Chapter 5
The ribbon slips off the box easily, but the guy standing in my personal space, holding onto my waist, becomes rigidly still.
I lift the lid.
Wait. What is this?
Paper. Bricks of green paper, banded in white bands. Neat, tight, stacked so precisely that some part of my brain, the part that’s been an accountant for seven years, is admiring the work before the rest of me catches up.
Oh my god. It’s money.
Money. Stacks of hundreds packed edge to edge, filling a brown box all the way to the lid.
I have done a lot of math in my life. But I have never done math that made my hands go cold.
“Oh, wow,” Anna says. “That’s a fantastic prop.”
I look up at the behemoth, but he is not looking at the box. He’s looking at me, and the blank expression is gone off his face like a sheet ripped off a bed. I watch this enormous man go gray from the collar up.
“Put the lid on,” he says quickly.
“What is this?”
“Vera.” My name rumbled in that voice, for the very first time, twists a knot in my stomach. “Put the lid on the box.”
“What is this?” My voice goes up somewhere near the top of my range. “You handed me a box of cash. How much is in here?”
I’m babbling. He doesn’t answer.
“How much?”
“Fifty,” he says.
Gulp. I feel my eyelashes widen. “Fifty what?”
He just looks at me.
“Fifty thousand?” I ask and it comes out as a wobbly whisper.
My hands are shaking. The money is shaking, making little thunking noises inside the box.
“Are you serious?” I half-croak.
“Yeah.”
“Are you insane? Is that the answer? Is the answer, that you’re insane?”
“Vera.” He’s got both hands up now, low, palms out, the way you’d approach a horse. “I need you to listen to me very carefully. Put the lid on the box. Put the box in my hands. Then get in that car and act like this never happened.”
“That’s a hard no. That is a no from a woman who has never so much as run a yellow light, and who is currently holding a felony in a vintage dress because of you. I want an explanation.”
His superhero jaw hardens, eyes turning to blue glass. “It’s not stolen.”
“Oh, well, thank God, he says it’s not stolen, that’s what they check for at the bank, they run the serial numbers.”
“Vera,” he rasps.
Something inside of me is spinning out of control.
My voice is foreign to my own ears and it’s climbing. “What did you think was going to happen? What was your plan?” I ask.
He swallows hard.
I continue, “A woman you’ve never met is standing in a parking lot and you walk up and hand her a fancy shoebox full of hundred dollar bills and you don’t say anything. What did you think I was going to do?”
He opens his mouth, shifts on his size fifteen boots and he closes his mouth into a hard line.
My skin is burning with… is this fury? I’m not sure.
“That’s what I thought,” I grumble.
“Sir.” Anna’s voice has changed. There’s a new note in it, a small careful one. “Is that money real?”
“Anna,” he replies in flat voice. “Get in your van.”
“Come on. Is it real?”
“Get in your van,” he tells her again.
And that’s when I hear the rumble of fast-moving engines.
Not one car. This is the sound of several, coming up the river road too fast, not slowing down for the turn. Puzzled, I turn around, facing the direction of the sound.
The box is still in my hand. A stranger is still standing in my personal space.
Three county sheriff’s cruisers come into the overlook nose to tail with their lights turning. No siren.
I shrug. That can’t be related to me.