up so your sister and her kids would be taken care of after all this is over…”
Riel tensed. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, once we bring charges, we’ll seize all his assets. That would include anything in his wife’s name or under the names of any of his companies. His mother will face charges with him, so anything in her name wouldn’t be safe, either. I’m not sure there’s any way around that.”
Riel swallowed, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “So Lizette will be bankrupt. She’ll have nothing. She’ll still be rid of that fucktard, but I’m not sure she’ll really thank me for it.”
“There are other ways.”
Riel put her hands down. “How?”
“Get him to put the money in someone else’s name, someone not connected with this stuff at all. Then, when legal gets a hold of this case, we’ll have an easier time keeping that money from being seized. You’ll just have to make sure your sister doesn’t use it to hire him a lawyer or help him any other way, because they’ll figure it out quick in that case.”
She thought of her sister, pale and miserable, stuck in a horrible marriage. But still, she loved Isaias. Would she try to help him after he was arrested? She clenched her hands into fists. “I’ll make sure she won’t,” Riel said.
Catherine nodded, smiling warmly.
The real problem would be convincing Isaias to put the money in someone else’s name. He’d be suspicious that she was up to something, afraid she’d run off, that she was playing him. And whose name would the money be connected to, anyway? Someone not connected with this, but who wouldn’t take the money and run themselves. She chewed her cheek so hard she tasted blood, while Catherine picked up a handful of fries, fixing her with a stare that Riel might have called motherly, if she could remember what a motherly stare looked like.
“Listen,” the agent said. “You’re brave, and smart, and tough, and you’ve got the U.S. Government on your side. We’re going to figure this out, okay?”
Riel nodded. “Yeah. We’ll figure it out. Thanks.”
***
Riel tossed around, tangling herself up in the scratchy blankets. The streetlights leaked through the curtains and stained the ceiling a watery orange, throwing every bead of the popcorn ceiling into high relief. Riel had memorized every pattern in that ceiling, the slack-jawed faces, weirdly-shaped animals, and misspelled words hidden in the smattering of dots. Her brain felt like dry toast. The alarm clock shone a dull red, turning over the minutes one by one. It was two fourteen in the morning.
All the potential conversations she could have with Isaias to convince him to give her the money for her sister rolled through her mind, each of them fragmenting toward the end as they broke down under the pressure of logic. There was no explanation she could give him for the request that wouldn’t invite dangerous questions.
She tossed over again. She wasn’t even getting any new ideas at this point. Her brain was stuck in a loop, wandering down the same well-worn pathways. If only there were some way to transfer the money from Lizette’s name to another without him knowing.
The relentless march of minutes dragged toward dawn, grey light dimming the streetlamp’s glare, before she sat up, flinging off the blankets. There was only one way she could think of. It was dangerous, but she’d have to try something.
The clock said six twenty-two. She grabbed her phone from the bedside table, hesitating. Her sister would probably be up now, Isaias still sleeping.
But what if she wasn’t up? What if Lizette answered the phone still in bed, a groggy Isaias right next to her?
And what if she told her husband that Riel had called her? Did she really love him? Would she be loyal, or was she just sticking around because she had nowhere else to go?
When they’d been girls, Riel and Lizette had been very close. Their parents were gone a lot, always working, and it was just the two of them together, taking care of each other, watching out for each other. Then, when their parents had died, they’d really only had one another. It had been them against the world.
Until Isaias came into the picture. Lizette had latched onto him like a life raft. He was their ticket out of the horrible poverty that threatened to claim them, the hunger and uncertainty that gnawed at them every night, the worry that the government would come and