Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
TEN YEARS AGO
Adam
I pull open the door and enter the lobby of CyTech Electronics Systems. I’ve been here dozens of times before, maybe hundreds at this point.
I usually pull up in the back to grab a package from one of the guys working in the warehouse.
But I’ve come in the front door, too, carrying lunch, dry cleaning, whatever else they want me to deliver.
For the first time, though, I study the name of the business hanging over the desk.
Does CyTech Electronics Systems actually distribute any electronics systems?
Or are there only drugs coming in and out?
I have to admit that on the surface, it looks pretty legit, with a nice-looking sitting room and some offices in the back.
But all of that could be a front. The sign obviously isn’t going to announce that you can buy your cocaine here.
On unsteady legs, I follow a hallway to the offices. I’ve been back here before, too, though never empty-handed or when I’m sweating this much.
I peek into the first office and find my boss sitting behind his desk, a cell phone pressed to his ear and a stern look on his face.
The wrinkles across his forehead deepen as he nods along to whatever the person on the other line is saying, and my hands begin to shake.
Jason should have delivered that package a couple of hours ago.
Is someone in Glassport calling because it never arrived?
I study him, searching for evidence that he’s the kind of guy who’s been running a front for drug trafficking this whole time.
But like the CyTech sign in the lobby, nothing in his appearance announces his criminal activity.
He’s a regular middle-aged white man with broad shoulders and a little bit of a belly.
A man who, up until today, I absolutely believed was Jason’s dad’s wealthy friend.
He’s always been nice to me, and during the times I’ve interacted with him, I’ve got the impression that he appreciates me working here and thinks there could be a future for me if I keep it up.
On Christmas Eve, he handed me a card from him and his wife with a hundred-dollar bill tucked inside.
When he hangs up the phone, he smiles up at me, and my mood lifts. Jason never actually looked in those packages, did he? Is it possible he’s wrong about all of this?
“Adam, how are you? I didn’t order dinner tonight.”
I clear my throat. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m sorry to bother you. There’s… a problem.”
His brows knit together. “The dry cleaning again? Listen, next time I want you to find a new company. I don’t care who, just someone who won’t mix up my shirts.”
“No, it’s not the dry cleaning. It’s…” I cough out the words. “It’s the package I was supposed to deliver today.”
“ Supposed to?” He cocks his head. “If you didn’t deliver it, who did? Your friend Jason?”
“No,” I blurt out too loudly. “No, it wasn’t Jason.
Jason is out of town. I’m the one who came and picked it up.
” I hold my breath and hope he won’t check with the guy working the warehouse.
They’re so used to seeing me and Jason that they don’t ask our names anymore, they just hand us the package and close the door.
“I picked it up, but it didn’t quite make it there… ”
His jaw twitches, and I see a hint of something darker in his demeanor. “So, you came and got the package, but you didn’t deliver it.” His eyes bore into me.
“No,” I whisper.
“Then where is it?”
“It was stolen out of my car.”
He stands up slowly. “Who stole it?”
I grip the back of a chair. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know how much it’s worth?” he asks with absolutely no emotion on his face.
The image of Jason and me huddled over my laptop searching for the price of twenty pounds of cocaine flashes in my head. “I-I have a few guesses.”
“Then you know why you need to get it back.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say as my hands begin to shake. “Someone stole it out of my car. I don’t think I can call the police, right? And there didn’t seem to be any security cameras…”
“Okay. I guess it’s gone, then.” He sinks into his chair with a shrug, and hope tosses me a lifeline.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he says in that same mild tone. And then his face turns to granite. “I want you to get my money.”
My eyes dart around the room, searching for something to offer him.
His office looks so normal: desk, cabinets, corporate-looking art on the walls.
A framed photo of him and his wife standing on a dock in front of a boat sits on the shelf behind him.
Surely, he’s a reasonable man. He has to understand this was all a terrible mistake.
“I’ll get it, I promise,” I say. “I can work for you full time until I’ve earned enough to pay you back.
I’ll do whatever it takes. I know I may not be able to right away, but I swear?—”
My voice is cut off by his hand slamming down on the desk in front of him. “Enough!” he yells loud enough for it to make my insides vibrate. “I don’t want your promises or excuses. I want my money.”
I take a step toward him. “Please let me work it off. I’ll do anything you want me to do…” I trail off. Am I selling my soul making this offer? But what choice do I have?
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way. I have contracts, people expecting things from me. I can’t make them wait for you to work it off.”
“I really will get it for you,” I say, my voice pleading. “Please give me a little time…” As the words leave my mouth, I realize how they must sound. A little time? For a destitute high school kid to come up with close to a million dollars?
My whole body is shaking now.
“Get in here,” he yells, and behind him, a door opens and in comes the red-haired guy who sometimes hands off the packages to me at the warehouse door.
He blinks rapidly, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s as terrified as I am. “What do you need, boss?” he asks, smoothing his face into an impassive expression.
“Adam lost one of my packages tonight.”
