Chapter 40 Cassie
CASSIE
“What do we do now?” I asked Jagger as I locked up the coffee shop later that night.
He’d helped me close up so Kaylee and Drew could leave. Now Main Street was falling under the spell of dusk, that liminal space between day and night when everything turned lavender-gray.
“I’m going to dig into those transfers from Kensington,” he said. “But I don’t have high hopes.”
A few hours ago I wouldn’t have known what he meant, but after a crash course in secretive financial maneuvers I understood: Kensington traded on its commitment to discretion. It would be hard, if not impossible, to figure out which of their clients was behind the transfers.
It would be hard, if not impossible, to get our hands on a client list at all.
“Shit,” I said.
I felt my earlier hope — that we’d found something important, that we were on the verge of a breakthrough — fading.
Jagger took my hand. “Let’s take a walk.”
My heart stuttered when I looked up at him, and a knot of worry formed in my stomach. Because wanting to sleep with him — wanting to sleep with all the Hawks — was one thing, but getting a funny feeling in my heart when I looked at him was bad news.
I was a temporary houseguest, and while I’d managed to get Bram to agree to let me stay for ninety days, I couldn’t exactly see us all sitting around the Thanksgiving table together.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Field trip.”
We made our way down Main, past Chasen’s bistro and the boutique with overpriced women’s clothing and a chocolate shop that had just opened a few months earlier.
Tourist season was in full swing, weekenders — mostly couples — up from the city and out for dinner or drinks after a day hiking the trails or kayaking the rivers.
They held hands too, stopping to look in the shop windows and flowing in and out of the businesses that made most of their money from May to November on the north side of town.
The crowd changed outside the Mill, a mix of curious out-of-towners and locals entering and leaving the bar as we stepped into the southside of town.
“Um… where is this field trip exactly?” I wasn’t eager to run into Bram while I was holding hands with Jagger. Bram had promised to let me make my own decisions about the Hawks, but I wasn’t sure I trusted him to control himself when Maeve wasn’t around.
“We’re almost there.”
We passed Junior’s (there was a line for cones and milkshakes), then the deli and the small engine repair shop. We kept going until we got to a nondescript brick building a few doors away from Screamin’ Syd’s, the biker bar.
Jagger walked up the building’s cracked stoop and held open the door.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Apartment building.”
“What are we doing here?”
He laughed. “You’ll see. Just trust me.”
I walked up the steps and through the doorway into a shadowed vestibule, a narrow staircase leading to the upper floors, similar to how my building was laid out.
“Let’s go.” Jagger headed for the stairs.
I climbed behind him, up four flights, past several numbered apartment doors with peeling paint, the light dim and gray from a single buzzing bulb on every landing.
“You haven’t decided to ax murder me, have you?” I asked as we passed the third floor.
His laughter echoed off the walls. “If I wanted to ax murder you I’d do it in the comfort of my own home where I could dispose of your body at my leisure.”
“Good to know.” I stifled a gasp as we passed the fourth floor. I guess I needed more exercise. “I feel so much better.”
Finally we emerged onto the fifth-floor landing. There was only one door here, marked Roof Access.
Jagger held it open and I brushed past him to a set of narrow iron stairs that led upward.
It was dark in the stairwell, and I held onto the wall as I climbed.
“Just push that door open at the top,” he said.
I could barely see the door, but I felt for the knob, turned it, and was greeted by a welcome wash of soft light from outside.
I inhaled the warm summer air as I stepped onto the roof.
We were high above Main Street, the brick buildings on Main surrounded on all sides by the rows of houses that lined the residential streets. Beyond the houses the Blackwell Preserve lurked dark and somber in the fading light.
“What is this place?” I asked walking to the edge.
“Just an apartment building,” Jagger said. “I come here sometimes when I want to let off steam.”
“It’s such a pretty view.” I could see Bram’s loft at the end of the street, and the old railroad tracks that ran in front of some of the lesser-known trails in the preserve. “But how does this help you blow off steam?”
“I’m getting to that part.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and withdrew a thick wad of cash.
I was confused, and my confusion didn’t end when he took a few of the bills, leaned over the edge of the roof, and let go of the money.
“What are you doing?” I watched the money drift in the breeze.
“It’s fun.” He handed me some of the money. “You try. Although you might want to walk to the other side of the roof. Some of these Southside assholes are richer than they look.”
I knew that part was true. Just look at Bram.
“I’m not going to throw your money off the roof, Jagger.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s… it’s crazy. It’s wasteful.”
“It’s only money, mouse.”
There was a new tenderness in his voice when he used the nickname and I was surprised I didn’t mind it as much as I had before.
Mice are smart. Crafty.
Mice find a way to survive when everything else dies.
“You’ve done this before,” I said, finally understanding.
“Lots of times. It’s how I met Hawk actually.”
“By throwing money off a rooftop?”
“Yep. We had an appointment — he was looking for a broker — but my head was all fucked up back then. So I’d go to the roof of the building next to where I worked in the city and throw money to get my head straight.”
“Sorry to be dense here, but how exactly did throwing away money get your head straight?”
“It was a reminder of how useless it was,” he said.
“Kept it in perspective when I was moving all those millions of dollars, sweating it out over quarterly earnings statements and IPOs. So anyway, I blew off my meeting with Hawk. Didn’t know the guy from Adam.
He was just a name in my appointment book, put there by my secretary. ”
“Then how did you meet him?”
“He waited for me for about ten minutes, then left all pissed off like Hawk gets when someone keeps him waiting. Except when he was leaving the building, he saw the money floating down from the roof.” Jagger laughed. “I still remember the look on his face.”
I laughed too, because knowing Hawk, I could imagine it.
“So he waited downstairs until I came out and asked me if I was the psychopath throwing money off the roof.”
“To which you said…”
“To which I said, ‘yep.”
“And then what?” I couldn’t help it. I was all in, fascinated by the strange story.
“Then he said, ‘let’s get a drink.’”
“And that was it?” I asked. “You’ve been friends ever since?”
“Well, the road was a bit more… winding than that. But yeah. More or less.”
I looked out over the town I’d called home my whole life. It looked different up here, the north side clean and new, Southside forgotten, ignored by everyone who didn’t live here.
“And so now you come here to throw money?”
“Now I come here to throw money,” he said behind me. “Go ahead.”
I walked to the edge of the roof on the other side, small houses stretching to the preserve. “It feels wrong to throw it away.”
“You’re not throwing it away,” he said. “You’re giving it away. You’re releasing it.”
I remembered the hundred-dollar bills I sometimes found floating down from the sky outside the shop.
It had been Jagger. Like some kind of sign from my future.
I lifted my hand and tossed the money into the wind, then watched as it drifted over Main Street.
Laughter bubbled up in my throat and Jagger handed me more money.
“Again,” he said over my shoulder.
I tossed the money from the roof, watched it float in the breeze. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. This is crazy!”
“Does it feel good?” he asked.
“It does,” I said. “I feel… lighter.”
He pulled me against him, his hands sliding around my waist as my back nestled against his chest, and the desire I’d felt back at my apartment came to life all over again.
“Then it’s not crazy,” he said. “It’s natural to want to feel good. Sometimes all the shit the world puts on you just weighs you down. We have to find ways to let it go.”
I reached back to put my arms around his neck and he kissed the top of my head.
It sounded so simple: if it felt good, it wasn’t crazy.
Being with him felt good. Being with all the Hawks felt good.
Did that mean it wasn’t crazy?