Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
I know we’re talking about more than the cliff right now, but I’m too distracted by the distance to the water to give the subtexts due consideration.
There’s no point in telling her I want to be with her if I’m about to die.
On the other hand, she’s right—worth it.
As I reach for her hand, a familiar voice calls my name. It has to be a hallucination, except my gut tells me it isn’t. The blood in my veins turns ice cold as Matt Lyman clambers up the cliff path.
“Hey, loser.” He looks down at his professional attire. “Looks like I wore the wrong kind of suit.” He leers at Cricket. “I’m a big fan of yours though.”
I move to stand in front of Cricket, effectively blocking his view. “How did you find me here?”
“Easy. I followed the scent of failure, plus some dude named Patrick pointed me in this direction.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Came to see what was so amazing about this place that you’d miss a charity auction with your best clients. You missed an excellent chance to hobnob with the senior partners.” He cocks his head, angling for another view of Cricket. “Now I see why.”
The moment with Cricket is ruined, but I’m more concerned about my whole future being ruined. Matt is a snake in the grass. If he’s here, it’s for a shady reason. Best to ascertain his intentions and fast.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” Matt asks.
“Matt Lyman, this is Courtney Abernathy. Courtney owns the camp. Matt is a work colleague.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cricket says, but there’s zero warmth in her voice. In fact, she sounds ready to toss Matt off the cliff. I wouldn’t stop her.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your private swim lesson,” Matt says. “I expected to find you tossing dwarves or whatever nerds do at camp.”
Cricket bristles. “We wouldn’t do that.” She swipes a towel off the ground and wraps it around herself. “It’s inhumane.”
As hard as it is to tear myself away from her, I know it’s for the best. I have to put as much distance between them as possible. Patrick’s presence is bad enough for Cricket. Matt would be worse.
Much worse.
“Why don’t we go somewhere less dangerous and talk?”
“That’s a good idea,” Matt says. “It’s unlikely the firm has liability insurance for this kind of thing.”
The moment we’re out of Cricket’s earshot, I go on the attack. “What are you really doing here?”
“Like my old man says, when one door closes, kick it until you break it off the hinges.”
Or kick it until it becomes as unhinged as you are .
“This place is ridiculous, dude,” he continues. “I saw a guy dressed like a Viking playing cornhole. So many losers gathered in one spot. It’s like the wall of the high school gym all over again.”
I escort him to my cabin before one of the campers overhears his insensitive remarks. “They’re not losers, Matt. They’re actually really great people.”
Matt looks me over with a grunt. “Riggieri was right. You don’t have the stones for this.”
“Wait. Riggieri sent you to check up on me?” I close the cabin door behind us.
“It was my idea, but he ate it up and left no crumbs. Why do you think I drove up so fast? LandStar says jump. I put on my anti-gravity boots and go for launch.”
“Well, I’m sorry you drove all the way here for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. I figured I’d help you out.
We’re colleagues, right?” He glances out the window as two campers in costume step into view, engaged in a foam sword fight.
“Dude, nerd camp is so lame. She’d be better off running this place as a furry camp.
She’d make bank with all those perverts humping each other. ”
“I’ll pass along your idea.”
“Don’t bother. Between the lake and the acreage, LandStar can develop the hell out of this property.” His eyes narrow. “Why do you have a Chucky doll? Is that like your teddy bear?”
Oh shit. I should’ve known better than to invite him inside.
I hear a thump, and the cabin wall vibrates, shifting my thin mattress. I hurry outside to make sure the LARPers are okay.
A cloaked wizard dusts himself off. “Sorry about that,” Ben says. “Dodging a spell.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Nothing two ibuprofen and a gallon of water can’t fix.”
Matt appears beside me. “Where’s your magic wand, old-timer?”
Ben limps away without a word.
“I think you’ve insulted enough people today. You should probably hit the road before rush hour. The highway gets backed up.” Not that I mind the image of Matt stuck in a horrific traffic jam, but I am desperate to get him far away from the camp in the shortest time possible.
“Sure thing.”
Okay, that was far too easy. I also don’t like the smirk on his face, like he’s harboring a secret he can’t wait to spring on me.
