Chapter 16
Mary
The Uber smells like gym socks left in a hot car; probably just me. The driver’s got one AirPod in, arguing with a podcast about aliens or crypto or both. I don’t care. I’m too busy counting my regrets.
I’m sweating through my blouse before we even hit Twain. The sky’s not fully awake yet, but the heat already feels personal. Like it knows I’m guilty.
The Uber pulls into a cracked lot, gravel crunching like bones under tires.
The laundromat looks exactly how you’d picture a murder scene from a low-budget indie film.
Faded brick. Neon sign that says WA_ _ in flickering pink.
Windows boarded. Dumpster overflowing. One twitchy streetlight doing its best impression of a seizure.
“Ain’t nobody out here. Place looks like where people go to get ghosted—permanently.” The driver glances at the building, then at me in the rearview. “You sure this is it?”
He’s squinting now. One hand still on the wheel, the other scratching at a patchy beard like he’s debating calling someone about this later.
“Yep.” I fake a cheery smile. “Just your average 7 AM work meeting. You know how it is.”
He nods slowly. Then: “Nah.”
I’m still smiling, but in my head, I’m weighing the logistics of asking him to turn around. Would it be weird to say, “Actually, can you take me home? I changed my mind.”?
Probably.
He gives me a thumbs-up like that’s a normal send-off and turns back to his steering wheel. Doesn’t wait for me to get out. Just unlocks the door and lets the moment hang.
I open the door and step out. The heat slaps me instantly, dry and sharp. My flats crunch gravel. The Uber pulls away, and I’m left standing alone in front of a building that looks more condemned than rented.
There’s no sound. No traffic. No AC hum. Not even a bumbling old dryer doing its death rattle. Just me, the boarded windows, and a broken shopping cart tipped on its side like it gave up halfway home.
And Dave.
He’s pacing by the entrance like he’s trying to wear a hole through the concrete. His Brioni suit is wrinkled to hell, tie loose like he slept in it. His hair’s greasy, thinning, and his eyes dart like a cornered rat’s. He’s clutching a vape pen, puffing clouds that smell like burned candy.
This isn’t the smug Dave who fake-laughed through Friday team check-ins and used phrases like “let’s circle back” without shame.
This Dave is cracked open. Eyes jittery. Fingers twitchy. Hair slicked to one side like he tried to fix it with water.
He sees me. Freezes as if I just caught him trying to eat printer ink. Then gives a half-wave, more twitch than invitation.
“Mary,” he calls out, already shifting like someone might be watching. “Come on. We don’t have time.”
“Time for what?” I don’t move. Just stand there, squinting at him, hoping the sun might burn off whatever lie he’s about to try.
He glances around again. “Just get inside.”
I look past him, through the smeared glass door, where the dark outline of old washers sits like sleeping beasts. The fluorescent lights are buzzing overhead, but dim. One’s flickering.
My stomach tightens. Regret #5 might already be loading.
“What’s this about?” My heart’s trying to ditch me, nerves crawling up my spine. Those ledgers in my purse scream guilt. Did he know I printed them? Is this a trap? My stomach twists like I ate bad Chinese takeout again.
“Inside. Now.” He fumbles with keys, drops them, picks them up. His fingers are trembling so hard the metal jangles. “We can’t be seen out here.”
The door creaks open to reveal exactly what I expected: industrial washing machines from the Carter administration, half of them sporting “OUT OF ORDER” signs written in Sharpie.
The fluorescent lights buzz, casting everything in sickly green.
It smells of bleach, rust, and something I can’t identify but probably don’t want to.
A tabby cat bolts from behind a broken dryer, disappearing through a crack in the back wall.
Dave locks the door behind us. Actually locks it. With a deadbolt I hadn’t noticed from outside.
“Okay, now you’re freaking me out.” I cross my arms, backing toward the nearest exit, which is apparently the door we just came through. “What’s going on?”
He’s sweating through his shirt now, dark patches spreading under his arms.
“Time for what?” I note how his hands shake. “Dave, what the hell is—?”
“Keep it down,” Dave hisses, glancing around nervously. “Did you look at the email I sent? The… transfers?” His eyes are bloodshot, like he hasn’t slept in days, his vape trembling in his grip.
I hesitate, throat dry as the desert air. “No,” I lie, but my face is a snitch, cheeks flushing like I got caught stealing pens. “I deleted it. Didn’t open it.” Total nonsense. I saw those Russian names, the weird LLCs.
