Debts (5 page)

Craig stands up as well, and she’s both happy to have his tall, sturdy presence next to her in the stuffy, unbearable office and utterly humiliated that he’s witnessed all this. How is she going to have any credibility at work when he’s just seen her get spanked by an interviewee?

The snake has lain motionless throughout their interview, but as Miriam passes by the terrarium to get to the door, the python lifts its massive triangle head, its yellow slitted eyes rising to meet hers. Everyone in the room freezes as the snake slowly uncoils and rises higher in its glass cage, its muscles visibly bunching and sliding under its camouflage-colored skin. Keeping this creature in the office is akin to leaving a gun lying around—pure intimidation. She knows what Bender is trying to do, and damn it all, it’s working. Animals can’t be evil, and yet there’s something nasty in the python’s gaze that says, “I can take you.” It flicks its black, forked
tongue once, tasting the air.

“Oh,” says Bender in high tones of delight. “Genghis likes you.”

Miriam shudders before hurrying out the door and out of the awful house.

Walking back to the newspaper office, Miriam fumes, kicking savagely at acorns in her path. She’s in no mood to dissect the interview for teaching points. This is what the angel Gabriel meant. She wasn’t finished. Bender had to be stopped.

Craig walks next to her, hands in pockets, matching his long legs to her shorter strides, smart enough to stay silent. It’s unseasonably warm, with autumn only a few days away, but the day feels gloomy nevertheless. A sudden breeze kicks up a few fallen leaves, twirling them in the street against the gray lip of the sidewalk.

“Miriam,” Craig finally says, breaking the silence. “It’s not the first time a big man pushed someone around and it won’t be the last.” He sounds resigned and kind of sad.

“What would you know about being pushed around?” Miriam asks sullenly. She’s the closest thing to a mentor that Craig’s got at the paper and he just witnessed her getting her lunch handed to her. She wonders about all the poor souls who’ve come up before the judge for their trial and sentencing. There’s no way he was an impartial judge. How many innocent people were behind bars because of him? The unhappy mix of revulsion, intimidation, and bitter frustration coalesces in her belly and turns to pure anger. It had to be him. Bender was her new mission and he had to be stopped.

A low-slung old Chrysler with an unfortunate burnt-orange paint job and oversized rims creeps by, the bass thumping so loudly Miriam feels it vibrating in her chest. Craig looks up, narrows his eyes. The windows of the car are darkly tinted, so it’s impossible to see who’s inside. Craig must recognize the car because he sends it a curt nod. The car slows to a crawl on
the quiet street. Miriam waits for a window to roll down and the driver to call out a greeting, but the car stays even with them and the windows stay up. She shivers and walks a little faster, and Craig easily keeps up with her. The car speeds up ever so slightly, staying even.

Miriam looks at Craig, a question in her eyes.

“Neighbor,” he says flatly. With the windows so dark, she can’t make out anything inside, not even the basic outline of the driver. The fast rhythmic booms of the bass provide a threatening accompaniment to their walk. Miriam keeps glancing at the car and at Craig. He hasn’t taken his eyes off where the driver would be. After several uneasy moments, a car drives up behind the Chrysler and honks impatiently for it to move on. It takes another long, creepy moment before the driver steps on the gas and leaves them behind in a cloud of stinking exhaust fumes and burned oil. Craig keeps his eyes on the Chrysler as it turns and disappears, the thumping bass still audible.

“Don’t worry about him,” Craig says to Miriam’s unasked question. “He’s no one that matters.”

Miriam shivers again, despite the pleasant afternoon. Big men everywhere like to push people around. Maybe Craig has more experience than she thought.

“Are you up for an extracurricular project?” she asks. Craig looks at her, surprised at the change of topic. “We have a civic duty to stop that bastard Bender. Are you in?”

His answering smile warms her heart.

“I’m in.”

