I remembered what Amanda had said about Ally not working. “Ben had more than enough to make her very comfortable.” Like she was a child, or an invalid. But if it was true—if she really hadn’t felt the need to work because he provided for her—why would she have felt the need to secretly squirrel away money in an old account? And it had been a secret. I was sure of it.
I thought about what Tony had said about David and Amanda, how wealth made people like them think they could get away with anything. It seemed to remove them from the dirty business of how the money was made, too. Amanda didn’t seem to have much of a clue about what David did, though I couldn’t tell how genuine she was in her ignorance. Amanda was a woman who wanted you to think she was just a pretty face, but underneath, she was sharp as a tack.
I googled “David Gardner businessman,” “David Gardner finance,” and “David Gardner San Diego,” but nothing much came up—mainly just brief mentions of him and Amanda in relation to Ben. Amanda had said he’d been doing some business in Portland, so I tried that, too, but came up blank.
I sat back and stretched my arms over my head. I’d slept badly the night before, and my back was stiff and complaining. I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen and considered my next move. It was hard to avoid having an internet footprint, especially if you had money, but it looked like David had managed it. But I knew that avoiding the public was one thing. Avoiding the government was another.
I logged onto the Securities and Exchange Commission’s database and typed in David’s name. Reams of impenetrable entries popped up. I made slow work of scrawling through them, and can’t pretend I understood much of the language—all “quarterly reports” and “statement of acquisition”—but one phrase appeared over and over: “Hyperion Industries.” My pulse started racing. That was the company that the receptionist had mentioned when I’d gone to the Prexilane offices, the one I’d later read had been looking to buy out the company.
I typed it into the database and up popped an entry for a company registered in San Diego, California. David Gardner was listed as the sole director. David had been trying to buy his son’s company.
The arthritis in my hands was acting up again thanks to all the time I’d spent at the keyboard, but it receded to background noise as my fingers flew across the keys. I typed “Hyperion Industries” into Google and came back with page after page of articles detailing Hyperion’s ruthless reputation as a corporate raider, buying up ailing companies, stripping them of their assets, and selling the bones for a profit. The words “hostile takeover” came up again and again. “Hyperion Industries is the pirate of the financial world,” said one piece in Forbes, “and unwilling shareholders are made to walk the plank.”
It kept going. An airline in the 1980s, a chain of grocery stores in the 1990s, a steel manufacturer in the early 2000s: all of them had been stripped and sold by Hyperion.
And now David wanted to do the same to Prexilane.
Outside, I heard the rain start up again, and I got up to close the windows. My eyes felt grainy from staring at the screen for too long and my shoulders ached, but adrenaline pumped through my veins. I was still staring into the woods, but one by one the trees were taking shape.
Allison
It’s the sun that wakes me, streaming through the slats of the blinds and creeping around the edges of the door. I open my eyes and stretch, every muscle straining. I can’t remember falling asleep—just the hours spent watching the ceiling as my mind raced—but in the end I slept deeply and blankly and the edges of it still blur the perimeters in my head. It takes me a minute to remember where I am, and why, but then the pieces slowly come together and I close my eyes against it.
Sam watched me even more after that day at the house. I could feel his eyes on me whenever we were in the same room, tracking me like I was his prey. At parties, I’d look up and see him staring at me, face inscrutable, fists clenched tightly by his sides.
What he didn’t know was that I was watching him now, too.
I asked Ben casual questions about him: How long had he known Sam? Where had he grown up? How did he spend his free time? Ben fielded the questions bemusedly. “Why?” he’d said when I asked if Sam had a girlfriend. “Are you interested?”
I’d let out a peal of laughter that jolted us both. “No!” I said. “He just seems lonely, that’s all.”
Ben had smirked at this. “Don’t worry about Sam. He is not exactly sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.”
