Chapter 13
chapter
thirteen
CALDER
Have we met?
“Fuck.” I dragged a hand through my hair, eyes across the street at the pink-and-green coloring of Shay’s favorite tea shop.
She was even more beautiful in daylight. Her wild, curly hair shoved up in a messy bun so her wide, honey eyes were clear and visible. Had I been staring? It was hard to look at her without remembering how her cheeks flushed.
I ran a hand down my face.
This was bad. I was breaking all my rules.
Shay was innocent.
And she was normal.
And I was very much not that. A normal person didn’t stalk the girl they’d just met. Didn’t lurk behind the bookshelves at her favorite local bookstore, noting what she likes.
A normal person didn’t hack into every corner of her life.
Shay’s password was shit, and it was also the same password she used for fucking everything. I’d told myself I was doing it for her. That I was only sneaking into her life to make it impossible for anyone else to follow.
I turned on two-factor.
I installed a VPN.
I enabled location sharing on my device so I could see where she was, learn her routine.
But…I had access to her photos—the ones she didn’t share. Cute, scrunched-up nose selfies with her and a black cat. Random pictures of things like trees or a dead butterfly. Photos I had no right to look at, and which had nothing to do with keeping her safe, but I drank them like dark liquor.
Everything I learned about her dug my grave deeper.
There was one event marked every week on her calendar: family dinner on Sunday. Book club appeared on random days, sometimes every day.
She left little notes to herself all the time, ranging from things like a random list of vegetables to a list of favorite words (oubliette, metanoia, selcouth) to the lyrics of a Taylor Swift song.
I paused on an old list, last updated years ago. What appeared to be an import of a patient chart.
I can’t control when I get sick. I can’t control getting better.
Her words fluttered back to my mind.
Shay seemed healthy—but then, that didn’t really mean anything. People hid all kinds of pain under a smile, especially women.
Before I could stop myself, I opened it. I scanned the note, what appeared to be a doctor’s diagnosis: chronic fatigue syndrome.
I quickly googled it.
A chronic, life-altering illness marked by profound fatigue, pain, and severe worsening of symptoms after even small amounts of physical effort.
I focused on the last part. Severe worsening of pain after physical effort?
And I chased her through a goddamn graveyard?
I was a prick—
Where the fuck are you?
A message appeared on my screen. Unknown sender, but Utah area code. The head of the Rocky Mountain division. I glanced at my clock.
Shit.
I drove about an hour out of the city to where the remnants of a quarry battled with new development.
Utah had blown up into a specific kind of toxic start-up scene.
Known as Silicon Slopes, it attracted scammers, grifters, fraudsters selling everything from oils to twenty-first-century indulgences—crypto.
Which made it the perfect hub to launder money.
A man waited to greet me outside of a nondescript building. He wore the typical investor bro uniform of jeans, a fleece, and a puffy vest. He had white-blond hair and a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
“You the cleaner?” he asked. When I nodded, he held out his hand to shake. “Andrew.”
I eyed his hand. Everything about this guy set my instincts on edge. But then, that wasn’t strange. This guy had moved up quickly, not little in part due to his influence in implementing a supercomputer crypto scheme.
Utah had gone from a small blip to the Mafia’s money hub. Every operation flowed through Salt Lake City. When I laundered something in Texas or Maine, SLC was providing the power to do it. You didn’t rise that quickly by being a good person.
I shook the hand.
“You been in Utah long?” Andrew asked, leading us inside.
I grunted my assent in response, and Andrew laughed. “Not the talkative type?”
Andrew walked me through the building, making empty small talk, not caring that I ignored every question.
I’d been prisoner to this world long enough to recognize the ritual of empty small talk. Beneath the smile, they were all waiting for blood in the water.
“I’m grateful you could come so last minute,” he said.
Like I had a fucking choice.
But my response was another half noise, half grunt.
Andrew led us into an empty conference room where boxes and boxes were piled high on a table. I paused.
Like most of my assignments, I wasn’t given any other information than a place and a time. I was to do my job: show up, clean money, ask no questions.
I slowly lowered my briefcase to the table. “What’s with the boxes?”
Andrew leaned in the doorway. “Didn’t expect I’d have to tell you how to do your job. You need to clean it, cleaner.” He threw out another humorless grin.
Curious, I lifted a lid. Inside the boxes were stacks of spreadsheets and black books for the organization’s brick-and-mortar buildings. It was the old way we’d used to clean money, shoving illegal transactions into the legal—clubs, car washes, et cetera—but then Utah happened.
Why do you think you’re in Utah?
Butcher’s words echoed in my mind as I flipped through the pages. I’d never cleaned for Utah. They’d always managed their own operations.
“We don’t have the capability for this kind of cleaning,” I said. “You moved us away from brick-and-mortar laundering. These businesses”—I held up a manila envelope—“make less than five hundred thousand annually.”
Andrew responded with a tight smile. “We’re moving back. Figure it out.”
“Figure out how to launder almost a billion dollars a month through small businesses? The current state of the organization relies on crypto—”
“That’s not for you to fucking ask,” Andrew snapped. The good white boy demeanor dropped instantly, the shark beneath appearing. “Your job is to launder the goddamn money the way I tell you to.”
“The way you’re telling me to launder will expose the entire operation. I think you need to talk to headquarters—”
“Figure it the fuck out,” he said. “Just because your brother’s out of jail doesn’t mean he’s safe. Or your sister. How is she doing?” He smiled white and sharp.
I worked my jaw.
The Mafia was a bloody bureaucracy.
Andrew would have plenty of time to fulfill his threat while I waited for someone to give a damn.
“I’ll get started,” I said.
Andrew lifted off the doorjamb. “I’ll be just down the hall if you need me.”
The head of the Rocky Mountain division is doing some…interesting things. Things that could turn into an opportunity for the right person.
This was interesting. Clearly something was happening with the crypto scheme, and Andrew was depending on me to hide it.
I stared at the door long after he had shut it, then got to work. I rifled through boxes in the stuffy silence of the office, trying not to think about Shay.
About the fact that I chased her through a fucking graveyard.
How I didn’t know if that had hurt her.
I’d never met anyone like her. So open and eager and fuck—this was bad.
My life was controlled with martial precision. To avoid being a regular, I never grocery shopped at the same place twice in one month. I definitely didn’t do more than one night with someone.
It was safer for them.
But one night with Shay and I wanted to break every rule. Wanted to bring her back to my place, tie her up, and never let her leave.