing with us.  We call it Our Daily Spark, even do it on the weekends, too, right before we go get takeout from Frankie’s and rent a DVD from the library.  My guess is Mom read it in some discarded Chicken Soup for the Soul or Cosmo article while on her break at P.F. Chang’s—probably titled Never Lose Your Spark! I could guess—but I’m grateful every day that it stuck for her.  Because Mom’s magic moments are testaments to her creativity.  

Mom will swear she saw the very same bird visit her twice in one day, at totally different locations.  “I knew because of the little red streak on his breast,” she’ll add as if it’s so simple and unquestionable, even though the bird she’s talking about is a rose-breasted Grosbeak (I know from the G encyclopedia).  And, although you may not think it, it is worth pointing something like that out because Mom’s talent is in her crafty comebacks.   “Cadence, honey, it was the exact same streak.  I saw the shape of it—through the window by the host stand.  Kind of like a violin.”  She shines in the details.  “But that doesn’t matter, because he sang the same song—Three Little Birds—and he winked at me, silly.  Both times!”  I think her eyes are the most beautiful when she tells stories, this sparkling sea green.  I just shake my head and roll my eyes because I love Our Daily Spark.  And Mom.

For months, I didn’t tell Mom about the secret note because I didn’t want her to ruin it for me, even unintentionally.  Until it was confirmed—or disproven—my theory could remain, and I just didn’t want to lose that connection to my dad as I have so few pieces of him.  This one being the biggest, most tangible, it also feels the most fragile.  As it sits right now, I don’t even know my dad’s name.  Mom has always refused to share it with me.

“He’s gone.  He chose to leave us, Cadence.  Let it be,” is all she’ll say.  

But I’d disagreed with that premise the minute Mom first said it because something about it just didn’t feel right, like I was trying to wedge a square piece into a round hole.  It just didn’t fit.  In hindsight, I do believe it was my obstinate refusal and incessant digging into the mystery that eventually manifested the clue.  The mind can will many things into matter.  

One night in my room, not long after I’d turned ten, I noticed a section of the glue on the back cover of the J encyclopedia had been pried open, like with a letter opener.  I got the little bug retrieval kit I’d made for myself—a pair of tweezers, a plastic-capped vial, and a magnifying glass—to retrieve it.  

The moment I read it, I just knew.  The writing was different.  Definitely not Mom’s.  ‘My Darling Girl’ was entirely new.  Then there was that word, so fresh and exciting, practically leaping off the paper.  Catalyst.  What a mantra!  The note read: 

“If you want change, education is the most powerful catalyst. 
So, LEARN my Darling Girl, and let nothing stop you.”  

Immediately my body started sweating, my pulse exploded, when I pieced together who it had to be from.  My dad!  The only thing he has ever written to me.  At that very moment I was stung suddenly by the realization that he must have left it in this book before I was even born.  Ten years ago.  The note felt so sacred, so life-changing.  

In a mad dash, within moments of finding it, I’d scurried around for a pen and signed the other side—“I will.  I promise.”  I’d even dated it because I wanted him to know—when I finally found him and could show him this note—when I had agreed.  That very minute!  Because he had given me the thing I had been most craving.  Directive.  A mission.  I thrive on a mission.  But, more importantly, my dad gave me a way to change my stars, mine and Mom’s both.  That was the real gift my dad had given me: 

A get-out-of-jail card.

---OoO---

CHAPTER ONE

AIRMONEY

CALLIE

“Yes, your Honor,” I grit out through locked teeth, covertly pressing a knuckle into my titanium shin—an old habit I use to hide anger. Well, and fear, tension, any emotion really.  Under our table on the plaintiff’s side of the courtroom, Mariah slides a silent, lithe hand over mine, pulling my right hand, now with its odd titanium imprint on the knuckle, off my leg. I spin my head so fast to glare at Mariah it almost shakes my blonde out of its shellack, but there’s usually a hole in the ozone over my head when I go to court.  It doesn’t move.  Mariah just glares back as we pack our legal pads and binders into our rolling briefcases and make our way out.

