Chapter Forty-Seven
FORTY-SEVEN
Shepherd paced the length of his kitchen, back and forth, muttering random expletives before punching his own palm. Noah, Max, and Chris watched from the chairs he and Ginny had been trapped in the night before. Well, Max and Chris sat on the chairs. Noah sat on the counter like an unwanted cat.
It was Noah who’d made it to the restaurant first, and found the note taped to the back door. All it said, in glossy letters cut from a magazine like some sort of nineties spy thriller, was a single word: TRADE.
Their money for Ginny. Great. Excellent.
Except Shepherd didn’t have their money anymore. Charlie. Goddamn Charlie!
“They must’ve had security footage!” Shepherd said to no one and everyone. “Did Charlie disclose the security footage? No, of course not! He never even stepped foot in the goddamn building!”
Noah raised his hand and cleared his throat.
Shepherd glared at him but did not stop pacing.
“Why don’t we take our security footage to the police? I mean, we know who’s got Ginny. Can’t they go and get her? Like, SWAT or the CIA or something?”
“The CIA doesn’t handle bikers, Noah,” Max said.
“Well, whoever then. Somebody does. The NSA or something.”
Shepherd stopped pacing, dialed an imaginary phone, held it up to his ear.
“Hello, police? Uh, hi. Yes, my girlfriend got kidnapped by bikers. Why? Oh, well. Funny you should ask! I stole one and a half million dollars from their clubhouse yesterday and they want it back! Yes, I did explode a food truck on county property and cause an untold amount of damage and firefighter labor to create a distraction. Why can’t I give it back?
Because a gangster I teamed up with stole the money from me!
My name? Why are you asking? Why are you putting handcuffs on me? ”
It was Chris’s turn to raise his hand. “I don’t think the police can get handcuffs through a phone.”
Shepherd muttered a curse in his general direction. This was why Ginny was so determined to rescue her mother herself. If the police asked even one question in the right direction, it was liable to end in arrests for all involved and bodies of mysteriously dead husbands exhumed.
Which meant he was boned. Plain and simple.
“Do I rob someone else for a million and a half dollars? Do I trade myself for Ginny? Do I … damn it! I don’t know what to do!” He grabbed his hair with both hands. “I don’t have a plan for this! I’m dead and she’s dead and we’re all dead!”
“I don’t think we’re all dead,” Noah said. “I mean, unless this is hell? Are we in the same hell together?”
Chris slapped his thighs before standing. “All right, Boss. Enough panicking. It’s time to get serious.”
Shepherd, who felt like there was still plenty of time for panicking, kicked the closest fridge. The fridge didn’t move, and yet, according to Shepherd’s toes, it definitely kicked back. “What are you talking about?”
He grinned. “I’ve been collecting for moments such as this.”
Shepherd, terrified but curious, hopped on one foot and asked, “Collecting what?”
Chris just grinned harder.
“Collecting what, Chris? Oh God, collecting what?”
Chris’s “collection” was stored in a small single-room shed, next to a leaning stack of see-through storage tubs that contained Christmas decorations. He left the door open—the only source of air in the tiny space—and rubbed his hands together. “Brace yourselves for a thing of beauty, boys.”
Shepherd was busy bracing himself for the inevitable collapse of nativity scenes.
Chris cracked open a black storage tub the way most men crack open a beer at five o’clock. Noah, Max, and Shepherd all leaned in as one.
There were … well, it was a collection, that was certain. Face masks. Canisters. Several bright red bottles that said BEAR MACE on the side in a font that looked like it had been scratched by a literal bear claw.
“Uh,” said Noah, “what the hell?”