Page 167 of Callan

“If you win, my winning chances, statistically speaking, will drop.”

He laughs.

“I’m sure you’ll win. You do it first.”

“Okay. All right.”

A few seconds pass.

“Speaking of winning,” I say, using my nail to scratch off the panels. “I guess my chances of working for you have vanished?” I murmur, looking down.

My first ticket is a non-winning one, so I toss it to the side.

I lift my gaze to him.

His eyes are soft, harboring mixed feelings.

He rests his elbows on the table, his broad shoulders filling his soft top well.

“Yeah. I won’t be needing your services anymore.”

He tilts his gaze down, making me focus on the scratch-off tickets again, and also distracting me and pulling me away from the topic of working for him.

Who am I kidding?

That’s never been real work, but the money was great, and I had a knack for gathering information for him.

Sadly, no longer running chores for him is not good news. And now that I know that for sure, I’m positive the money that I’ve got will soon be gone.

Because of that, I’ll need to be more proactive about getting that job.

Maybe I should call that woman. Mrs. Goodman.

Follow up with her so she knows I’m still interested, and I’m not taking anything for granted.

I’m down to my last scratch off ticket.

“Enough. You do yours. I’m not holding out hope that I can still win,” I say, laying my hand flat on the lottery ticket.

“All right.”

He pulls out a coin and a one hundred bill from inside his jacket.

“You do it for me. And this is your pay.”

“You said you didn’t need my services anymore.”

“When it comes to gathering information for me,’ he says with humor.

I pick up his scratch-off tickets and go through them.

“This is bad,” I comment. “You’re not winning because of me.”

He flashes a smile.

“Don’t be so sure about it.”

I work on the fourth one, and my eyes slowly widen.

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