“Don’t,” Mariah warns as we shove pads and pens in.  Looking down at her, her thick black hair wrestled into a piled-up braid that gives her a few extra inches up top, I sneer into her hair.

“The only way I won’t,” I exhale, forcefully, as I smash a binder in, ripping and crumpling pages that—only minutes ago—were mission-critical, “is if you talk to him.” I give Mariah a little uplifted chin and eyebrow as I sling my laptop case over one shoulder and schlep my rolling case the direction opposite of him, the soft thump of the orthopedic-looking flats that round out my pants suit undermining my intended dramatic exit.

God, I miss heels I think as I pad out, soft as a librarian, leaving Mariah watching me with narrowed eyes and an almost imperceptible shake of her head left to right. Almost.  She’s going to kill me later, I know it.  Unleash all her Italian fury.  Because I’ve left her with The Snake, we’ve dubbed him. Brendan Waltrip. “The third,” he always feels it is necessary to add. The Snake is local counsel for Revyve, a company that preys on fear to con consumers into buying a completely unnecessary, yet wildly expensive product that not only does not do what Revyve promises—filter dirty air to clean—it introduces a chemical into the home that Mariah and I can prove poisons people, has poisoned people.  

Revyve manufactures this fancy gizmo called an “ozone generator” that allegedly filters out harmful particles in your home’s air.  Problem is generating the ozone compound in your home is actually quite dangerous because the chemicals that comprise ozone can react with other chemicals and create noxious, harmful fumes.  But that’s not what the hundreds of Revyve salesmen—who are knocking down doors all over the United States—tell worried consumers.  

Instead, Revyve arms each salesperson with a script and a whole briefcase of magic dyes and powders they deploy to make the perfectly healthy air in your home—when bottled in their deceitful, laced containers—immediately turn brown and cloudy.  This scene usually terrifies and egregiously forces hundreds of regular, everyday people to fall prey to Revyve’s pressure tactics and sign up for unconscionable monthly payments and interest rates to get the system installed in their house that night, because they are told the offer is time-sensitive and limited (when it’s not).  

It’s an awful financial trap, not to mention potentially dangerous to the human body.  When Mariah and I finally got to the bottom of this heinous scheme—all dreamed up years ago by high-end Revyve execs and directors, who pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses every year and fly around on their private jets—we couldn’t not pick up the fight.  And here we are two years into litigation and thousands of dollars in costs.  But the money Mariah and I have both poured into this lawsuit speaks nothing of the hundreds of hours we have put in, for which we will never be paid … if we don’t win.  And Revyve is still fighting us on every front.

____________

Today we were in court on Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel, basically a request that the court make the other side do something.  Mariah often likes to wave one around the office smacking it and shouting “The power of Christ compels you!”  In our motion, we had been asking, politely at first, more forcefully later on, for dates for the deposition—essentially an under-oath interrogation—of Revyve’s CEO, the esteemed Trevor Sinclair.  What had been The Snake and his team’s response?  

“He’s out of town.”  

“We can take his deposition remotely, Your Honor,” Mariah had immediately offered, but The Snake countered.  

“He’s in Italy.”  

“We can travel to Italy,” Mariah fired off without thinking because that was a bald-faced lie.  We can barely afford our briefcases. 

A cough, followed by: “He’s there mourning a death in the family, Your Honor.”  

I heard the tiniest throat clearing by Mariah then.  More of a kneejerk reaction by her body—a repulsion to the lie.  But how on earth could we unpack that standing there with no facts or evidence and the only way to gather it being by deposing The Snake right here in live court.  “Which family member?  What side?  Were they close?”  

Shit I heard Mariah spit out under her breath.  But Mariah and I are used to this.  If you decide to make fighting Goliath your career, you better be ready to face and slay dragons, and take some serious licks.  And do it while tired, hungry, without adequate weapons and an unfair disadvantage.  Uphill.  In the snow.  Like goddamn Marines.  Mariah pivoted lightning fast.  