Natasha can’t bear the thought of another minute in Hamilton; the smugness of the place is galling. She downshifts to fourth in the electric blue Camaro she rented and blasts up the country road that leads back to Nashville. The Camaro is a sexy car, and the growling sound of eight cylinders is a perfect background for just about anything. When she upgraded to the sports car at the rental desk in the airport, she had visions of taking Emmett for a spin. With her heart and pride in shards, Natasha grudgingly still enjoys the ride, coasting up and down the rolling green hills, flying past country music mansions and prosperous farms. It’s a far cry from Florida, where everything’s flat and straight and the mansions only live on the water. With the windows down and the wind tangling her hair, she enjoys the dry breeze, so different from Florida’s moist air. It’s still technically summer, and in St. Pete’s, the temperature is up in the nineties. But here in Tennessee, she can feel how there’s cold in the near future, even on a warm day like today. There’s something thin about the air, something that says summer’s leaving.

Screw it
, she thinks, shifting up to fifth, the car leaping forward under her. Maybe her drunk of a brother is right. And her parents. And her sister Leni clearly has been thinking it for years. Even Sofia at the shop mentioned how anyone who didn’t get what a great thing Natasha was didn’t deserve her. Nine years was plenty of time to give someone to open their eyes. To figure out that they were perfect for each other.

She smiles an unhappy smile at the thought of Emmett freaking out over how to pay her back. She doesn’t regret it. If he turns his back on her, then he turns his back on everything she
can give him.

It feels excellent. in a weird, awful way, to break it all. To smash any affection he might still have for her and burn that bridge behind her. When she thinks of everything she’s done for him, everything she risked. She downshifts to third and the engine howls as the rpm needle hovers dangerously on red. It’s a special kind of pain when you try to give someone everything you have and they smile and say no thank you. Emmett’s words play back in her mind.
I’m telling you this as someone who used to care for you …

“Screw you, Emmett,” she says. “Have fun paying back the mortgage.”

She punches the radio on, flicks past all the country music until she finds a solid rock station playing the good stuff. Nine Inch Nails comes on and she screams along to the lyrics:
Head like a hole. Black as your soul. I’d rather die than give you control
. She’s flying by, seventy on a forty-five-mile-an-hour road, downshifting on the climbs, the throb of the engine sometimes drowning out the howling lyrics.

There should be no way to notice the man standing by the side of the road. She should be going so fast that he would be a smeary blur, but she sees his face clearly, the mussy, too-long hair, the slight smile, the amazing leather coat that looks buttery soft, the cowboy boots that fit right in on the outskirts of Nashville. Without conscious thought, Natasha slams on the brakes, leaving thick black skid marks behind her, and the car comes to a stop after a few hundred feet. As the engine growls unhappily in first gear, she pulls over onto the gravelly shoulder, her heartbeat thudding, hands gripping the wheel. Taking a deep breath, she uncoils herself from the car. There’s a large estate off to her right, the house barely visible, high on a manicured hill. A wrought-iron fence stretches in either direction as far as she can see.

He’s strolling toward her, hands in his pockets, hat tipped slightly back. He’s wearing
one of those big cowboy belt buckles and it has a familiar stylized flame on it. She smiles when she sees it. Little puffs of dust rise with every footfall, so that there’s a smoky sort of haze behind him. Her heart thumping pleasantly fast now, she walks to meet him halfway, leaving the car door open with the keys in the ignition and an annoying repetitive chime meant to remind her that she shouldn’t do either.

She hasn’t seen him in seven years. While the businesswoman side of her knows that seeing him again means he’s here to collect her part of their agreement, the stupid, fragile side of her wonders if maybe her broken heart called to him, and maybe, just maybe, he’s going to do something to fix it. The irony or symbolism or whatever this is isn’t lost on her. The first time she and Emmett broke up brought him to her. And this second, final break between them is bringing him back.

“Baby girl,” he says with that small smile on his lips. “You’ve grown up.”

Her breath hitches in her chest; her heart beats even faster. She’s almost forgotten what it’s like to be near him: that electric presence, the simultaneous sense of danger and excitement, how with him around,
anything
is possible. His eyes flit over her and she can feel every place on her skin that they touch.

“It’s been seven years.” Her voice sounds breathy.

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he says, and he seems so amused that it’s like an inside joke, but she’s on the outside.

A car drives by, kicking up dust and leaves, tangling her dress around her legs. She feels his appreciative gaze on her and knows she makes a tempting sight. It gives her confidence.

“So what brings you to these parts?” she asks, heavy on the humor.

He grins.

