Jake's Biggest Risk

“Were you scared?” he asked.

Jake shrugged carelessly. “Not really.”

“I bet they could bite me in half.”

“Maybe not in half, but they’ve got really powerful jaws and can drag a grown man under—”

“Danny, I’m done. Can you take the laundry over to our house?” Hannah interrupted hastily.

“Okay,” Danny agreed, though he looked torn.

When he’d clattered down the steps from the sunroom, Hannah turned to Jake. “Look, I appreciate your being friendly to my son, but he’s prone to nightmares. Besides, a child his age doesn’t need to know the details of how a crocodile could kill him.”

“Hey, I saw my first wild croc when I was four,” Jake said defensively, though he also seemed to be embarrassed. “It never gave me nightmares. And after that we spent several months on an African savannah while Josie photographed a lion pride.”

“Josie?”

“My mother.”

“Okay, fine. That was her decision. But I’m worried about Danny waking up at two in the morning, screaming bloody murder because he thinks a crocodile has climbed into his bed.”

Jake winced. “Sorry. I don’t know anything about kids.”

“I understand that, but please keep in mind that certain things shouldn’t be talked about in front of an impressionable child. Besides, I bet you did have nightmares—you just don’t remember.”

“If I did, they obviously didn’t scar me for life.”

Hannah clamped her mouth shut. Being scarred for life was a matter of opinion. Jake seemed to lead a solitary existence where taking high-risk photographs was more important than human contact. Perhaps she was biased, but even the greatest photograph in the world wasn’t worth dying to get.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d7960f4d-83ac-5d26-aacd-94fc31605276)

IT WAS A QUIET Friday afternoon at Luigi’s, and Barbi opened one of the books Hannah had given her to study. She chewed her lip, knowing she should give as much attention to math and proper English as other subjects, but history was a lot more interesting than adverbs and dangling participles.

“Good, you’re studying,” Luigi said with approval. He was a nice boss. If she could make enough money working for him to live on, it wouldn’t be so important to get her GED.

Wrong, whispered a voice inside her head. She couldn’t keep working for Luigi; she had to get out of Mahalaton Lake. When her father wasn’t in jail for drunk and disorderly behavior or boozing it up at the bar, he was coming over to her place, demanding money or getting maudlin over her mother’s death.

She tried not to carry more than twenty bucks in her wallet, but it helped to have a little cash because Vic got ugly if she didn’t have any...especially when she’d been delivering pizza. Her father knew she ought to have tips on delivery nights, though he didn’t know she’d started leaving most of them at the restaurant until she could get to the bank the next morning.

She tried to say no when he wanted money, but he’d just knock her down and go through her purse. She might be able to press charges against him, only how could she do that to her father?

And to be honest, she was scared to death of him.

Barbi looked at the bruises where Vic had grabbed her wrist the night before—he was a mean drunk. She shoved her bangles over the marks, her heart aching more than her sore wrist. It hadn’t always been like this. Before her mom died, Vic had laughed a lot, worked steadily and only drank an occasional beer. But it was as if something inside him had broken when they’d buried her mother. Hell, he wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt when Rachael Paulson died; he didn’t have to dive into a vodka bottle and stop being a dad because of it.

Sighing, she turned a page of the history book. It was the section on the American Revolution and she needed to memorize the dates. Learning the information wasn’t the problem, it was having her mind go blank when she took the test.