8. Paige
8
PAIGE
The next time I wake up, Poe is gone. I’m alone in the room again, but I can hear them talking in the other one. This time though, it’s easier to make out what they’re saying. Either they are sitting closer, or they think I’m still asleep and aren’t worried about me overhearing.
I rub the sleep out of my eyes with my free hand while I cautiously roll over on my side, trying to get my ears as close to the door as possible. Maybe I can overhear something useful.
Something that might give me a clue about if I should really trust them or not.
“I don't fucking like this,” Crank says. “That’s a lot of cash. The job said she stole from him, but it didn’t say nothing about a million bucks, and nobody legit does business in duffel bags full of hundreds.”
“Doesn't feel right.” Poe agrees.
“We’ve been with her for most of a day now, and she’s gone through the fucking ringer,” Savage says. “Either her uncle is exaggerating her addiction, or it’s bullshit. We walked her into a fucking drug den after she thought she lost a million dollars and her only reaction was to freak out about the hookers and the dicks on the screen. Her arms are clear, and she was moving around so much in her sleep I got a pretty good look at the rest of her and didn’t see any signs she’s injecting.”
“Great legs, though,” Crank comments.
Poe huffs a soft laugh. “Fuck yeah they are.”
My cheeks heat in embarrassment, but considering my dreams last night, flashing a little leg doesn’t seem so scandalous.
I pick up the familiar scent of coffee seeping through the door. Obviously I don’t do drugs, but I could kill for a cup of my own.
“But does it fucking matter?” Crank again. “I like her, so you won’t hear shit out of me if you say let her go and look the other way, but when people list shit like this on the boards, it’s because they can’t or don’t want to do things out in the open. We don’t expect to get the full story. We just do the job and we don’t ask questions.”
“We could walk away. Look, the elephant in the fucking room is that we’re only here because it seemed like a straight forward job. I don’t really give a shit how she ended up with the money, but people will kill for a lot less than a million,” Poe points out.
“Are we in or out?” Savage asks.
“Out,” Crank votes after a pause that makes me want to throw up.
Poe grunts. “Out.”
Yes! I’m grinning ear to ear. They believe me! Or at least, they believe me more than my uncle.
“So we what? Take the cut she offered and let her go?” Savage asks. “If this was a private job, we’d take it to Hellfire and see if he agrees there’s been enough bullshit to break the contract, but this is an open bounty. We haven’t promised anyone shit. The only ones that know we’re involved are Eddy and his crew, and they’re not going to say shit or they’d have to admit to getting their asses kicked. But the girl’s still fucked.”
My grin disappears.
He continues, “Until her uncle drops the job, people are gonna keep coming. And if it’s the money he’s really after, the reward’s gonna keep going up. Eventually, someone’s gonna drag her sweet ass back to him. When that happens, she’s gonna talk. Shit, even if she tries to keep us out of it, you really think that girl in there is going to hold up to the kind of pressure they’ll put on her to find out where the rest of the money went?”
Do I take a little pleasure in having my ass called sweet by a man who doesn’t know I’m listening? Yeah, a little. But having it followed right up with wondering how I’d respond to torture? I curl up, wanting to hide under the covers forever.
“Safest thing to do is put the bag in the room with her and be gone before she wakes up,” Poe suggests. “It’s a lot of dough to walk away from, but it comes with strings and we don’t know who’s holding the other end. Better to keep the club in the clear. At the end of the day, it’s her fucking mess.”
“Safest for us, but it feels really fucking shitty.” Crank sounds frustrated.
They’re right.
Every single thing they’ve said is right.
I’m screwed no matter what they do, and the only reason I have even a sliver of hope right now is because I was lucky enough to be found by the three of them. If they’d showed up even a few hours later, I’d be in Eddy’s not-so-loving hands. I wouldn’t even blame them for walking away.
Unless…
I sit up in bed, doing my best to arrange things so I’m not flashing anyone. “Guys? Hello?”