“It’s easy to get lost. I’ll walk you to the parking lot.” Since it’s the only way to insure he actually leaves. “Seriously, what did you think you would accomplish by coming here?”
“I originally planned to grab a few soil samples to take back with me, maybe doctor them a smidge, enough to shut down the camp. LandStar can afford amelioration, but the nerds can’t. Riggieri scoops up the land for a song.”
“So your plan as a lawyer was to lie, cheat, and steal in order to give our extremely important client something he wants but has no business owning?”
“Give me a break, Chuck. Most of our clients have no business owning anything. It’s the capitalist way.” His smile sets off alarm bells. “But then I discovered something better. Something that doesn’t even involve a little well-placed fraud.”
My stomach lurches as he dangles a familiar document in front of my face. “Where did you find this?” It’s a futile question, given I know exactly where he found it.
“And here I thought we ran a title search,” he says.
“We did.” I stop walking and snatch the paper from his hand.
“How did we miss a judgment lien? A tax lien I can almost understand—sometimes those can be hard to identify, but this…” He motions to the document. “This is exactly the leverage we wanted, and you’ve been sitting on it this whole time.”
“I haven’t. I only found it recently.”
“And instead of sending a screenshot directly to Riggieri, you decided to hide it under your mattress? What was your plan, dude?”
I fully intended to chuck the document in a bonfire and not mention it to another living soul, but I haven’t had the chance to do it without being seen. Knowing the campers, at least one of them would be curious about my kindling. Not that I can admit any of that to Matt.
A projectile flies toward us and pelts Matt right between the eyes, quickly followed by a second one that hits the breast pocket of his jacket.
Matt eyes them with vengeful fury. “What in the hell was that?”
“Foam-tipped arrows. No harm, no foul.”
“This suit is Armani, dude.”
I move to dust the dirt from his jacket, but he smacks my hand away.
“I think you’ve lost your mind since you’ve been here, you know that? And you’re going to lose the partnership too.”
Cricket stifles a laugh as she jogs toward us. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?” Her question seems more directed to me.
“I’m fine.” Matt’s nose scrunches. “Are you wearing elf ears?”
“No, they’re naturally pointy.”
Now it’s my turn to stifle a laugh. I realize my mistake when I notice Matt’s scowl. Cricket and I have just done the worst possible thing to a fragile guy like Matt Lyman—we’ve bruised his ego. His shoulders square and his jaw tightens.
“You want to know why Chuck is really here? He doesn’t care about your nerd shit. He was using you to get dirt for his client. He’s been acting as a spy for someone who plans to tear this place down to the studs.”
Glaring, Cricket folds her arms. “I already know all that.”
“And now that he’s delivered that pertinent information, he’s leaving,” I interrupt.
“Like hell I am.” Matt grabs the rolled-up document from my back pocket. “If you two are so tight, then I guess he already told you about this too.” He hands the document to Cricket, and I brace myself for impact.
Her expression waffles between rage and agony as she reads. “I’m going to ask you to leave now, Mr. Lyman.”
“You shouldn’t have come in the first place,” I tell him.
“Unlike you, our client’s best interest is my top priority,” Matt shoots back.
“Leave now before I call Chief Johnson,” Cricket says. “His granddaughter will be here in approximately one week, and I know he won’t be comfortable with grown men trespassing on camp property.”
“Kicking me off your land won’t make that lien go away,” Matt says. “Hope you have a good lawyer, unless you’d rather save your money and sell to LandStar now.”
My teeth clench. “Matt.” My warning tone drives him to walk backward, out of reach.
“The countdown is on, Thorpe,” he yells from a safe distance. “If you don’t take that to LandStar, then I will.”
I’m torn between racing after Matt to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid and staying here to convince Cricket I won’t do anything stupid. Rock meet hard place.
“What’s the lien?” Cricket asks. Her voice is so small, so unlike her, that my throat closes up at the sound.
“It’s when another party?—”
“No, I know what a lien is. I’m asking what this lien is, specifically.” She shakes her head. “Why didn’t I know about it? No one’s ever come to enforce it.”