When Sam came to the house, I would linger by the closed door of Ben’s study, straining to hear their conversation. Most of it was indecipherable—talk of deliveries and actuals and forecasts and net growth. But one night, I heard them arguing. Fear prickled at the base of my spine. I thought of Sam’s broad shoulders, his large hands, his cold, calculating eyes. He was capable of violence, I was sure of it. Ben’s body had the lean, ropy muscle of a long-distance runner. He was fit, but he wouldn’t stand a chance against someone like Sam. He’d be snapped like a twig.
I pressed my ear against the door and held my breath.
“I thought you took care of it.” This was Ben, his voice low and steady, but I could hear the anger coiled inside it. I’d never heard him sound like that before.
“I did.” Sam’s voice was softer, almost pleading. “They want more money. They say—”
“I don’t care what they say. Just make it go away. Remember, you’re in this just as deep. If I go down, you’re coming with me.”
I heard footsteps approaching and pressed myself against the wall just before Sam burst through the door and rushed down the hallway. Ben emerged a few minutes later, relaxed and smiling. I had moved to the sofa and was pretending to read a book.
“Hey, baby,” he said, leaning down and kissing the top of my head. “Let’s go out for supper tonight. Sushi, maybe?”
I smiled up at him. “Sounds great.”
I watched him lope down the hallway and thought of the clenched look on Sam’s face as he came out of the study, and the way his voice had wavered during the argument.
I realized then that it wasn’t that Ben was scared of Sam. It was the other way around.
I swing my legs off the edge of the bed and pull myself onto my feet. The blood drains too quickly and I stumble drunkenly into the bathroom, bracing myself on the edge of the sink. I lift my eyes to the mirror and watch the shock register on my own face. I don’t recognize the person staring back.
The skin on my nose is flaked and peeling, and my lips are cracked and bloodied at the edges. There are hollows below my cheekbones now, my skin tanned a deep nut brown and peppered with a constellation of freckles. My eyes are still the same washed-out green, but the skin around them has gained faint, spidery lines. There’s something else that’s different: a hardness that seems to come from the back of my skull. I wonder if other people can see it in me, too.
I raise my hands and untie my hair. The honeyed blond tones poor Kai had gone to such lengths to perfect are now a brassy yellowish white, bleached and dried out from the sun. Thick coils of it spring from my head like Medusa’s snakes, and now my fingers can’t make their way through more than an inch without snagging. I finger the scab covering a wound on the back of my skull. The blood is matted into the hair around it, crusted and stiff. Jesus, I think. What a mess.
I’d spent years growing it out, carefully shampooing its lengths and massaging conditioner into the ends. I’d wanted hair that would stream seductively down my back or tickle a man’s bare chest as I leaned over him in bed. I’d wanted hair that I could use as a tool or a weapon.
He’d loved my hair. He’d come up behind me sometimes and take a lock of it in his hand, as if he were weighing its worth.
I can’t wait for it to be gone.
I fetch the nail scissors from my bag. It’s slow work, methodical, gathering thin bunches between thumb and forefinger and snipping close to the roots, but eventually I’m left with a head of messily cropped dar
k hair. There’s a pile of tangled blond straw in the sink, and I scoop it up and shove it into the trash. It looks faintly absurd peering over the lip of the can, like one of those long-haired little dogs that girls in San Diego carry in their Louis Vuitton totes. I resist the urge to reach down and pet it. Instead, I run a hand across my new spiky tufts and admire my reflection. My cheekbones are like razors, my eyes two shining stones. Now I look how I feel: streamlined and bullet smooth.
I turn on the shower and climb in. I turn the dial all the way into the red, and steam quickly fills the air. I position my whole body underneath the showerhead and let the water pour over me, blistering and painful. I unwrap the complimentary disk of soap and lather it between my hands. The water in the tub turns gray as the accumulated grime slowly sloughs off me. I slide my hands over my legs, my shoulders, my stomach. Each part of me is different than it was: slimmer and sinewed and dotted with patches of thick, calloused skin.
I take a deep breath, pour shampoo into my cupped hand, and wash my newly sheared head. It feels like washing a kiwi fruit. I rinse off and step out onto the bath mat. There are still half-moons of dirt packed under my nails and I pick them clean before drying off. I examine the wound on my thigh, now a jagged red-black seam running up my leg, its teeth smiling at me. It should have had stitches. I smile back before padding naked into the bedroom and gathering my clothes.
