The Days of Noah: Book One: Conspiracy by Mark Goodwin

you might end up as famous as this Scopes guy.”
    “Lucky me.”
    Dinner was being served while the news was on. Noah found a seat next to Phil and waited for the tray to be placed in front of him. When it arrived, two boiled hot dogs, two slices of white bread, lukewarm mixed vegetables, and a piece of yellow cake with no icing sat on the plastic section tray.
    Noah stared at it.
    Phil wrapped one of his hotdogs in a piece of the bread. “You better eat. There won’t be anything else until 5:00 AM.”
    Noah pushed the tray toward Phil. “I should be bonding out soon. Do you want it?”
    Phil pulled the tray over and took the hotdogs. “At least eat your cake. It’s not too bad, and you’re not free until you walk out that door.”
    Noah nodded and picked up the cake.
    After dinner, a voice came over the intercom. “The following inmates have visitors. When you hear your name called, line up at the sally port door: Miller, Gibson, Mills, Dunn, Parker, Alvarez. If you didn’t hear your name, you don’t have a visitor.”
    Noah got in the line by the door and waited. Two guards appeared outside of the thick glass and metal door, a buzzer sounded, and the heavy door slid open.
    The first guard put on latex gloves, while the second gave instructions. “Line up with your hands against the wall.”
    Noah complied as the guard went from inmate to inmate performing a pat-down search.
    After the search, Noah followed the line to the visitor station. He found an empty booth and waited. Moments later, Cassie came to the glass separation booth and picked up the phone. “What happened to your head?”
    Noah held the receiver just close enough to hear. “The officer said that I hit my head on the desk after they tased me.”
    Cassie’s lip started to quiver. She swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
    “Did you call a bail bondsman?”
    Cassie wiped a single tear. “They hit you with resisting arrest and assault of a law enforcement officer in addition to the Community Core violation. I think they’re trying to make an example out of you. Your bond is $100,000. We need ten grand to bond you out. We’re short about $1,500. I sold off some stock from our Roth IRA. By the time the money from the sale is available to transfer out of the IRA account and it clears into our checking, it could be Thursday or Friday.”
    Noah bit his lip in anger. “He assaulted me! And I never resisted!”
    Cassie maintained a calm tone. “I know baby. I called the teachers union to get you a lawyer, but they can’t represent you because of the Community Core contract violation.
    “I spoke with Isaiah, and he has a friend that’s a lawyer. I called the lawyer, and he’s filing for a bond reduction hearing.  Either way, it could take a couple of days. Will you be all right?”
    “I can stick it out. The market looked like it was about to get pummeled this morning before I left for work. The news said it rebounded quite a bit, but I guess we still lost a lot on the stocks you had to sell.”
    Cassie smiled. “Not as much as we would’ve if the market hadn’t come back around. The proceeds of the sale and our savings will be completely gone once we bond you out. Do you think we should sell off some more so we have a little cash? Besides that, I think something is happening in the markets that they’re not telling us about. We could be in for a rough ride.”
    Noah tried to think. With everything else that was going on today, he wasn’t in the best position to be making a decision like this. “What’s the total value of the portfolio after today’s drop?”
    “Roughly $40,000.”
    “What do you think we should do?”
    “I think we should sell everything and take the cash. Since it’s a Roth IRA, we won’t pay any penalties. What happened today is a very bad sign.”
    Noah though for a minute. “How about we sell half and think about the rest at a later date.”
    “Okay, we can talk about the other half after