“That is a tragedy,” she said quickly, and Judge Kittrell visibly relaxed.  “Your Honor can we have a guaranteed week soon after Mr. Sinclair’s return in which the defense will agree to schedule his deposition?  When will Mr. Sinclair be returning, Mr. Waltrip?”  Mariah was acting so poised I could kiss her.  But something in the room shifted then.  

“Your Honor, ummm … the defense will be filing a Motion for Protective Order then.  The Plaintiff’s desire to depose Mr. Sinclair is designed solely to harass and will cause an undue burden and unnecessary expense on the defense,” Waltrip breathed out, his eyes on his legal pad, his voice monotone having simply read the last bit from the verbiage on his page.  

“Harassment?!” I’d exploded.  “Respectfully, Your Honor, our complaint alleges the defendant, Revyve, intentionally and fraudulently deprived thousands of vulnerable consumers out of millions of dollars.  The man responsible for concocting and executing that plan is the Chief Executive Officer of Revyve, Mr. Sinclair!” I was about to lose it.  I could feel it.  Mariah had grabbed the pen from my hand under the table, turned it around and jammed it so hard into my thigh I’d flinched.  But I could not stop myself.  

“It is not our desire—but our right—to depose him and ask any question relevant to this lawsuit.  Now, deposing his wife, his kids, his brother-in-law?  Harassment.  Absolutely.  The attendees at the Italian funeral?  You bet.  But, Mr. Trevor Fitzgerald Sinclair, the Fourth?  No.  He is obligated under the Rules of Civil Procedure to appear as the corporate representative of Revyve for, what will probably be, the most important deposition of this case.  The fact that the deposition may cost us, the plaintiffs, a few thousand dollars—which, I have to point out, we are happy and willing to pay to uncover this company’s multimillion dollar fraud—does not make this, in any way shape or form, an unnecessary expense for the defense.”

“Counselor, we are not arguing that motion yet,” Judge Kittrell was swift to shut me down.  I wanted to respond: You’re right, because I just did.  And proved it’s garbage.  Motion denied.  

“What my colleague,” Mariah rises and gives me the universal signal to sit yo ass down—a push downward on the shoulder, “is trying to say, is that we’d like to go ahead and set the deposition date as soon as Mr. Sinclair returns so that’s locked in, as you wisely mentioned, Judge Kittrell, but then also get another date on the books in the next week or two—before the deposition—to argue the Motion for Protective Order.  That way, in case that is denied, we’re all set to proceed, and we don’t have to bother you any more with any of this.”  

I ease down, positively fuming.  I’d been thinking of taking my leg off and beating Waltrip with it.  My version of removing my earrings on the Jerry Springer show.  I had been very close.  Instead, I clamp my loud mouth shut as Judge Kittrell berates Mariah over my outburst and tells us he’ll simply take all this “under advisement.”  I watch Mariah in awe as she stands ten feet tall next to me, absorbing, plotting, proving to me every day how fierce she is. 

____________

Mariah Avalero and I met in eighth grade in Earth Science class back in Clovis, New Mexico—a little dusty, nowhere town where both of our families grew up.  Me, a poor broke white kid, mostly in and out of trailers, with wild flying blonde hair, freckles, and tortilla and bologna usually gummed up in my teeth, while my quiet leader, Mariah, was a scrappy little Italian number who used to be so shy she would hide behind her own thick black hair, hair sprayed into a protective wall in front of her face.  She and I had been a pretty nerdy, repulsive pair in our teens—pimple-faced, crazy over boys (who didn’t even notice us), and completely addicted to Dream Phone.  We never really fit in and, frankly, Clovis, New Mexico didn’t offer us much in the way of prospects.  For that reason, Mariah and I had both set our sights on getting out of Clovis early on, a path that started—for us—in books.  We both fled as soon as we sprouted our wings.  Still wet.  A little dewy.  But we flew anyway.  As far as Texas, anyway.  

