by Erin Healy
“I don’t care how hard it is for you. If you loved Molly—”
“I do! You don’t know a thing about what I feel. I love Molly more than I ever—” He clamped his teeth down and exhaled slowly.
“More than you ever loved me,” she said.
There was nothing to say about that. It didn’t matter that he’d never stopped loving Lexi, that he loved her more now than when he’d left, now that he had a crystal clear understanding of what he’d abandoned. When it came to a wife, no words could shout louder than actions, and Grant’s history was very, very noisy.
“What is he saying?” Grant asked. “What is Ward telling you he’ll do?”
“He says he’ll take her.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough? He didn’t exactly lay out his plans, Grant!”
“Where is she?”
“With my mother.”
“Your mom can take her somewhere until we sort this out.”
“Sort what out? You either have the money or you don’t.”
“Ward’s a negotiator.”
“Molly can’t travel right now.”
“She’ll be traveling with Ward if we don’t do something!”
Lexi put a hand on her forehead. She looked as though she was about to tip over. Grant moved forward to support her by the arm, but she wrenched it out of his reach.
“You mean if you don’t do something,” she growled.
All the ancient arguments Lexi and Grant had waded through failed to prepare him for the intensity of her anger now. Somehow, detached from her for so long, he’d accomplished the amazing feat of downplaying her fury. His memories of her anger were varied: pleading with him to stay home, giving him the silent treatment if she was really upset, or—above all other images—standing speechless in his rearview mirror, holding their toddler, when he drove off for the last time. But never worse than that. The intervening years had turned her into a fierce she-bear who would kill to protect her child, and Grant was her most-hated enemy.
“You know Ward better than I do,” she said. “You’re not so unlike him. Do you think he won’t kill her, if that’s what he wants?”
“He wouldn’t kill over such a small amount,” Grant said.
But he failed to convince himself. He couldn’t deny the possibility. Just as he couldn’t deny his role in putting his wife and child in this situation. He had knocked over a heavy domino years ago and he could not stop the rest of them from crashing down. And at the end of the line: a beautiful little girl, the only human on the planet whose love he had a chance of regaining, was about to be crushed.
She too was beyond his reach.
Grant covered his face with his hands. His shoulders started to shake. And in the ensuing saline bath of his own, those tears washed the dirt off the folds of his mind and revealed exactly what he needed to do.
{ chapter 26 }
The decrepit Datsun Richard had secured for Grant strained at fifty-five miles an hour and started rattling at sixty. He pushed it to sixty-five and clattered down the north-south thoroughfare into downtown Riverbend, irrationally certain of the haunt where he would find Warden Pavo.
Riverbend, population one hundred fifty thousand, was part of the larger Rawson County. Big enough to sustain its own brand of drug dealers and runners, but too small for taxpayers to support any full-time legal force devoted to this particular line of crime. The Riverbend sheriff’s department was tied up in the dubious distinction of having to manage a city with a per capita murder rate second only to Detroit’s. As far as Grant knew, that hadn’t changed in the years he’d been gone.
Warden Pavo had been particularly successful in this region during the time Norman and Grant did business with him. Chances were good Warden was still king of his usual places of business.
What made no sense, though, was why he would try to extract the money from her. Warden could have come after him easily enough. How hard could it be to find an ex-con who’d come back home?
The Datsun complained all the way to the south end of town, where Grant careened into the parking lot of the Blue Devil’s Nightclub and sped around the building. The absence of lights on the backside was intentional and brought to mind a more sinister interpretation of a place where the sun don’t shine.
Grant got out of the car and slammed the door so hard that a rear hubcap fell off.
He made his way to the basement rooms by memory rather than sight. Twelve jogging strides to the metal rail, seventeen cement steps down to the grate that covered the drains. Three steps, then through the door into the bunkerlike hall that glowed with a golden yellow light.
