Chapter 45
chapter
forty-five
CALDER
It was hard to go to work. To drive up to that steely building walled off by a mountain of granite. To get out of my car. To live the life I’d already resigned myself to live. The mountain air was cold and smoggy with lack of snow.
I’m starting to really like you.
I more than liked Shay. I was starting to picture it. Starting to imagine unthinkable things, like normalcy. Like mowing a lawn. I could imagine waking up next to her. Feeding into her book addiction. Watching her reality shows.
I would have to leave soon, go to the next place the Mafia wanted me.
Never see her again.
I had no fucking right to imagine anything but Shay without me.
But now I was having a hard time imagining the day I never saw her again.
Fuck.
Was this love?
I spent eight hours going through the accounts, again barely making a dent. As the sun was setting, I stood up, grabbing my stuff. I glanced at Shay’s location for the hundredth time since Saturday. She hadn’t moved in days. I fought the urge to drive over to her house.
She was fine.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Andrew’s raised voice pulled me out of my thoughts. He stood in the doorway. His outfit wrinkled. His hair unwashed. Dark circles under his eyes.
“I’ve been here all day,” I said, voice low and measured. Something was clearly off with him. He was unhinged.
“Really?” he said, taking a step. “Well, then why the fuck is this not finished?”
“I told you, you’re asking me to clean a billion dollars with companies that make less than a million—”
He stepped to me, grabbing my collar and cutting me off. “I’m not gonna be the one dying because you can’t do a fucking job.”
I didn’t bother shoving him away.
“So…we go back to crypto,” I said.
His nostrils flared. “Finish this by the end of the week. Using this method.”
It was an insane request.
Even if we weren’t talking hundreds of millions, cleaning too much money at once was just as big a red flag as leaving it uncleaned.
By now there were hundreds of millions of dollars uncleaned. The longer it sat, the more chance there was to be caught.
Maybe someone up the chain had realized that.
Was starting to ask questions he couldn’t answer.
His grip tightened a fraction of an inch, and he let me go.
I walked to my car and slid into the driver’s seat, looking at Shay’s location again when a notification came through.
I’m sorry to reach out, but you told me to if something happened. Terry came back.
The number belonged to the young woman I’d met the first day I saw Shay—Tish. I rubbed my thumb across my mouth.
I’ll handle it.
“Relationship troubles?” a voice said at my back.
“Jesus,” I cursed.
Butcher sat in my back seat, grinning in my rearview mirror. In his lap, a box of doughnuts.
“Doughnut?” he asked, extending his hand through the gap between the passenger seats, a pink, sprinkled confection in his hand.
“What the fuck do you want?” I said.
He held the doughnut out a moment longer before shrugging and placing it back into the box.
“What the fuck do you want?” I repeated.
“How’s your girl, anyway?” he asked lightly. “Having any trouble at her job?” He laughed at the look on my face and threw his hands up in surrender. “I’m trying to help. Your girl is in deeper than you realize.”
“Get the fuck out,” I said. Butcher shrugged, but opened the door.
“And leave the doughnuts.”
Butcher placed the pink box on the seat. “When you need me, I’ll be waiting.”