by Jade Allen
About a year into working for Elite Advertising, Rachel had come to the conclusion that the job was never going to get any better. She knew that her superiors had low-balled her on their initial offer, counting on her desperation to get a job—any job. She knew that they had no intention of appreciably increasing her pay, or giving her any kind of promotion; she had proven herself to be too efficient to make the argument that additional responsibilities merited an increase in pay. Whenever she tentatively raised the subject, she was met with “But you’re so capable; this will only take up a few minutes here and there in your schedule.” The thought of abandoning the job, of finding something better, had occurred to her more than once—but the very real possibility that she would leave one dead-end only to step into another held her back.
Rachel shelved the topic of the day’s work in favor of checking in on her friends for a few minutes. She glanced at the time—she still had ten minutes before she needed to start getting ready in earnest. Scrolling through her feed, Rachel frowned enviously at pictures of one friend’s exotic vacation—something she could never scratch up enough extra cash to afford—and a coworker’s new car. They can afford to bump pay for the sales team, but not for the girl practically running the place, she thought bitterly, closing out the app before her resentment could bloom out of proportion.
She decided to rub a little more salt in the wound, and opened up her banking app, thinking that she would make a couple of plans—maybe pay a couple of bills—before she got dressed and made up for the day’s work. Logging in, Rachel went through her usual mental routine of trying to estimate just how much she should have in the bank, recalling the groceries she had bought a few days earlier, the lunch she had treated herself to after forgetting the Tupperware holding her leftovers. When the screen finished loading, she glanced at the total and her mouth fell open in shock.
“Two million dollars? What the hell? What—how—it’s got to be a mistake,” she said, shaking her head and blinking her eyes to clear them. But the total still showed the same amount. Rachel tapped the account details option and saw, to her amazement, that it had come from a transfer, showing as posted just that morning.
Her mind spun for a moment. It still had to be a mistake; someone had tried to send a transfer to their kid, or to a family member—maybe even a corrupt politician—and had gotten some of the digits wrong on the account number. Rachel looked at the time, wondering just how long the hold period would be for the customer service line. She chewed on her bottom lip and considered. On one hand, she absolutely had to get ready for work—she would be late if she didn’t. On the other hand, Rachel thought it was entirely possible that, assuming the transfer into her account was a mistake, she would probably face a much bigger problem later on down the line if it wasn’t corrected quickly.
She called her boss, leaving a voicemail saying that she had to take care of a personal issue and would be a few minutes late getting in. Rachel then pulled out her debit card and dialed the number on the back of it, fidgeting in her pajamas as she entered her account information and passcode. She tapped her foot lightly on the floor as the hold music played, her heart beating faster. What if it isn’t a mistake? She thought, her brain barely—barely—daring to hope. But how she could have ended up with two million dollars in her bank account without it being a mistake of some kind was impossible to comprehend. No one she knew had that kind of money. The wealthiest of her friends and family were only making—at most—a hundred thousand or so per year.
Her mouth was dry and she sipped at her coffee, forcing herself to breathe slowly. The customer service agent finally came on the line, and Rachel explained her dilemma. “That is…certainly an odd situation,” the woman on the other end of the phone said, sounding nearly as surprised as Rachel was. “I’ll be happy to look into that for you in a little more detail. Would you be okay with holding?” Rachel told the woman that she would, even though her skin was crawling, even though she felt an instinctive fear that just by alerting the bank to the discrepancy, she might—at any moment—find her door kicked in by unknown “others.”
When the woman came back on the line, Rachel eagerly told her that yes, she was still there. “I’ve looked everywhere possible,” the woman said, with a mixture of confusion and certainty in her voice. “There is no way that the transfer is even possibly a mistake. I was even able to call up the original bank form that was used—and your name was specified, along with your account number. We use a redundancy system to guard against errors; it doesn’t always work, but it’s clear that someone apparently wanted to give you two million dollars.” The woman paused. “I guess… congratulations?” The phone almost slipped out of her fingers, and Rachel barely managed a coherent reply before ending the call.
As she sat in numb silence at the table, a dawning realization came over her. I don’t have to go to work today. She smiled slowly. If I’m careful, I don’t have to go to work ever. She began to laugh, eyes wide, shaking her head in shock at the turn of events.
****
Two days later, Rachel had formally quit her job, not even giving notice, and submitting a resignation letter that, if formal and moderately polite, at least provided some food for thought to any of the people in HR who might have actually concerned themselves with a disaffected employee. She had not given specific reasons for why she was leaving so abruptly; to Rachel’s mind, the fewer people who knew about her unexpected windfall, the better. But the question of just who had sent her the money, why they had sent it to her, continued to plague her in the back of her mind, even as she went about putting plans into place to not only protect it, but to make it last as long as humanly possible.
She had gone into the bank the same day and spoke to a manager who had been unable to discover the source of the transfer—it had been done anonymously. The trail was worse than cold; the manager told her that deliberate steps had been taken to obscure the identity of whoever had sent the transfer into her bank account. “Whoever gave you this money sure doesn’t want anyone to know it was them,” he had said, shaking his head at the vagaries of the wealthy.