Inside, a skinny punk dressed in a business suit greeted Grant. He went by the name of Rayban, like the shades. He sat behind a rusty desk and was eating from three boxes of Chinese takeout. Rayban would have seen Grant coming through the night-vision security camera and could have locked the door if he’d wanted to.
He said around a mouthful of noodles, “Been a few years, Solomon.”
“I’m here to see the Warden.”
“Not sure he wants to see you.” He slurped the lo mein.
This guy barely broke one twenty-five or five and half feet. The business suit gave him the appearance of a boy in his father’s clothes. Grant wouldn’t test the man, though; he was mean like a weasel and deadly as a coral snake.
“He’ll see me,” Grant said.
Rayban gestured to the elevator doors in the wall behind him. “Don’t let me stop you.”
He couldn’t have, not this time, though Grant was glad he didn’t make it difficult.
Grant stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the lowest level. The ride down took nearly half a minute. The doors opened and he stepped into the room.
The air in here was strangely sharper than the mountain oxygen outside, oxygen that he’d been deprived of during his years in Los Angeles. Grant recalled his first visit to this room and his surprise, back then, over the showiness of the place, the Las Vegas glitz of it. It was the Casablanca of nightclubs, a place where those invited by friends of friends could thumb their noses at the blue-collar Blue Devil patrons drinking beer above ground, and they could pretend for a few hours that they didn’t live in a small, inconsequential Rocky Mountain city.
Tonight, though, he stepped into the room and was caught off guard by the stench of smoke—some from substances other than cigarettes—and the frayed look of all the glamour. The lights were up, footpaths were worn into the carpets, and the mirrored walls were foggy. The eyes of guests who bothered to look at Grant were vaguely dazed. One of them held an opium pipe in his left hand.
Ward didn’t run the place but knew the people who did. At least that was what he told Grant years ago.
Grant scanned the room, looking for him, and when he came up empty he passed among the tables to a hallway on the opposite side of the floor. A curtain of black beads separated the bar from the rooms where business was conducted privately. In the days when Ward had suppliers for Grant to meet, they usually conducted business here.
The beads rattled when he pushed them aside and entered the blood-red hall. There were six offices, for lack of a better word, three on each side. Each door marked the bull’s-eye of a black target. The targets’ rings arced over the doors, overlapping the adjacent lines.
Grant threw open each one without announcement. Empty. Empty. Empty. Occupied.
Two men exchanging bundles of money and cocaine glared at him. Grant held up a hand in apology and pulled their door shut.
In the fifth room, Ward sat alone. His feet, crossed at the ankles, were propped on a glass-topped square table. His chair stood on its two rear legs. He chewed the end of an unlit, hand-rolled cigarette.
“Thought you might drop in, old friend,” he said.
Grant took two steps into the room and leaned on the other side of the table’s glass top. The fact that Warden appeared to be waiting for him was disorienting. He had expected to int
errupt an exchange.
“Why go to Lexi for the money you want from me?” Grant demanded.
“I don’t want the money from you. Ergo, Lexi.”
“Why did you tell her to get it from me, then?”
“Doesn’t matter to me where it comes from.”
“I’m the one who owes you.”
“I’ve got what I need from you, Solomon.”
A frown pinched Grant’s brow. He would readily admit he owed Ward ten grand. For Molly’s sake, he was willing to make a deal to pay Ward whatever he wanted, twenty-five grand if it came to that. This dismissal of Grant’s obligation was wholly unexpected.
Ward extended the homemade cigarette to him.
“For old times?” he invited.
Grant swatted it out of his hand. “Explain this. Lexi doesn’t owe you anything. And using Molly as a pawn is beneath even you.”
“Oh, nothing is beneath me.” Ward balanced on his tipping chair and wiggled the fingers of his right hand like a magician. A closed fist, a flick of the wrist, and a fresh cigarette appeared between his fingers.
Grant shook his head. “Don’t distract me.”
“Already have.”
Another roll of tobacco appeared in Warden’s other hand. He touched the ends of the two cigarettes together, and each one began to smolder. When the tips glowed orange, he pulled them apart and handed one to Grant. A thread of smoke rose under his eyes, making them burn. The vapor smelled like the decaying leaves of fall.