I pull on the dirt-encrusted leggings and one of the sweat-stained T-shirts and force my feet back into the sneakers I swore I’d never put on again. The movement reignites the smell trapped inside the fibers, and the stench hits the back of my throat. God, how was poor Luke able to stand being in the truck with me for that long? Once I get my new clothes, I’ll have to burn the old ones, though who knows what kind of ghouls will be released in the flames.
The pawnshop is shut when I get there, so I spend four of my six remaining bucks on a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin and sit on the stoop waiting for it to open. The caffeine pulses through me and the muffin is almost unbearably sweet, the sugar coating my already-furred teeth. I remind myself to pick up a toothbrush after this, and some toothpaste, as well as new clothes and shoes.
A burly looking man with a longish white beard turns up at ten to nine and pulls up the metal shutter with a screech. I stand up and brush myself down. I’m nervous, I realize, and eager to impress.
“Can’t come in here with that,” he says, nodding toward my coffee. I dash across the street and chuck the paper cup into a garbage can. When I get back, the door is open and the lights are on and the man is already squatting on a stool behind the counter, a newspaper spread out in front of him. I wonder briefly if I’m in it.
“What’ve you got?” He doesn’t bother to look up.
I slide the ring off my finger and place it on the counter. He keeps his head bent low as he picks it up but I can see his eyebrows raise. He pulls a loupe out of one of the desk drawers and peers at the diamond through the lens.
“This yours?” His voice is neutral, but I can feel the doubt in it already.
“Yes.” My voice sounds false and too bright. Relax, I chide myself. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s your property, and you have every right to sell it.
He raises his eyes to mine and I see him take in my cropped hair and dirty clothes. “You sure about that?”
I nod, a little too eagerly. “It was my engagement ring.” He grunts, and I can tell from the look on his face that he can’t imagine any right-minded man proposing to me, never mind one brandishing a three-carat flawless solitaire. It’s fair enough—if I were him, I’d think I was lying, too. If I close my eyes, I can still picture Ben down on one knee in front of me, holding out the little black velvet box like it was the key to the world. “It’s mine,” I say again, but I choke on the word. I stare down at the ring sitting in a stranger’s meaty palm and feel the acid pain of my old life being burned away. I swallow it down.
He shakes his head, and for a minute, my heart sinks. And then I see him look at the diamond again, and I realize he doesn’t care if I’m lying. A diamond that size has that effect on people. “I don’t have the cash to cover this,” he says, blowing out his cheeks. “Even if I did, there’s not a lot of call for $30,000 engagement rings around these parts.”
My heart flutters in my chest. I need this money, badly. Keep calm, I tell myself. Hold your nerve. “What can you give me? I’m open to offers.” I hope I sound casual, but I know I sound desperate by the smirk that flickers at the edge of his mouth. He knows he’s got me.
“Seven thousand.”
“Fifteen.” It’s not even close to what I’d hoped to get for it, but I guess plans have changed. Fifteen thousand would give me enough money to get myself to Maine and make a start on a new life once all this is finished. If I live to see it finished.
He stares at the ring. I can see the wheels turning in his head. He knows he won’t see something like it in a place like this again, but it’s a lot of money for him up front—maybe too much. Finally, he lets out a long sigh. “I’ll give you ten and that’s my final offer. You’ll have to give me until tomorrow to get it to you.”
I shake my head. “It needs to be today.”
His eyebrows raise and I realize he wasn’t expecting me to accept the offer. I should have pushed back one more time, asked for $12,500. It doesn’t matter—it’s too late now. He knows he has me over a barrel. “Well, sweetheart,” he says, his smirk fully intact now, “I guess you’re out of luck.”
I nod. I know enough to know when I’m beaten. “Fine. No later than ten a.m., though. And I’ll need that seven you mentioned up front.”