“Shit,” Savage curses under this breath. “One sec.”
They come into my room and turn on the lights. I blink away the temporary blindness and take them in. Poe is still shirtless. His hair is wet and slicked back, and his golden skin is still damp from the shower. Crank leans against the doorframe, a massive to-go cup in his hand from a coffeehouse in one hand and a breakfast sandwich in the other. Savage is shirtless as well, with a towel slung over his shoulder.
He crosses the room to me and takes my arm, holding it carefully as he unlocks the handcuffs. He rubs my wrist and hand, checking me over. His fingers are rough but his touch is gentle. “Everything feel okay? No numbness? Pins and needles?”
I shake my head. “No. I yanked on it a couple times and it wasn’t exactly comfy, but it’s fine.”
He nods. “Go use the bathroom. We have to talk.”
Remembering what they said about my legs and butt, I rush to the bathroom, showing off just a teeny tiny bit and not quite sure how to feel about the little flutter it gives me. Once I’m washed up and changed into jean shorts and a tank top, I feel a lot more ready to deal with whatever is about to happen. The guys are spread out in the room, Savage in a chair, Poe on the edge of the other bed, and Crank sitting on the top of the dresser as he finishes his coffee.
I sit back down on my bed. I want their help, but I don’t know the best way of going about asking. “I—I have a question.”
Savage cocks his head, watching me like a curious specimen he isn’t quite sure what to do with. “Can’t promise you’ll like the answer, but spit it out.”
“You guys take jobs from people, right? Like you found me because of my uncle. Did he hire you or something?”
“Yes and no,” Savage answers slowly. “Sometimes people have shit they need doing that isn’t exactly within the bounds of the law. Our MC is known for being open to that sort of work. Your uncle didn’t hire us directly, he put out a general bounty. Anyone who knows where to look can see it.”
“How did you find me, anyway?”
Savage looks to Poe.
Poe shrugs. “You did a pretty good job staying under the radar but you’re twenty. Your ex-roommate got engaged and you commented on her post. Once I had that, it wasn’t hard to follow the breadcrumbs.”
Seriously? “Oh my God. I’ve only turned my phone on like three times since I ran.”
He grins. “What can I say? I’m good. Most people have no idea how much information they’re shedding as they walk around in the world these days.”
“Okay, so… If I wanted to hire you, how would I go about that exactly?” I'm so far over my head. “Is there an app?”
Three sets of judgmental male eyes stare at me
“No app?”
Savage shakes his head. “No. No fucking app. It’s not like hiring a plumber. You’d have to have the right connections, ask for a meetup and present your case. Then we decide if it’s something we’re willing to do and if it’s worth our time. If everyone agrees, we make it happen.”
Here goes nothing. “This is a meetup, right? I want to hire you to keep me safe until I can go back and get this whole mess sorted out.”
Crank starts to chuckle.
Savage holds up a hand for silence. “You wanna hire us? First rule is that all cards need to be on the table. You need to be completely fucking honest about anything that might impact our ability to do the job. The good, the bad and the ugly. Don’t hide shit because you think it makes you sound bad.”
I rub my sweaty palms over my thighs. “I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning,” Poe says.
“Right. Okay. About a year ago I was living out of town, studying office management. I got a call at the start of the summer telling me that my mother had been in an accident. She was…” I swallow hard. It’s still tough to talk about the details. “She was hit by a car when she was going into work. One of the employees found her a couple hours later. It was probably instant.”
Crank sucks in a pain breath through his teeth. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” I sit quietly for a few moments, not sure what to say. Words aren’t enough and they don’t change anything. “Anyway, she and my uncle Walter owned a laundry business together. Well, she was the owner, but he started it with her and did all the accounting. Holland Laundry Services. They handle washing for businesses. Restaurants, gyms, motels like this I guess. When she died, she left her share of the business to me. I went home for the summer, but I wanted to finish studying and Uncle Walter encouraged me to go. It made sense since he knew the business, right?”