Grant took it, then dropped it on the floor, grinding it under the toe of his worn-out cross-trainers.
“Let’s sort it out, Ward. You stay out of Lexi and Molly’s way. That’s all I’m asking.”
“This is all so noble of you, Grant. I’m touched, really I am. But it’s also irrelevant.”
“What do you want with them?”
“Money. Sins. Souls.”
Grant stared at him until he continued.
Ward lowered his chair to the floor and leaned onto the tabletop, speaking slowly. “Lexi has money. Lexi has sins. Lexi has a black, black soul, and I’m entitled to her.”
“Entitled to her what?”
“No, idiot. Entitled to her.”
“She’s not a piece of property.”
Ward laughed at that. “Call her my collateral, then.”
“Then what does Molly have to do with it?”
“Molly is the only thing Lexi has that she doesn’t want to lose.”
Grant clenched his jaw. “The debt is mine,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh believe me, she has her own. And she has the ability to pay it too.”
“How?”
“The same way you did, old friend.”
Stupefied was not too strong a word for what Grant felt at this claim that Lexi had entered the rotting world of drug runners and dealers.
“Lexi doesn’t deal. She hated me for doing it.”
“You’ve been gone a long time, brother.”
“I’ll never believe it. Not so long as she’s got Molly.”
“We all must face our disillusionments.”
Grant let his hand fall hard on the table, slapping it with a flat palm. “Only when they’re based in facts.”
Ward shrugged. “Pay her a visit, then. She’s got stashes of great stuff all over her home sweet home.”
“What’s the street value of it?”
“Enough to pay me back.”
Grant cursed and came around the table. “Then let her pay you back and leave her alone, if it’s true!” He shouted. “Take her inventory. She doesn’t have cash. She never did, and you know it. What’s the point of putting her through all this on account of what I did?”
“No man is an island,” Ward said. He leaned back in his seat, all four legs of the chair earthbound this time. “Our sins are never only ours to bear.”
Grant’s fist came back over his shoulder, then swung out in an arc toward Ward’s jaw. He blocked the blow easily, locking Grant’s forearm in his grip. The ease of his move sobered Grant up fast.
Ward didn’t release him.
“Let me own what I owe,” Grant said. “Let me take what Lexi owes too, even though I’m sure you’re making all that up. I’ll find a way to pay you back for both of us.”
“No.”
“Why not, man? Name your price!”
Ward yanked his arm so that it nearly came out of its socket. Grant’s head snapped back, then came forward so that it was nose-to-nose with Ward’s.
“My price is the price of innocence, Solomon, and you have paid every last dime already. You don’t have anything that I want, not anymore. The only person who has more than two pennies to her name is your dear little Molly.”
Grant jumped on Ward then. He launched all his weight toward Ward’s chest, hitting him square so that he tipped backward on the seat. His grip on Grant’s forearm tightened and twisted, burning the skin.
They tumbled over the chair. Ward’s throat rumbled with an unrestrained laugh. Grant got the clear sense that nothing that was about to happen would be his doing. Everything that transpired in this room, before and after his arrival, was purely for Ward’s entertainment.
Ward allowed Grant a few punches to his ear, a few frustrated sprays of spittle. When he was done with Ward’s ear he aimed for the man’s greasy hair and locked on, expecting to come away with fistfuls of charcoal-gray tufts.
He came away empty-handed.
The room rolled, and from his new position underneath Ward, Grant kneed him in the ribs, then kicked at his kneecaps.
“You finished?” he taunted as Grant clipped his shins with his hardest kicks. Back when Grant was an inmate at Terminal Island, he once fractured a guy’s leg this way.
Grant kept kicking, hyperaware of his strange impotence on Ward’s turf, trying to clear his head and reevaluate his weaknesses.
What was going to happen to Lexi? To Molly?