Rachel decided to forego the pursuit of her mysterious benefactor for the time being. When the bank manager had suggested that she work with the bank’s wealth management division, she was more than happy to go along with his idea, knowing that while she had ample experience making twenty dollars last for a week, she had very little notion of how to live with millions. She knew that decisions would have to be made—whether to invest, what to invest in, how much money she really needed to live every year, all the myriad of choices that came along with a sudden windfall. Taxes, charities, debts to be paid off; did she want to buy a house, since she had the money to pay for it outright? Did she want to get a new car to replace the old jalopy she had scrimped to purchase when her first car had finally, irrevocably died?
Her phone rang as Rachel was getting out of her old, worn out car, preparing to walk into the bank to talk to someone about a safe, long-term investment strategy. She dug her phone out of her purse, glancing at the number flashing across the screen. It wasn’t a complete number; it was only four digits long. She shook her head and moved out of the flow of traffic, deciding that she would just answer it. If it was a telemarketer or scammer, at least she would know for sure. “Hello?”
There was a crackle of interference on the line, a high-pitched tone that nearly made Rachel pull the phone away from her ear, and then a distorted voice. “That money doesn’t belong to you. We’re going to get it back.” She turned her head, staring at the phone for a moment in mute shock.
“What money? Who are you?” Her mind flip-flopped between confusion, anger and fear. In an instant, she realized that whoever had called her, they were almost certainly referring to the anonymous transfer into her account.
“You got money that you didn’t deserve,” said the distorted voice on the other end of the line. “We’re going to get it back. We know where you are at all times.” The call
cut out, and for a moment, Rachel wondered if it was intentional or accidental. Her hand shook and she waited for a moment to see if the number would flash on her screen again. There was nothing. Rattled, looking around her—remembering what the person on the other end of the line had said about knowing where she was at all times—Rachel slipped her phone back into her purse and swallowed against the tight, dry feeling in her throat, gathering up what little composure she had at her command before she walked towards the entrance of the bank.
She sat through the meeting, even though her mind was spinning from the phone call she had received. Logic dictated that Rachel should call the police, but what exactly could she tell them? “Some strange person with a distorted voice and an invalid number called me and said that they were going to get their money back from me.” Not only would there be nothing for them to really go on, but Rachel suspected that they wouldn’t even take it seriously. She signed the papers after barely reading them, realizing that she should have taken the time to read the fine print.
As she left the bank, she was so consumed with confusion and fear that she didn’t notice a man standing off to the side, watching the entrance. Rachel moved towards her car, looking at the ground, trying to make sense of what had happened—not only the sudden wealth, but the even more recent fact that apparently someone didn’t want her to have it—and didn’t see the man slowly starting to walk in her direction. She heard the sound of idle whistling, but didn’t pay any attention to it as she neared her car, trying to decide where she should go next—whether it should be home, or somewhere public. “We know where you are at all times,” the voice had said. Presumably, as long as she was in public, she was at least relatively safe; she didn’t think that anyone would be stupid enough to grab her where there might be witnesses.
She turned the key in her lock and suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. Rachel wheeled around, bringing her hands up, holding her keys tightly in her right hand to provide herself, instinctively, with something that had a little more heft than her fist itself. Her heart was pounding in her chest as her gaze fell on the man standing behind her: tall and muscular, towering over her, his eyes were covered by a thick pair of dark sunglasses, his face half-hidden behind dark brown hair that fell nearly to his shoulders. He was dressed in jeans, a tee shirt, and a hooded sweater, all carefully nondescript, in washed-out colors.
Rachel backed up until she collided with the door of her car, trying to decide whether it would be better to try and get in—potentially putting the car between herself and the stranger—or to cry out for help, struggle, call attention to herself. Before she could decide, the man smiled slowly. “You’re a woman with a big load of trouble on your hands, and you let me nearly get the drop on you—not the best strategy.” The man’s voice was light and low, almost gravelly to her ears, rippling with an Irish accent that made him sound even more amused than Rachel thought he actually was.
“I—who are you? What do you know about my troubles?” she looked around quickly, to see if there was anyone loitering in the parking lot at the bank who might come to her aid; it was almost suspiciously empty, just one or two people walking with self-absorbed determination towards the entrance or back to their cars.
“Name’s Dylan,” the man said. “As for what I know about your troubles: I know you probably got a phone call not too long ago that you have no idea how to trace, regarding a very large sum of money you recently came into.” Rachel stared at him in shock; how could he possibly know what’s going on?
“You—were you the one—” she shook her head, looking around in panic again, reflexively grabbing at her car door.