“That’s the uncle that’s looking for you, right?” Savage asks.
I nod. “I didn’t hear much from him when I was studying. Everything seemed like it was going fine. I noticed a couple of the employees who had been there for a long time quit, but new people were hired. It wasn’t really until I finished school and went home that I noticed something wasn’t right. We lost contracts, and I found lots of notices for missed maintenance. I asked Uncle Walter about it, but he said the economy was hard for everyone.”
“Doesn’t sound like a guy who has a million dollars sitting around.”
“He’s not! But I started getting a bad feeling about the answers he was giving me because on paper, it looked like profits were up, and he and my aunt were driving brand new cars. He started pressuring me to sell him the business, and that’s when I started snooping around. I snuck into his office to go through the books because I didn’t think he was telling me everything.”
Crank laughs. “Sneaky.”
“It was my company! I don't think that counts.” I wrinkle my nose at him. “Anyway, I was right. Only maybe half of the books matched up to anything we were actually doing. There were customers listed that I’d never heard of or seen on orders, and others that I knew weren’t making as many drop offs as were listed in the system. I made copies of everything and stashed it away before I confronted him. I’m not dumb, I didn’t tell him I had proof. I just wanted to give him a chance to explain, figuring he’d gotten into trouble and needed help.”
“I bet that went well. I’m sure some middle aged guy loved being called out by his cute little twenty year old niece,” Poe says with a smirk.
I shudder, remembering how furious he was. “I’ve never been yelled at like that in my life, and all I got for it was being told I was too young and stupid to understand accounting and how the real world works. We argued so much, but in the end, I went to the police because I didn’t want to lose what my mother worked so hard to build.”
“And yet you’re still here, talking to us.” Poe chuckles darkly, flexing one hand into a fist. “I've yet to see anything that they can't make worse.” From his tone, it sounds personal.
“They were worse than useless. They gave me a contact and I sent him my files, but a few days later he just closed my report and told me not to bother them again unless I had a real crime to report.” I slam my fist into the bed, but the soft bounce off the mattress isn't very satisfying. “And I think he told Uncle Walter, because suddenly he was freezing me out of everything. He even told me I shouldn’t go in anymore if I was going to keep disrupting.”
“Let me guess, you didn’t listen,” Savage comments dryly.
“Of course not! I’d been studying the books and noticed that the phony work orders usually came on Thursdays. I snuck in after closing and hid out in the delivery area, waiting to see what happened. Even if I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously, I wanted to know. A truck showed up in the middle of the night and they unloaded a single laundry cart. After they left, I checked inside. It was mostly what seemed like already clean towels, but at the bottom was the bag.” Telling the story for the first time is a little exciting. Okay, it was obviously a really stupid idea, but it was still exciting. “I opened it up, saw the cash and freaked out. That’s money laundering, right?”
Savage nods. “Sounds like it.
“A little on the nose if you ask me. Laundering through a laundry,” Poe says with a snort. “Probably mob. Small businesses like your mom’s are perfect. I bet your uncle saw an opportunity when nobody was looking and then you came back and fucked everything up.”
Crank raises a finger. “One question. That doesn’t explain why you decided that instead of taking a few pictures and tucking the bag back where you found it, you decided stealing a million dollars was a good idea. Whoever dropped that cash off is expecting your uncle to pass it on, and when he doesn’t, they aren’t going to be happy.”
I look down at my hands.
“Paige? Did you steal the million and then get cold feet and not know how to turn it in?”
“Not exactly. I… Ugh. When I took out the bag, I brought it into the office to go through it and see if there was anything in there that could help me. But while I was doing that, I heard the delivery bay door open again and then people started shouting.”
Savage starts nodding like everything has fallen into place. “So you ran.”
“So I ran.” I look back and forth between them. “What do you say? Will you help?”