The Cartel Lawyer by Dave Daren (ebook reader below 3000 TXT) 📕

“Are you here to get me out?” Camilo asked as he finally looked up at me, and I saw a glimmer of hope spark in his eyes.

Chapter 11

“I can’t get you out just yet,” I told Camilo.

My heart squeezed in my chest as I saw the little spark of hope in his eyes die away to be replaced with a dull lifelessness.

“Then why are you even here?” the young teen snapped.

The guard who had brought him in was leaning against the gray cement wall a few feet away. He looked relaxed, but his eyes scanned the room for any signs of trouble, and when he heard my client’s tone, his attention snapped back over to our table. The wiry guard suddenly kicked off the wall as his right hand went to the handle of the club he had at his waist.

I lifted a hand to wave him off, and though he narrowed his eyes, he relented when I shook my head. I didn’t like the way he’d reached for his weapon so fast, or the way he’d pressed his lips together when he’d given in. It was like he was upset he hadn’t been able to strike the fourteen year old boy across from me. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he resumed his leisurely position on the wall, but I wondered what would happen once I left.

There were a few other teens who were meeting with visitors, and I noticed how unlike teenagers they all behaved. They kept their voices low, and they sat across from their visitors with their hands in their laps. I saw one gray-haired woman reach toward the boy she was talking to, but he kept his hands in his lap, his eyes downcast, and he simply nodded whenever she said anything, and tears silently slipped down his sunken cheeks.

My attention shifted back to the teen who sat at the table with me. His shoulders were slumped in on themselves like the other boy, and though he didn’t cry, he didn’t have that cocky grin that he had worn every other time I’d seen him. He hadn’t been there long enough to lose much weight, but exhaustion rolled off of him as if he hadn’t allowed himself to sleep since he’d arrived.

It was possible that Judge Williams had no idea what it was like at the Everson Juvenile Center, but no one was above corruption, and his records had shown he favored the terrible place. And then there were the longer sentences he’d started dishing out. None of it made any sense unless the judge was getting a kickback.

Scouring the judge’s financials suddenly moved to the top of my to-do list. If the jurist was indeed receiving payments for every child he sent to the facility, I would make sure he was disbarred, lose his seat on the bench, and maybe even find himself in prison.

“How are things going?” I asked as I pulled my thoughts away from the corrupt magistrate.

“How do you think?” Camilo scoffed.

There was a flash of his previous sass, but it was half-hearted and didn’t have the usual bite that came from the teen’s confidence. He tried to stifle a yawn, though he caught it too late, and his mouth opened wide. He swiped angrily at the few tears that slipped out of his red-rimmed eyes.

My heart squeezed in my chest as he pressed his lips together and gritted his teeth against the sob that tried to crawl up his throat.

“I need you to tell me everything that’s happened since you got here,” I told him with a glance toward the guard as I pulled the pen and pad of paper from my briefcase.

The guard was far enough away that he wouldn’t hear everything we said, as long as Camilo could keep his voice low and his tone nonthreatening.

“Why the fuck do you care?” the dark-haired teen growled low enough that no one else could hear.

“Because I’m going to get you out of here,” I told him. “And the more information I have, the better.”

“Fine,” the teen sighed, and his body hunched in on itself.

I needed to get him out before he broke, and I was surprised to realize that I missed the cocky young man that had squared off with his intimidating father and put his feet up on the table like he owned the place.

“Go ahead,” I said with a nod with my pen poised over my pad of paper.

“It’s just juvie,” Camilo hedged with another glance to the wiry guard. “Of course, it sucks.”

“What are the rooms like?” I asked.

“There’s four of us to a room,” he told me.

“Four?” I muttered. There had been two bunk beds in each room that I’d seen online, but I had hoped those were fake.

“Yeah,” the teen lifted one shoulder. “They’re squeezed in on the walls to the left and the right. It’s bunk beds, just like we’re at camp or something. And the mattresses are thin as hell. They practically fall through the bars of the beds.”

“Okay,” I said as I took notes.

The pictures online were apparently accurate, though I hadn’t paid much attention to the mattresses. I knew that the cells in juvie were roughly the same size as a cell in a regular prison, and to fit four teen boys into one of the small rooms was unacceptable. The courts had cleared out prisons and shut down jails for trying to cram four adult men into the same limited area.

“I don’t think I’ve been able to sleep more than an hour,” Camilo huffed as he ran a hand through his short black hair. “One of the guys snores so loud it rattles the bars on the windows.”

“So you have a window?” I prodded.

“Sure,” the teen said with