I landed in Austin.  Mariah in Houston.  And, although we disconnected completely during our college years, we both somehow became lawyers in Texas around the same time.  Only, Mariah had chosen wisely to fight on the side of good, while I had lapped the dish of evil, naively but dutifully spending my first five years in the practice helping insurance companies shirk their obligation to pay legitimate claims.  That was until Mariah found me and plucked me from the rubble that was my imploding, detonating life at that time.  This was several years back, to that horrific summer in 2012 when a gruesome club shooting and drunk-driving accident took more from all of us, my entire family, than we would like to admit or remember.  Although my missing leg and the current, shambled state of our tribe—me living temporarily with Levi, Jay living with Braden, all of us still a little tender from it—are daily reminders.

In the middle of that hillbilly hurricane Mariah had locked eyes with me, refused to look away or let go, and she dragged me by the scruff out of the wreckage and into her fold at Avalero & Associates.  Before that, I had spent the first five years of my practice at my former law firm, Goldman Carr, with a pretty golden salary to do their sinister, gold-plated work, while Mariah had hung out her shingle to help the little guys.  Elderly people needing wills.  Blue collar folks with employment disputes.  Dabbling in family law, helping neighbors through nasty divorces and custody battles, although I don’t know how she could stomach it.  Until Mariah finally earned enough stripes to settle into her real passion—plaintiff’s trial work—taking on bigger consumer protection, personal injury, and medical malpractice cases.  

Basically, when a big corporation—usually an insurance company—puts profits over people, that’s our fight.  Me and Mariah.  Well, and my old partner from Goldman Carr, Justin, an adorable little brainiac Mariah has been shamelessly chasing for some time.  Same height and build as her, which helps.  His fiery red hair always makes me think of Carrot Top, although his is glossy and straight and always swept back in this trendy man bun.  Mariah and I have a bet as to who’s going to free it from its scrunchie first.  Two years now we’ve been trying and neither of us has been able to do it, although Mariah’s been reaching for much more than just his scrunchie.  

I’m pretty confident if you were to ask Justin point-blank, he’d tell you he, too, has no regrets over leaving our gold-plated parachutes at Goldman Carr to fight in the trenches with Mariah.  That career move was probably the biggest tectonic plate shift in my life since I left Clovis—just a few days after my senior prom with just a few things to my name: my eight-hundred-dollar savings, my high school degree coming in the mail, my Dad’s old beat-up Dodge Ram pickup, and my admission to the University of Texas to start undergrad.  Although both shifts were terrifying and overwhelming, I knew somehow—even in the middle of each of those painful transitions—that both were critical.  Necessary even.  Change gon’ come Mariah always says.  

She’s not wrong.  Most of the time.  Problem is she knows it.  She and her smart-mouth brother, Roddie.  Problem is, he’s sexy enough to forgive it.  And—before everything between he and I went to shit—Roddie was probably going to be my husband.  Well, second, as I’m currently still married to my first: Braden.  It’s a bit of a story.  

__________

“What the?” Mariah snaps me back to the present.  I’d slumped my head on the dash of her Jeep while waiting for her to come out.  Now she’s slammed the door, snapping me to, and she’s swiping furiously on her phone, her nose inches from it.  I slide my eyes over to see hers moving lightening-speed reading left to right as fast as she can.  Her whole body has stilled, and I don’t think she’s breathed in a minute.  

Something feels electric in the air as I sit up straight and turn to Mariah, her silence alarming me.

“What?” I ask, the question blunt and immediate.  Mariah keeps reading so I repeat it, more forcefully than I would have liked, but my heart rate has picked up.

“Mariah, what is it?”

“It’s my mom,” she says finally, apologetically.  “Roddie just took her to the hospital.”

“The hospital?!”

Mariah finally lifts her eyes from her phone to look at me.  Immediately I can tell she’s serious and that it is serious.  I haven’t checked my phone yet either, but I’m sure I’ll have a million texts from Roddie, too.  Even though we’re in the middle of the biggest fight we’ve ever had as a couple, some things trump a simple lovers’ quarrel.  Bitsy would be the ultimate one.  