“No, Love. I’m not the one who’s after you. But I know who is—and you’re going to need me around. I got dropped off here to wait for you to come out, so I don’t have a car to my name, and you don’t really need to be driving anywhere alone just now. So how’s about you unlock the car, let me in, and crawl over to the passenger side; then you can tell me where we’re going.” For a long moment, Rachel considered refusing. She looked around again, but there was no one around. They were alone in the parking lot. She had her phone—but if this Dylan person had bad intentions for her, she doubted he would let her get a call out to anyone. If he had bad intentions, he wouldn’t have even let me stand here this long, he’d probably have just grabbed me… he did say he was dropped off… how stupid do you have to be to take someone’s words at face value when you’ve already been threatened by someone else? She took a deep breath.
“Can I make a phone call first?” she asked. Dylan raised one dark eyebrow from behind the sunglasses he wore.
“Don’t see as it would change anything. I’d recommend against calling the police—the folks who are after you are in pretty deep with them, and at best you won’t be taken seriously.” Rachel swallowed. Should she trust him at all? “I swear to you, Rachel, I’m here to help; I’m not going to get you into the car and cart you off to someone else. Get in, tell me where we’re going, and that is precisely where I’ll take you.” Rachel hesitated a moment longer, trying to decide to what extent—if any—she could trust the stranger. She sighed; he had her blocked off. She was within arm’s reach. Rachel took a deep breath and turned her back to Dylan, opening the car door and crawling from the driver’s side to the passenger side.
Dylan swung into the driver’s side and snatched up the keys from Rachel’s nervous hands, inserting one into the ignition and turning it. As the car roared to life, Rachel pulled the seatbelt around, glancing at Dylan as misgivings filled her mind. “So, tell me where we’re going, Love.”
****
Rachel paced back and forth along the rug in her tiny living room, able to feel Dylan’s gaze on her but, for the moment, caring very little about his presence. “Do you want something to eat?” He asked her.
Rachel stopped, turning slightly to look at the man sitting on the couch, staring up at her with a slightly sardonic smile curving his lips. “What?”
Dylan shrugged, stretching his arms over his head, glancing around the room. “I asked if you wanted something to eat. Worrying is hungry work.” He stood in a quick, fluid movement that made Rachel take a few startled steps backward, glancing at her before he walked towards the kitchen. For a moment, she simply stared at his back, her mouth slightly open in shock. He had had the audacity to accost her in a parking lot, to bully her into giving him her car keys, and when they had arrived at her apartment, he had taken her keys with him, holding a hand out as they approached her door to forestall her. He had walked right into her house after unlocking the door and left her standing outside before beckoning her in behind him.
“What are you doing?”
Dylan turned, one dark eyebrow raised as he glanced at her. He had taken the sunglasses off when they came into the apartment; he had wide-set, dark hazel eyes that seemed entirely too full of knowledge for Rachel to comfortably meet them. “Getting something to eat. I thought I’d get you something as well—cranky women tend to be hungry women.”
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest as the blood rushed into her cheeks. “I am not a cranky woman!” she said, knowing she sounded petulant but unable to help herself. “Even if I was cranky, don’t you think mysterious threatening phone calls and random strangers who force you into your car and take your keys are perfectly good reasons?”
Dylan leaned against her fridge, his gaze traveling up and down over her body, taking her in. “I didn’t force you into your car,” he said slowly. “I advised you very strongly to get in your car and let me drive us to wherever you wanted to go.”
Rachel pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath. “You’re still a random stranger and you—you bullied me into doing what you wanted.” She scowled at him, resenting herself for going along with it and resenting him for being there, looking completely unfazed by her irritation.
“That tends to come with the territory of being hired to protect someone. And we’re all random strangers ‘til we get to kno
w one another.”
“Stop being so reasonable!” Rachel’s hands clenched into fists. “What do you mean hired to protect someone?”
Dylan pulled himself back into an upright position, turning away from her and opening the fridge. He leaned in, and Rachel heard the sound of the fridge’s contents moving around, shuffling plastic and shifting glass on metal racks. “This looks promising,” Dylan said, standing up once more and producing a Tupperware container full of leftover steak tips and mushrooms. He looked around and plucked a wrapped up baguette from the top of the fridge where Rachel had left it.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, losing her instinctive fear as her anger rose up.
“I don’t actually have to, you know,” Dylan pointed out. He moved to the counter, reaching for the knife block with one hand, pulling a cutting board down onto the counter with the other. “There’s enough here for two; sure you’re not hungry?”
Rachel closed her eyes, her fists tightening convulsively for a moment before she took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “How the hell is this my life?” she asked no one in particular, opening her eyes and looking up at the ceiling.
“You got lucky; some people don’t appreciate it when others catch a bit of luck. And here we are.” Rachel tore her gaze from the ceiling and watched as Dylan nonchalantly cut the loaf of bread in half. He cracked the seal on the Tupperware container and opened the microwave door, putting the steak tips and mushrooms into the box with the ease of practice. Rachel took a few steps into the kitchen, pushing Dylan aside; he shifted away from the counter, and she turned towards the fridge once more, withdrawing a packet of provolone cheese.