He studies me for a long minute, and then heaves himself off his stool. “Give me a minute.” He walks into the back room and I hear a series of beeps. A code being punched into a safe. He returns with a stack of hundreds held together by a rubber band. “I’ll give you five,” he says with a smirk, “because I’m a nice guy.” I reach out to take the bills and he holds them just beyond my reach. “The ring stays with me,” he says.
I feel a flurry of panic. “Shouldn’t we sign an IOU or something?”
“You gonna give me your name?” I don’t say anything and he laughs. “I didn’t think so. Look, I’ll give you my word, all right? I ain’t in the business of screwing people over, and I don’t intend to do it to you.”
“What do you call ten thousand dollars for a thirty-thousand-dollar ring?”
“Business.”
I drop the ring into his palm and he hands me the stack of bills. I tuck them into my sports bra, where they bulge conspicuously. “Ten a.m.,” I say.
He grins. “I’ll be here with bells on.”
I walk out of the shop and stand on the sidewalk for a minute. The bills feel heavy against my chest and I can feel the skin underneath turning clammy. I look down the street, scanning the storefronts for something useful, though I know that’s unlikely. Towns like this stopped having useful stores on their main streets years ago, hollowed out by strip malls on the outskirts of town. Just like Owl’s Creek. Which means I need to get to a strip mall on the outskirts of town, which means the first order of business is to get myself a car.
I duck my head back in the shop. The man looks like he’s been expecting me.
“Where’s the nearest car dealership?” I ask.
“Blowing through it already, huh? ’Bout two miles from here. Take a left at the end of Main and follow Route 32. It’ll be on your right after about a mile and a quarter. Chet’s, it’s called, and that’s his name, too. Can’t miss it, or him.”
Chet’s is right where he said it would be. A row of multicolored flags tacked up on the low-slung cement building wave a half-hearted greeting, and there’s a row of dusty cars lined up in front. Chet must have seen me walking up the road because he’s standing outside waiting for me in a pair of grease-stained overalls, an expectant smile stretched across his face.
“I hear you’re in the market for a new car,” he
calls out before I’ve even set foot in the parking lot.
My footsteps crunch on the gravel, and my lungs fill with the smell of motor oil. “News travels fast around here.”
Chet’s a few inches shorter than me, with a round face and pink cheeks, and the bottoms of his overalls pool over his thick-soled boots. He shrugs affably and wipes his hands with a rag. “Bill called from the shop to give me a heads-up. Told me I had a pretty young lady coming to see me and I’d better be presentable. So, what sort of thing are you looking for?”
“Cheap,” I say, thinking of the wad of cash stuffed in my bra. I need to hold on to as much of it as I can. “But something that won’t break down on a long drive.”
“How long?”
“The East Coast,” I say vaguely.
He lets out a low whistle. “How cheap?”
I think for a minute. “You have anything for a grand?” I know I’m lowballing him, but the higher I start the higher he’ll go, and I can’t afford to be ripped off the way I was at the pawnshop. I need every penny of that money, especially if the guy doesn’t cough up the second half tomorrow.
He laughs. “I do, but I wouldn’t count on it getting you to the East Coast. The best I’ve got for you is this old gal,” he says, slapping the roof of a Subaru station wagon. “She don’t look like much but she’s dependable. She’ll get you where you need to go, no problem.”
A high-stakes cross-country journey in a Subaru: just like I’d always imagined. “How much?”
“Thirty-five hundred.” He shoots me a sideways glance and I can tell he’s sizing me up for a reaction.
I shake my head. “I’ll give you two.”
He sighs and runs a hand across his face. His fingers still carry traces of grease, and they leave black marks down either side of his mouth. He offers up an apologetic smile. “You know I’d love to help a pretty little lady like yourself, but I’ve got a business to run here.”
I fold my arms across my chest. Chet’s poker face isn’t as good as the guy at the pawnshop’s, and I can tell that he’s itching to make a sale. There can’t be much business out here in the middle of nowhere, judging by the layer of dust on the car hoods. “Two and a half in cash and throw in a dealer’s plate.”
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