Chapter 26 Brady
Brady
“Do you ever sleep?” I asked Collins when she came into the kitchen.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.
When I woke up this morning, she was nowhere to be found, and it freaked me out.
Last time she didn’t tell anyone where she was going, she ended up on the side of the road ready to sleep in her car.
“Sorry. I thought I’d be back before you got up,” she said.
“I didn’t love that,” I said honestly. “That you were gone when I woke up after we…” I trailed off and shook my head. I felt like an idiot.
“Oh, Brady,” Collins said softly. She walked toward me and gently plopped herself in my lap.
I instinctively put one of my hands on her thigh as she draped her arms around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry. There was just…something I felt like I had to do.
Next time, I’ll leave a note—even if I’m going somewhere for five minutes in the middle of the night. ”
“Next time?” I asked—and I couldn’t ignore the hope that made its way into my voice.
“Worried that was a one-night stand?” Collins said. “It wasn’t for me.”
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “But it feels good to be sure.”
“I really am sorry,” Collins said. “I didn’t mean to make you worry or make you feel…like I didn’t want to be here with you, or anything. Because I did. I do.”
“Thank you for saying that.” Collins leaned down and kissed me quick. “So where did you go so early?”
Collins sighed. “Toades. It’s bad in there.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that I understand why my parents might not want to deal with it if given the opportunity,” Collins said. “But the entire thing could burn to the ground and Clarke wouldn’t think twice about putting the ashes together piece by piece until it was whole again. I don’t want her to lose it.”
I nodded. “So you two are okay after yesterday?”
“We’re always okay,” Collins said. “Sometimes we’re just not good. It’s a sister thing.” She shrugged. “So, since it’s tomorrow now, I guess I should ask all those questions I have for you…” She trailed off.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Tell me about Sullivan Enterprises. What would they even want with property in a town like this one?”
I took a deep breath. “Their whole schtick is ‘small-town revitalization,’?” I said. “They generally start by buying some midrange holdings—not any sort of prime real estate, but something adjacent to the prime real estate.”
“What do you think the prime real estate is in Sweetwater Peak?”
“I would guess Wilkes Farm—that’s where the money is here,” I said. “They use this strategy to eventually push the prime real estate holders to sell because everyone else around them already has. They’re an island.”
“Good strategy,” Collins said. She was biting down on her lip.
“The revitalization label is intentional. It’s real estate propaganda.”
“So they don’t actually help anything?”
I shook my head. “Nearly every town they’ve developed is struggling.
Once the construction is done, all the jobs that they promise to bring to these towns are also gone, and everyone is back to square one.
Most of the new buildings stay empty because no one can afford them.
He raises rent on businesses after the first six months through some weird loophole in his contracts, which they can’t afford, so they lose their space and then he sues them for money owed. ”
“Fuck,” Collins said. “So we need to keep him far away from Toades.”
“Far away from Sweetwater Peak,” I said. “If your parents have really already turned him down, he’s moved on to someone else. He’s a clever predator.”
“And you worked for him?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“And he would’ve been your father-in-law?” I nodded, and Collins’s brows knitted together—thinking. “I’m just…having a hard time imagining you working for a person like that, at a place like that.”
Honestly, that was a relief. “I was…different. To me, the results of everything felt so far away—the towns, the people—everything. It was easy for me to push it out of my way—out of sight, out of mind.” It wasn’t until I saw that feature in Blue Sky Geographic that I could even visualize what a town like that could look like, and that there were people who lived there who were negatively affected by the numbers on my computer screen.
“I get that,” Collins said quietly. “So what exactly did you do for them?”
“Algorithms and formulas and projections—stuff like that. The main thing I worked on was an algorithm that used census data to identify potential targets.”
“Is that how they found Sweetwater Peak?”
“I don’t know, truly,” I said. “I don’t think it’s significant enough—numbers-wise—to get picked up by it.”
“Oh,” Collins said, and I wished I could tell what she was thinking. “What about Jackie? What did she do?”
“She was usually the boots on the ground for the deals—site visits, point of contact for the sellers. A lot of client relationship stuff. She sees the whole thing as a challenge. Like her dad, she’ll do anything for a deal. It’s like a game. She’s really good at it.”
“Oh.”
I nodded. “Collins…you’re sure your parents haven’t signed anything? Ed is a crafty motherfucker.”
“I’m mostly sure. I don’t know why they would even consider it. They hate corporations, and they love Sweetwater Peak.”
“Maybe they’re just putting some feelers out—seeing how much the properties are worth to get a new mortgage loan or something.”
Collins buried her head in my shoulder. “Unfortunately, I don’t know what that means, or why it’s relevant,” she lamented.
“It just means that we can’t get too carried away until we know exactly what’s going on. As far as you know, they rejected the first offer and haven’t heard anything since, right?”
“They got a second one,” I admitted. “But they haven’t responded, as far as I know.”
“Then there’s no use worrying about it right now—not until we know something.” I knew Sullivan Enterprises well enough to know that probably wasn’t the case, but for Collins, I needed it to be true right now. I held her tighter to me and tried not to think about it.
“Are you going to go back to your parents’ today?” I asked.
I felt Collins nod. “Yeah, and I’m going to fill Clarke in on everything you just told me.”
“Do you need help?”
“Not this time,” Collins said, and I felt her lips press against my neck. “But thank you for asking.”