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later.”
    â€œSee ya,” Cookie said as she closed the door.
    Serenity knew Cookie was only joking about her clumsiness, still it made her heart sting to be teased about it. She pulled her hood over her head as she carefully walked down the steps and headed to her house across the street.
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    Homer signed out of the chat room and stood up. He looked out his bedroom window and rubbed the back of his neck as he watched Serenity walk past his house. The skinny jeans she wore clung tightly to her long slender legs, and he estimated her to be around thirteen or fourteen years old—the same age as the girl he’d been chatting online with earlier.
    Homer liked meeting young girls in chat rooms, and out of all the chat rooms he visited, teen2teen.com was his favorite. He could be anybody he wanted to be, and they never questioned him. Sometimes, he would send a picture of a handsome seventeen-year-old boy to the girls and tell them it was him. Other times, he pretended to be a young girl who was the same age as they were.
    It was all in good fun and the bonus came when some of the young girls agreed to meet him at different locations. They were so gullible. Or were they? Homer believed some of the girls knew just what they were doing and were just playing the game along with him. No one could be that naïve, he thought, teenager or not.
    Like the young girl he had just finished chatting with—the picture he’d sent her had been of a boy clearly older than the eighteen years Homer had said he was. Still, the girl in all her eagerness had believed him without question. Homer was looking forward to meeting this one. He had special plans for her.

Chapter Ten
    Shari looked at Cookie as she closed the door behind Serenity. “Do you have any homework?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œIs it done?”
    Cookie shrugged.
    Shari shook her head. “What does that mean?”
    â€œI’m gonna do it.”
    â€œUh, excuse me. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
    â€œI’m gonna do it right after dinner, Ma,” Cookie said as she headed for the kitchen.
    â€œAll right,” Shari said in a tone that implied harsh consequences if Cookie didn’t get it done.
    Shari turned her attention to her husband who was scrolling through job postings on a career Web site. She knew his focus was not on the conversation she and Cookie had been having. At that moment, she knew his focus was on finding a full-time job in his field as an alcohol and other drug abuse counselor.
    Funding for the Christian-based treatment center where Tony worked had been decreased. As a result, the center had to let some employees go. Many of the counselors were kept, but their hours had been decreased and Tony was one of them. He stayed on because a part-time job was better than no job at all. But their bills were piling up, and he needed to start looking for full-time employment.
    Tony’s hope was to find a counseling position with another Christian-based treatment center. As a born-again Christian and a member of the First Temple Church, he wanted to continue sharing the Word of God with those dealing with addiction. And a counseling position at a Christian-based treatment center would allow him to freely do so.
    Tony knew that an addict could not fight the demons of addiction alone, and he didn’t want his clients to stop at the recovery mark. He wanted them to be permanently delivered—just as he had been. He could testify that God was the ultimate deliverer because He had delivered him from an addiction to crack cocaine twenty-two years ago. And he had been clean ever since.
    As is the case with any addict, it had not been Tony’s intention to become one. He didn’t have a sad story to tell. There were no horrific episodes of child abuse, no neglect, or extreme poverty. There was nothing he could blame for the poor choices he’d made other than just that—the choices he’d