The red-haired guy’s eyes widen, and his mouth falls open. My heart drops to my knees.
“Why don’t you give him a taste of what you’re going to do to him if he doesn’t get me my money by tomorrow?”
I’m shaking, shivering, as my gaze flies around the room, searching for an exit. Would I make it out the door if I ran? But then what would I do? Where would I go?
“I… uh…” The red-haired guy shifts his weight, and I get the feeling he doesn’t want to do whatever he’s been ordered.
He’s young, not that much older than me, and probably new at doing what ever it is that the boss is threatening.
But he doesn’t seem to have many more choices than I do, and the next thing I know, he’s crossed the room and slammed a fist into my stomach.
My muscles seize up, and a burning coil forms in my gut.
I try to gasp but my lungs won’t expand.
Doubling over, I drop to my knees, clutching my stomach as the searing pain radiates in all directions.
The room blurs around the edges as a wave of nausea rolls over me.
Vaguely, I sense the red-haired guy towering over me, fists still clenched. Frantically, I scramble to my feet.
The boss eyes me with a crooked smile on his face, as if he’s finding this whole situation entertaining. “Was that clear enough for you?”
I stumble backward. “I’ll get you the money by tomorrow. I promise.”
For a moment, his eyebrows knit together like he’s a parent who’s disappointed in me. “I always liked you, kid. I thought you had a lot of potential. You could have had a future here.” He hitches his chin at the red-haired guy. “Like Anthony.”
My eyes focus on the man who punched me. Though he stands confidently, with his hand still clenched in a fist, his face looks pale and uncertain. If he does this job long enough, will he turn hardened against this violence? Would this have eventually been my fate?
“You can go now,” the boss says. “But I wouldn’t advise you to try to run. You might not have family, but I know where to find those friends of yours. I make sure my guys keep an eye on all my employees.” His voice deepens. “And all their loved ones.”
The nausea that rolls over me has nothing to do with the fact that I was just sucker-punched. I turn and run, but I’m still unsteady on my feet, and I only make it about a dozen steps before my lungs seem to fold in on themselves. I skid to a stop in the hallway, bending over to gasp for a breath .
The boss’s voice drifts out of the office behind me. “If that kid isn’t here with my money by this time tomorrow night, I want you to take care of him.”
“Take care of him?” Anthony asks with a slight waver in his voice.
“Get rid of him,” the boss barks. “Set an example.”
I stand up and run again, barely making it out of the building before I throw up.
I finally make it to my car and peel out of the parking lot, but I have no idea where to go from here.
If I run, they’ll come after Jason and Madeline.
And if I don’t run, they’ll kill me. I would die before I let them hurt Madeline. So, is that what has to happen?
I drive aimlessly through town before steering onto the road that follows the river, unconsciously taking the route where I drove Madeline on our first date.
That day was sunny, cloudless, but today, a cold rain slaps against my windshield and the roads are slick with ice.
My phone buzzes, and I see Jason’s name pop up on the screen, but I toss the phone on the seat beside me and keep driving.
The Bronco’s tires slip on a patch of sleet, and for a second, the car banks to the right, dangerously close to the gravel edge that hovers over the river below.
I yank the steering wheel just in time, and easing my foot off the gas, I pull the car over.
And that’s when it comes to me. Adam Nathanson has to die.
It’s the only way those guys will be satisfied, and the only way to keep the people I love safe.
I’ll lose everything, but somewhere deep, I knew none of it would last anyway.
Guys like me don’t get to change their circumstances.
They don’t get to be like Jason and his perfect family.
Guys like me don’t get to be with girls like Madeline.
She deserves someone who will give her a good, stable life.
Someone who has more prospects than trafficking cocaine.
It takes me a minute to realize that I’ve stopped on the overlook where Madeline and I had our first kiss.
Across the river, the winter wind has stripped the trees of the last of their leaves, and I squint, hoping for a glimpse of my family’s old trailer nestled somewhere in the woods.
The wildflower fields will be dormant now, and I won’t be here to see them bloom this spring.
I press my hands to my face as if somehow that will hold the pain inside, but it comes pouring out anyway. I want to cry, and rage, and scream. I want to tear this car to shreds, punch the window, pound on the steering wheel. But I can’t. Not now.
Right now, I need to hold it together because that’s the only way Madeline and Jason are going to come out of this unscathed.
I have twenty-four hours before it’s too late.
But someday, if I make it through this alive, I’ll face this agony burning in my veins.
I’ll face the fact that I’ll never see the love of my life again.
I pick up the phone and call Jason.
“How did it go?” he asks.
I hesitate. Here it is, the moment when everything changes forever. The moment my life as I knew it, imagined it, is over. “Jason, listen to me. I need you to pick up Madeline and take her to Tom Burke’s party tomorrow night. Tell her I had to work, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Dude, what happened?” His voice comes out higher than usual, trembling slightly at the end. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of everything.”
I’d say I can’t believe it’s come to this, but maybe all along, I knew.