“It appears to have been misfiled. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“If it was misfiled, where did you find it?”
“This copy was in your office. I found it when I put Chucky in your drawer. I wasn’t there to snoop, I swear. The paper was jammed underneath the files. You should really have a better organizational system, by the way. The files aren’t even alphabetical.”
If looks could kill, I’d be a pillar of salt.
“Strike that last comment from the record, Your Honor,” I say, desperate to keep things from spiraling out of control, although I know in my gut that kayak has launched.
She glances at the date. “This is from almost five years ago. Right before my dad died.”
“He may not have been aware of it.”
“I don’t recognize the name of the lien holder.”
“It seems to have been an unsecured creditor. Your father owed them money and failed to pay.”
“Shocker,” she says without a trace of irony. “And they were able to put a lien on the camp?”
I nod. I hate this conversation with every fiber of my being. I’d hoped to avoid it in perpetuity.
“If it happened five years ago and they haven’t enforced the lien, what does that mean?”
“In this case, there’s a five-year statute of limitations, which runs out in twenty-one days.”
“Twenty-one more days and it would’ve been null and void.” Tears cling to her lashes, and I long to kiss each one away. I hate this for her.
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t afford to pay it off.”
“I know.”
“What happens now? You take this to Riggieri, and he assumes the lien and enforces it?”
“Do you think I would do that to you?”
“You were holding on to it for a reason, weren’t you? You could’ve destroyed it when you found it, but you kept it, which means you hadn’t decided what to do.”
“I was planning to destroy without anyone knowing about it. I had no intention of telling Riggieri.”
“But were you tempted?”
I choose my words carefully. “I considered it, but only for a nanosecond. I don’t even think it crossed the threshold of a full second.”
“Why not? This promotion is important to you. You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“It’s not as important as you.”
She bites her bottom lip. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I swear I wasn’t keeping it a secret to use against you. I didn’t want you to worry. I planned to burn it when no one was around, but someone always was, and then I got distracted by you?—”
I realize instinctively it was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes pop.
“ You’re blaming me? Go on then. You don’t want Matt to get the credit for this. Go home and get your trophy or your blue ribbon, or whatever the reward is for screwing me over. I know how important external validation is to you.”
Ouch. Bullseye. Her words wound me exactly as she intended.
“I was only trying to help. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Cricket.”
“I’ve heard that one before.” She plucks off her ear extensions and stuffs them in her pocket. “So all the fun and games, none of that was an excuse to access my files?”
“Not a single one.” I make a show of crossing my heart.
“Hope to die?” she asks.
“For the sake of the idiom, yes. If I’d intended to use it against you, I would’ve left the day I discovered the lien. I stayed because of you.”
“Then why were you hiding the document from me? Why not show me?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know, including you.”
“Why? Do you think I’m too stupid to understand the consequences of my dad’s actions?”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry. I can see the pressure you’re under here, trying to keep this camp afloat and the community glued together without losing your own home in the process.
You ease other people’s burdens.” I pause, realizing the truth of my next statement.
“I wanted to be the hero who eases yours.”
She cocks her head and studies my face. “You have no idea how much I want to believe you.”
I grip her shoulder. “Then do it. Don’t let Patrick or your father or anybody else convince you that you will always be betrayed by men. That isn’t who I am, Cricket. I promise.”
“Like you said, Charlie, maybe I don’t really know you at all.” Storm clouds gather across her face. “I think it’s best if you leave now. I’ll send you a partial refund for the remaining days.”
All the air leaves my lungs. I am absolutely, unequivocally crushed. And yet I know I deserve this. Like she said, if I were firmly on her side, then I should’ve taken the document to her the moment I found it, instead of trying to handle it behind her back. Cricket doesn’t need protection.
As though reading my mind, she adds, “And for the record, I don’t need a hero. Women like me rescue themselves.”
With those parting words, she swivels on her heel and marches toward her office. It isn’t lost on me that she doesn’t ask me to return the document. She’s literally leaving the final decision in my hands.
As much as it pains me, I drag myself to my cabin to pack my things.