His shoulders sag with relief for exactly two seconds before his paranoia kicks back in. “Good. Good, that’s—” He stops, studies my face. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not—”
“Your left eye twitches when you lie. Always has.” He runs both hands through his greasy hair. “Jesus Christ, Mary. What did you see?”
“W.R. Holdings,” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the buzzing lights. “Viktor Rezhnov. Some other Russian names I couldn’t pronounce.”
Dave goes white. Literally white, like someone just drained his blood. “Oh God. Oh no, no, no.” He starts pacing again, three steps to the broken soda machine, three steps back. “This is so much worse than I thought.”
“Worse how?” My voice cracks. “Dave, what the hell is going on?”
He stops pacing, looks at me with eyes that are pure terror. “Mary, listen to me very carefully. You stumbled into something you don’t understand. Something that could get us both killed.”
The word “killed” hangs in the stale air like a physical thing.
“What are you talking about?”
“Viktor Kozlov. The accounts you saw. The money—” He runs both hands through his greasy hair. “It’s not just fraud, Mary. It’s laundering. For the Bratva.”
I blink. “The what now?”
He opens his mouth like he might explain slowly, like I’m a child or a hostage or both.
And something in me—something small and survival-shaped—says, “Don’t let him.”
I don’t want to know this. I don’t want Russian anything in my vocabulary before 8 AM. I don’t want to be in a murder laundromat learning about mob money like I’m in a bad Netflix doc.
But Dave keeps going.
“Russian mafia.” His voice cracks. “Viktor was skimming from casino operations, using our bank to clean the money. I got pulled in because—” He stops, swallows hard. “Because I owe people. Bad people. Gambling debts that spiraled, and they offered me a way out.”
“Mafia…?” My throat dries. The stack of flagged deposits in my bag suddenly feels radioactive.
The fluorescent light above us flickers, casting weird shadows that make Dave look like a skeleton.
I stare at him. “So you helped them launder money.”
Dave’s laugh is bitter, broken. “Helped? Mary, I wasn’t the only one.” He looks around the laundromat like the walls have ears. “You think they’d trust something this big to just one regional manager at a second-tier bank?”
My stomach clenches. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying this goes deeper than you think. Way deeper.” His hands shake as he takes another hit from his vape. “There are others at Brightside. Others at different banks. This isn’t some small-time operation; it’s a network.”
“Stop.” The word is sharp. “Just stop. I don’t want to know.”
Dave stares at me like I just slapped him. “Mary—”
“No, Dave. Whatever this is, whoever else is involved—I don’t want to know.” My voice is shaking now. “I just want to go home and pretend I never saw that email.”
“You can’t just pretend—”
“Watch me.” But even as I say it, I know it’s not true. Dave wipes sweat from his forehead, his eyes darting to the boarded windows.
“When Viktor started skimming, when money started going missing, they didn’t just blame him. They started looking for leaks. And Mary—” He grabs my arm. “They think the leak came from someone who had access to those account details.”
“I processed deposits. Moved funds. Created fake accounts.” He’s talking faster now, words tumbling over each other, like confession is bleeding out of him.
“But it wasn’t just me, Mary. There’s a whole system in place.
People at corporate, maybe even federal contacts…
I don’t know how high it goes.” His voice cracks.
“But Viktor got greedy. Started taking more than his cut. And now they think someone at the bank leaked information about the operation to him.”
“Someone like you.”
“Someone like us.” He points at me, his finger shaking. “You saw those accounts, Mary. You know the names. They’ll think I told you, or worse—that you’re working with Viktor.”
My stomach drops. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“You’ve seen the records. You could identify the accounts.” Dave’s eyes are wild now. “I tried to delete that email before you could see it, but it was too late. And now—”
A sound outside makes us both freeze. Footsteps on gravel.
Dave goes white. “Oh God. They’re here.”
“Who’s here?”
“I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I messed up. Sent the email to the wrong person. You weren’t supposed to see it.”
But he’s not looking at me anymore.
He’s staring at the boarded windows like he can see through them. Like maybe someone’s already watching. “They said if I could convince you to stay quiet, if I could make sure you understood how dangerous this is, they might let us both walk away.”
Cold spreads through my chest.
“You set me up.”
His head jerks. “No! Mary, no. I didn’t—” His voice breaks. “I didn’t have a choice.”
He finally looks at me—and now I see it. The panic. The guilt.
“They know where my wife lives. My kids. I thought if I could just talk to you, make you understand, maybe they’d back off.”