We all love Mariah and Roddie’s mom, Bitsy.  She’s like everyone’s adopted grandmother.  She used to make her own homemade soaps—in the shape of farm animals—and sell them at a little farmer’s market stand.  Bitsy still makes chicken noodle soup anytime any one of us gets sick, the old-fashioned way with real chicken, carrots, egg noodles, the whole works.  It’s immensely healing.  I’m having trouble even trying to imagine tiny little Bitsy looking like a toddler absolutely swallowed in a hospital bed.  

But it doesn’t make any sense because she was totally fine.  Tutting and swatting us the last time we were all piled in the little kitchen of her apartment at Endurance, the assisted living facility where she lives, heating up leftovers together just last weekend. 

“Roddie said he stopped by Endurance to see her today to help her move that dresser like he promised, and she was woozy and acting kind of strange.  He checked some vitals, and her oxygen levels were low,” Mariah is scrolling and reading as fast as she can.  “Then she passed out trying to stand up too quickly, so he called 9-1-1.  They’re on their way.”  

“Jesus,” I breathe out as I see Mariah calling Roddie back.  “Passed out.  What?  Why?  How?”  I know she has no answers, but I also know Mariah knows I pepper questions when I get nervous.

“I can’t.  I don’t,” Mariah starts but doesn’t finish.  “He just …” she trails off as I hear Roddie’s deep baritone come over the line as Mariah listens intensely for a bit.  

“Oh God … ” her voice is deep and two octaves two low.  Although it kills me, I wait as Mariah listens.  

“I’m going to check her utility closet, hold on,” I hear Roddie say.

“Roddie found a pamphlet in her mail and a letter from the facility,” Mariah tells me quick.  “Looks like they had all twenty-four units at Endurance outfitted today with some ‘Airify’ filtration system,” Mariah says—while clacking on her phone, trying to Google the company I imagine.  

Then I hear it.  Mumbled through the phone.  But it was definitely an expletive from Roddie.  A harsh one at that.  Mariah hits speaker immediately and Roddie’s thick voice fills her Jeep.  

“Roddie, what?  For God sakes, what?  Just tell me.”  

“Rye, it’s an ozone generator.”  

The air in the Jeep stands still as Mariah pulls in a huge breath and screams at the top of her lungs.  

I look over to see The Snake and his egglets coming out of the courthouse—congratulating one another and clapping themselves on the back.  Assholes.  They turn at the sound of Mariah’s visceral shout and see the two of us, sitting disheveled, sweaty, and now panicked, and they smirk.  

Mariah throws her phone hard into my lap, leaps from the Jeep faster than I can think, and starts speed-walking over to them.  I hear Roddie still on speaker, now saying “Rye?  Callie?  Are you there?  Did you hear me?” but I leave him.  Roddie and I are not talking right now anyway.  I’m speed-walking behind Mariah trying to catch her, although speed-walking is not my specialty with my bionic leg.  She goes by Betty.  

The egglets all stop and watch Mariah approach contemptuously, their smug grins infuriating me.  When Mariah reaches Waltrip, the third, and she stretches her arm up high and plants a firm finger in this chest.  While Waltrip looks amused at first, I stop walking when I see his face shift to true fear and think to myself.  Get ‘em, Rye.  You fucking get ‘em.

“I find out Revyve is in any way connected to this Airify outfit.  Any.  Possible.  Way,” Mariah is digging her finger into his chest now as The Snake is flinching.  “I want you to mark my words: I will be the one to personally seize your private jet.  You got that?  Counselor?”

The Snake and all three egglets simply stand there, jaws dropped and I feel it.  This immense swell of pride in my chest knowing that woman, right there—all five foot three of her—is my best friend and law partner.  Hell, probably someday my sister.  My reaction to back her up is instinctual, primal. Mariah and I both feel the same way about every member of the eclectic, empowered army we have been building for two years that we call family.  Especially our niece, Cadence.  

Referring to their ridiculous Revyve writeoff, a 120-foot Lazzaro motor yacht aptly named AirMoney, I tell them, “I’ll be the one taking the yacht.”