Deceived Read Online Free PDF Page A

anticipate when it was coming. When he’d try to get her. His eyes would get mean.
    Arty’s eyes had that same look now. At least she thought they did.
    Nobody does that to me.
    In her body, every muscle tensed and flamed, as if she were a storehouse of fireworks with a torch thrown in, the hissing starting as the first rocket ignites.
    Then, explosion. Blind pinwheel rage and Roman candle fear.
    Her eyes closed. She felt her hands shoot out in front of her. Her right-hand fingers scraped his cheek. Her left pounded his chest.
    She pulled back, readied another strike. The faintest part of her warned her to hold up, to stop.
    She hesitated and opened her eyes.
    Arty wasn’t there.

    “Where you been, MacDonald?”
    Slezak was the last person Mac wanted to see. Especially in that made-myself-at-home position, waiting by his door. Slezak loved to wait. Or show up knocking when you least expected it.
    Mac hadn’t seen him as he pulled his pickup into the driveway. The little guest house behind the church was Mac’s only home now. Pastor Jon waived rent in return for duties around the grounds and general fix-it tasks for the members. No, it wasn’t much at all, but it was Mac’s place. His, but not completely. Not as long as he fell under the jurisdiction of Gordon Slezak, parole agent for the California Department of Corrections.
    “I need to get inside,” Mac said. His headache pounded like a drill bit in granite.
    Slezak said, “Let’s get this over with quick, and I can be on my way.”
    “Just let me get something, okay?”
    “Drugs again?” Slezak said. “Turn around.”
    “My head — ”
    “Turn around or I’ll tag you for resisting, huh?”
    Mac turned and put his hands on top of his head. Maybe if he squeezed his own skull he could keep the pain from overtaking him.
    Slezak frisked him. Hard and slow, taking his sweet time.
    “Empty your pockets,” Slezak said.
    “Please.”
    “Now. The more you talk, the less I like it.”
    Mac pulled a flat leather wallet from his left front pocket, then untucked the pocket completely. He had a plastic comb in his back left, and two quarters, a dime, and a penny in his right front. He already had his keys in his hands.
    “Just hand ’em over,” Slezak said.
    Mac, with knots tightening behind his eyes, tossed the stuff on the chipped flagstone slab in front of the door. And knew he’d made a big mistake.
    “Oh, now that is going on the report,” Slezak said. “Yes, indeedy. Attitudinal adjustment is slow in coming, huh?”
    “My head . . .”
    “Sure. On the ground.”
    This was worse than prison. There, they didn’t care enough about you to single you out, as long as you knew the rules. You could play by the book and they’d leave you alone.
    On parole, it was your PO that decided the form and texture of your life. Daniel Patrick MacDonald had drawn the short straw and gotten Gordon Slezak, a middle-aged man who seemed to be in a prison of his own, venting on other people as his only escape.
    Just be still, Mac told himself. Lie facedown in the dirt as Mr. Gordon Slezak goes through your wallet. Pray that you don’t do anything stupid.
    He prayed.
    “You got a job yet?” Slezak asked.
    Mac turned his face to the side. “Yeah.”
    “You didn’t tell me. That’s great news, huh? Whereabouts?”
    “Odd jobs.”
    “Be more specific.”
    “For the church.”
    “Oh yeah, the church. You’re sticking that one out pretty good, huh? Got ’em snowed, do you?”
    Mac said nothing.
    “What’re they gonna say when you up and walk out, huh? Which you’ll do. Then you can go pull a con somewhere else, where I’m not there to call you on it. But they’ll know. They’ll contact me.”
    Pause.
    “You’re clean here,” Slezak said. “Your wallet’s got moths.” He laughed. “Up and at ’em. Let’s take a look inside, huh?”
    He had to let Slezak inside. In California they made you waive your Fourth Amendment rights when you got out of the