He swipes at his face, but the tears are already there, dragging streaks through the sweat and fear.
“I thought they’d just scare you. Not—”
The footsteps stop. Right outside the door.
“Dave.” My voice sounds strange, distant. “What did you do?”
Before he can answer, something slams against the door. Hard. The whole frame shudders.
Dave scrambles backward, bumping into a washing machine. “I thought I had more time. I thought—”
BANG.
The door explodes inward, wood splintering. A man steps through, tall and imposing, wearing all black. He’s got a gun.
Dave drops to his knees. “Please. Please, I brought her. Just like you said.”
The man doesn’t even look at him. His eyes—cold, dead eyes—lock onto mine.
“Mary Catherine Sullivan,” he says in accented English. “You’ve been very busy.”
My legs feel like water.
Oh God. This is how I die.
Dave is sobbing now. “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so sorry.”
The man with the gun finally looks down at him. “David Thornton. You were supposed to handle this quietly.”
“I tried! But… but… please…” He’s shaking. “Look, I did what you asked. I brought her here. Can we just—?”
The gun swings toward Dave.
“Wait!” I hear myself scream. “Wait, please!”
Both men look at me. Dave’s face is a mess of tears and snot.
“Run, Mary!” he chokes.
I don’t think; just bolt for the back. Flats skidding on broken tile, purse slamming against my hip. I ram into the door behind the old soap machine, half-expecting it to be locked, jammed, cursed.
It opens.
Thank God.
I stumble inside. Slam it shut. There’s no bolt, so I press my whole weight against it, useless as that is. I’m in some kind of back storage room, maybe once used for detergent or mop buckets. Now the air is thick with dust.
Crack.
A bullet punches through the doorframe, metal pinging behind me. I drop. Knees scraping the floor. Purse sliding. My heart’s not beating right; it’s pounding like a jackhammer.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
I crawl behind a busted dryer tipped halfway off its base. One of those industrial ones, dented and caked in lint. It smells of mold and melted plastic, but it’s the only thing between me and them. I wedge myself behind it, knees tucked to my chest, sweat sliding down my back.
Outside, Dave’s whimpering, rambling. His voice is high, desperate.
And then— Laughter.
Not the human kind. Cruel. Vicious.
“Finish him.”
Dave screams. Sharp. Guttural.
They’ve got him. Oh God, they’ve got him. I press my hand over my mouth, stifling a sob, purse clutched like it’ll save me.
Those ledgers—those stupid papers—are why I’m in this mess. Tears stream down my face, hot and stinging, mixing with the sweat. I’m dead. I’m so dead. My brain’s a mess, flashing to the blood on Grandma’s porch, and the threatening call…
My whole body’s shaking now. Not trembling—shaking.
The air back here is worse. Thicker. Dusty, hot, metallic. There’s a small window near the ceiling, but it’s covered in grime and mesh wiring. No way out.
I’m trapped. They’re going to kill him. Then me.
A loud crash. The back door shatters.
Boots on concrete.
I press myself deeper into the gap behind the dryer, rust biting my palms, legs cramping. I try to slow my breath. Be invisible.
It doesn’t work.
His silhouette fills the doorway. Huge. All black. Face like a scar carved into flesh.
His gun swings low. But his eyes— They find me instantly.
“Suka,” he sneers, voice thick with lust as he reaches in and hauls me out, dragging me to my feet. Then he’s grabbing my blouse and yanking it open, buttons popping, exposing my bra. “Might as well enjoy you before you’re done.”
“No! Fuck off!” I struggle, kicking, but he’s too strong, pinning my arms, his breath hot and rancid on my face. I’m choking on panic, tears streaming.
This is it. I’m dead.
Before he can say more, a wet crack splits the air. A hole blooms between his eyes, blood oozing down his face, thick and dark, splattering my blouse.
He collapses, heavy, his gun clattering.
I scream, staggering back, my flats sliding in the blood.
A second figure steps from the shadows, silhouette unmistakable—broad shoulders, dark hair swept back, sharp jaw.
But I can’t see him. Not really.
All I see is him, the man who tried to pin me down. The way his eyes rolled back when the bullet hit, the slack twitch of his mouth, the dead weight of him collapsing like meat. His blood is on my hands. My chest. My skin.
The floor tilts. My vision swims.
“Mary.”
The voice is low. Gravel and thunder. I turn—barely.
All I see are green eyes before the black comes.