He let loose with his three free limbs. He thrashed and twisted at the waist, bent at his hips, butted with his head.
Ward twisted Grant’s arm until he cried out and flipped onto his stomach. Ward pressed the struggling fist between Grant’s quivering shoulder blades. The odor of dead tree leaves clogged his throat.
“My turn,” Ward said.
Grant believed Ward let him off lightly. He ended up with a swollen jaw and a sprained wrist, a bloody nose and more bruises than he could count afterward. Ward crushed two of his fingers and dislocated Grant’s shoulder. Grant passed out from the pain. When he came to, he lay panting on his back while Ward lit another cigarette. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
Ward bent over and blew smoke up Grant’s nose, triggering a coughing fit.
“There’s nothing you can do to save your daughter,” he said. “You had your chance, years ago. You made your choice. Now it’s all Lexi.”
Grant spit in Ward’s face and missed entirely. Gravity had a wicked sense of justice.
“I can’t accept that,” he groaned.
“Nothing I can do about that,” Ward said. He grabbed Grant’s twisted arm and yanked again. Grant screamed. His shoulder popped back into its socket.
“Now, listen carefully, old friend. The only thing you have worth living for anymore is the life you wish you had. And in case that doesn’t feel very satisfying to you, you are welcome to join my guests in the nightclub out there who are living for the same reason, drunk and dumb on their own fantasies. Join the crowd. It takes the sting out of the regret. You understand me?”
Grant didn’t understand a word of it, but he couldn’t say so. Ward had placed his large hand over Grant’s mouth and nose and pressed down, cutting off the air. Fight left his body, but not his mind.
“Let’s talk about regret for a minute. You lost your wife seven years ago. You know who stole her out from under you? Norman Von Ruden. That’s how weak a man you are. That’s how little she regards you.”
Grant’s chest seemed to collapse. All these lies!
What Ward had in store for Lexi was beyond Grant’s imagination. She needed his help. He had to get Lexi to listen to him before—
“That’s the mistake you people make more than any other I’ve seen,” Ward said. “You think you have more time. Time to love, time to make things right. You fools. And Molly? You never had her to begin with. So move on, brother. And don’t look back. Because when you do, I’ll be the one snorting down your neck until my scalding breath singes every nerve at the surface of your skin. If you want to go through that, it’s your call. At least when I’m through with you, you won’t feel a thing anymore.”
The seal that was Ward’s hand tightened. In this basement clubhouse where the oxygen once had seemed so pure, Grant found himself suffocating.
Ward snarled. Grant’s starved brain saw sharp incisors behind his black lips, and a forked tongue.
His eyes closed.
The sleep that followed was a relief.
{ chapter 27 }
Lexi was sucking blood out of her finger on the cereal aisle of King Grocery when Alice found her Wednesday morning. She’d been unloading cases of cereal and got the mother of all paper cuts from the corrugated Rice Krispies shipping box.
The slice drew tears as well. Not because it hurt, but because it showed how powerless she really was. She needed to be out saving Molly, to be finding money, to be telling the sheriff that Norman had threatened her, to be finding the drugs Ward had planted in her home, to be fleeing the state on the tank of gas in her car and the twenty-six dollars in her bank account.
Instead, she was paralyzed in routine, working because of all her options it seemed the only one that could buy time to think. Norman’s hearing was in two days. She had two days to figure out how the planets that were Norman, Grant, Ward, and her precious daughter had aligned so swiftly and catastrophically. Two days to decide how she was going to save Molly’s world.
The sight of Grant weeping over Molly had undone Lexi. His brokenness confronted her. His tears humbled her. She believed he was contrite for every mistake he’d ever made.
Had she ever shed tears like that? No. She’d turned her regrets into defensiveness. Grant could not have known she was upset over her role in Molly’s danger. He could not have known Ward wanted Molly for jealous revenge against Norman and her. How could she tell him? What would she do if Ward told him first? Grant’s eyes would dry up fast enough when he learned just how much of their family mess she was responsible for.