“The scenery, of course, and the small, inconsequential matter of a debt owed.” The grin vanishes as he pauses, tilting his head to study her from a different angle. “To me.”

She shivers.

“I know,” she says. “I waited years to hear from you.”

“Seven years,” he says mildly, but it’s like a rebuke, an unfair one since he’s known where she was the whole time. She stiffens at the implied criticism.

“Well, here I am,” she says sharply, and his gaze flares for a moment into something truly scary.

“You owe me,” he hisses, the charm, the grinning pleasure at her spunk and courage, gone. “Your debt to me has come due. Do you fulfill it now?”

His language is weird, all arcane and specific.

“You never told me what you want me to do,” she says. She hasn’t run a successful business for almost five years without learning you don’t sign before reading the contract.

“Will you fulfill your vow to me?” he asks again. This time his voice squeezes through a throat constricted by fury. His eyes glint red. Another car whizzes by them, unpleasantly close. Startled, she turns to look at the road, and when she looks back, he’s there, right in front of her. He closed the five-foot gap between them in a split second. He’s taller than she remembered, menacing and overwhelming. She takes a step back, but he grabs her, hands whipping out so fast she never sees them move. His skin burns hot on her bare skin and she gasps.

“Wilt thou fulfill thy vow to me?”

She’s scared in a way she’s never been scared before. She’d allowed herself to forget so much about him, to buff away the details that made her uncomfortable, to only remember the excitement and sense of possibility. But possibility was a two-edged sword—if anything was
possible, then nothing was safe.

“I won’t hurt my family,” she cries. “I told you that from the start!”

“You’ll hurt them,” he says with a sneer, “but on your own, not working for me.”

“I won’t hurt my friends. Not Emmett.” Maybe he had been waiting for them to have a falling-out, thinking she’d be willing to hurt him once they weren’t together—but she wouldn’t, not like that.

“You’re a fool,” he says, giving her a shake. “I don’t want him.” But a flicker in his eyes says that he’s lying.

“I won’t do anything bad to anyone that I know,” she says, tilting her chin up, her hands fisting by her sides. “That’s what I told you then and I’m sticking to it. So let’s hear what you want me to do.” She yanks her arms out of his grip and he lets her. She waits a moment, breathing hard, and then seeing he’s calm, she takes a step back, to get some space between them.

Two more cars fly by, leaving exhaust and fluttering leaves in their wake.

“Him,” he says, handing her a small photo. “I want him.”

She reaches for the picture reluctantly and glances at the face. Young. Good-looking. No one she knows.

“You want me to bring him to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says, wildly relieved. For a moment, she thought he meant something else entirely. “Tell me when, tell me where, he’ll be there, I promise.”

“Don’t be a moron,” he says. There’s no heat in his voice, only utter contempt. This isn’t personal, this is business. “There’s a gun under the seat of your car. It has a full magazine, but if
you need more than two bullets, you’re thicker than I thought. He’ll be running laps on the track at Greenbrier Park. Get him to walk with you into the woods, past the baseball diamond. Even you should be able to figure out what comes next. My only advice is not to talk too much beforehand and not to hesitate. Bring the gun right up to his forehead. Two shots. Done.”

She’s turned chalk-white.

“I—I—”

“Don’t cross me, little girl,” he says, leaning in until she feels his hot breath on her face. “Do. Not. Cross. Me. Understand? You owe me twenty-two million debts. Debts you will never get out of unless you buy back your freedom now.”

Her whole body trembles.

“And it’s not just your debt, is it? Where’d the money go? Who has it now?” The shaking grows worse. “Do you understand me now?”

She nods, tears sliding down ice-cold cheeks.

“So go,” he orders, slapping her hindquarters like you would on a recalcitrant horse. “He’ll be there in half an hour.”

Like an automaton, she slowly walks back to her car, her steps jerky and uneven.

“Oh, and baby girl,” he calls out, back to fond and sexy, “I watch you all the time. You know that, right? I know everything.”

She sits back in her car. The photo of the kid is on her lap. Caramel skin, tight blond curls, and golden brown eyes look back at her. She doesn’t know who this guy is or what he’s done. She reaches under her seat. Her questing fingers fumble around the tight space underneath the driver’s seat until they bump into something hard and smooth. She jerks her hand away like she’s been burned.