Double Bind by Kathryn Michaela Page A

said, as he poured the little pizza pockets onto a tray and shoved them into the oven.   “What brings my workaholic sister over on this unholy Monday morning.”   He picked up a shirt out of one of the piles on the counter and pulled it on over his head.
                Sarah decided not to point out that it was well past noon.   Her brother would only scoff about normal work hours.   “Dude, I got myself in big trouble.”
                He laughed a little crashing down sideways onto the floppy armchair across from Sarah.   “Since when are you ever not in trouble?”
                Sarah sighed and buried her face in her hands.   “No, not the funny kind of trouble this time.   I’m in big real trouble.”
                He shifted, sitting up a little to look curiously at her.   “What do you mean?   Did you get fired?”
                Sarah sighed, letting her hands fall.   “Getting fired is the least of my worries right now.   I’m about a week away from going to jail forever.”
                That caught his attention.   “What do you mean?   What did you do?”
                “Nothing!” Sarah said, then slouched back over.   “It’s just that the police think I did some terrible things.”
                “How terrible?” He asked.
                “Oh, just that I stole some chemicals from my employer and tried to poison the whole city with it.”
                “What?!” David said, jumping up to a stand. “They think you’re the Water Terrorist?”
                Sarah nodded miserably.   David leaned in, his face serious.   “You’re not the Water Terrorist, right?”
                Sarah glared at her brother.   “Of course not!” She punched him in the arm.   “Don’t be a complete idiot.”
                “Okay, okay.” he said, throwing his hands up. “I just had to make sure.”
                She rolled her eyes.   “You really think that if I did something like that I would get myself caught?”
                He looked at her, grinning a little.   “Well, I had hoped that I had taught you better than that, but -” he shrugged.   “You never know.”
                She punched him again.   “Thank you for assuming that I’m an idiot.”
                He shrugged, heading over to the far wall which hid his secret hacking room.   “Hey, what are brothers for?”
                Sarah stood to follow him.   “So, as you probably guessed, I need your help.”
                “Yeah, yeah,” he said, triggering the wall.   It swung open revealing his little tech grotto.   “Heaven forbid my sister visit me when she doesn’t need my help hacking the world.”
                Sarah raised an eyebrow, slipping in after him so that he could turn on the weird defenses he had set up.   “I brought you pizza pockets.”
                “Oh!” he said, darting back into the other room.   “I almost forgot.”
                Sarah tucked herself into his guest chair, fiddling with one of his headsets while she waited for him.   She would have liked to experiment with some of his custom computers, but if she even touched a keypad, he would have her head.   She knew better than that.   He returned with the entire box worth of pizzas piled high on a plate. Then he plunked himself in front of the computer screen ready to hack.
                It took Sarah a few minutes to convince him that he shouldn’t hack straight into the police files to find out what they had.   She knew what they had.   They were positive that she was guilty, so they had a whole bunch of evidence that pointed to her.
                She needed something that pointed away from her.   She even knew how.   David reluctantly agreed to log onto her ebay account,