by Parker, Ali
We had contingency plans for getting rid of the duffel and pretending to be a hostage who had gotten away, but I had a feeling today was an all-or-nothing kind of deal. I’d either get out with the money, or I’d be in the back of a van with Rayce and New Guy sooner or later.
I didn’t remember much about getting out after that. Hell, I didn’t remember either breathing or the drive back to my new house.
All I knew was that I followed Rayce’s plan to the letter, and it had worked. Before I really knew what was happening, I was at my house and the money was sitting on my coffee table.
I’d only started coming back to my senses when there was a knock at my door. My eyes darted to the backyard, knowing I could escape from there. After everything Rayce had done to get me out of there, I couldn’t risk getting caught now.
Having already stopped on the way home to get rid of the tracking mechanisms in the stacks, I had no idea how they’d tracked me down so quickly. I was running through the possibilities when a voice at my door yanked me out of flight mode.
“Will? It’s me.” Heidi’s sweet voice anchored me, brought me right back to the moment and the very reason I’d been in that fucking bank earlier.
She was my future, my family. And I suddenly couldn’t wait to tell her that.
Chapter 34
Heidi
My heart was pounding in my chest while I waited for Will to open his front door. I hadn’t heard a peep from inside, but his truck was parked in the drive, so I was pretty sure he was home.
Fidgeting with my hands, I wondered for what had to be the thirtieth time whether I’d made the right decision coming here. It hadn’t really been a decision, though, if I was being totally honest with myself.
Ever since I’d spoken to Will on Monday morning, I’d had this knotted pit in my stomach. It wasn’t a feeling that came and went, it was more like it’d hit me with the strength of a freight train and had refused to budge.
Since my stomach already wasn’t the favorite organ in my body these days, it was like it had finally decided to rebel and fully earn its place in dead last. It rolled and lurched, grabbing onto the sinking feeling with all it had.
All night I’d felt sick, weighed down and like the pit in my stomach was about to open up and swallow me whole. I’d done everything I could to distract myself. Movies with the girls, staying late at work and going in early again. I’d even volunteered for an extra shift, but eventually, I just couldn’t stop myself anymore.
As soon as my last shift had ended, I’d set off along the sidewalk and I hadn’t stopped once. Though I’d argued with myself all the way over, I kept convincing the doubtful part of my mind that this was for the best.
There was no way I could have another night as awful as the last had been. I was too worried, too uncertain, and too confused about everything that was going on. Will had the answers to all my questions and was the subject of all my worry. It seemed natural that I would feel compelled to seek him out.
Of course, there was also the fact that I’d developed real feelings for the guy and frankly, I just missed the fuck out of him. It had been too long since I’d been in his arms properly, and that was what I needed.
So, there I stood outside his house, hoping that I wasn’t standing in front of a door with nobody behind it. The truck was there, but I supposed that didn’t mean he was actually home.
When the door swung open to reveal Will, relief crashed into me. He was here, he was okay, and he was smiling. In fact, he was smiling a little manically.
“Heidi, I’m so glad you’re here.” He stepped outside and pulled me into his arms, crushing me against his chest so hard I almost couldn’t breathe. “It’s so good to see you, baby. I’ve missed you. How are you feeling?”
“Dizzy,” I managed to choke out, pushing him gently away from me. He released me immediately when he realized what I meant, grinning and taking my hand before tugging me inside after him.
“I’m sorry, I got a little excited. How are you feeling? Do you want some water?”
“Yes please.” My reply was quiet. Taking in the house again, I was struck once more by the opulence of it. I mean, it even had a huge chandelier in the entrance hall for fuck’s sake.
Sucking in a deep breath, I reminded myself of my decision. I wanted Will, even if he had made bad choices in the past. I needed to know the truth, but I would be able to make a final decision about whether I would be able to live with whatever he had done once I knew for sure what that was.
Will was still holding my hand, leading me to his dreamy kitchen. While I wasn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination, even I would learn if it meant being able to use that kitchen. It was just that nice.
While we walked, Will kept firing off questions. Something seemed off about him, like he was hyper-charged or something.
When I caught sight of his gigantic coffee table, I had my best guess as to why. I stopped abruptly, dragging him to a halt with me. “Will, what is that?”
“Money, baby.” He grinned, bringing an arm up to sling it around my shoulders and pull me close to his side. His pupils were slightly dilated, the black just about as big as the blue. “Money that’s going to buy our baby everything he or she ever wants, the best education money can buy, and whatever else you guys may need.”
The pit in my stomach widened, my pulse kicking up a notch. “Money that you got from where, exactly?”
While I’d never seen so much cash in my life, I was also still sure it wasn’t an amount regular people had hidden underneath their mattresses. There was a black duffel bag on the floor that looked like it would fit an amateur hiker’s gear for a month, initial packaging included.
A few stacks of bills were still lying on the bag, indicating that it was what had been carrying the rest of the money. Bills covered the coffee table in its entirety, which would have been impressive even if the thing wasn’t the size of a dining room table for a large family.
Will’s lounge was spacious, the couches positioned in a U-shape around the coffee table and faced a flat-screen TV and a fireplace. Every person sitting on each of those couches would have been able to reach the coffee table, that was how big it was. And it was covered in cash.
Will was watching me surveying the money, looking at me with this odd expression on his face and not answering my question. I slid out from underneath his arm, folding my own across my chest as I looked up into those gorgeous blue eyes I had honestly believed belonged to a good man.
“Where did you get all this money, Will?”
His one hand went up to rub the back of his head while he shoved the other into his pocket. He wore black jeans and a navy blue T-shirt. I hated how good he looked in them given the situation we found ourselves in, but I couldn’t help myself. He looked good.
Noticing that my eyes had dropped away from his, he smirked. “Does it matter? How about we celebrate it instead. That right there is financial freedom, baby.”
“No.” I forced my eyes away from the stupidly sexy muscles showcased by his stupidly sexy shirt, then wondered if the pregnancy hormones were somehow to blame for how badly I wanted to jump his bones even with the strange pit in my stomach. “What that looks like to me is bad news, not financial freedom. What have you done?”
Will’s eyes narrowed, his shoulders steeling before they drooped. He sank into the couch, thankfully abandoning whatever bravado he was about to fake. When he beckoned me over, I went to sit next to him.
Rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, he released a sound that was somewhere between relief and despair. “I stole it.”
“You what?” My heart forgot how to beat, numbness settling into every one of my limbs.
Will nodded. “Rayce and I robbed a bank this morning.”
“What?” As soon as my fingers remembered how to move, I pinched myself. It didn’t help. I was still staring at more money than I’d ever seen and sitting next to a man who looked decidedly guilty.
He stared at
the black screen of his TV for a beat before turning to me. “Have you heard about the recent string of bank robberies in the area?”
“Of course.” It dawned on me then that he wouldn’t have brought that up for no reason. “Oh my God, Will. Please tell me that wasn’t you.”
“It was us.” I had to give him credit for not flinching or really reacting at all when he admitted it. My heart sank. It might have been my imagination, but there was a glimmer of something that might even have been pride in his eyes.
Shoulders broad and jaw set, he twisted on the couch to face me fully. “Rayce and I grew up in the system, as you know. When he got out, he had nothing and no one. Petty theft had been a way of life for us for a long time, and eventually, it morphed into this.”
He watched me carefully, but except for the blood draining from my face and the rapid beating of my heart, I tried my best to keep my expression neutral. I would hear him out. I’d already decided that when I realized that I wanted him no matter what.
“I’ve been wanting to get out and go legit for as long as we’ve been doing it. Eventually, I got the job I have now and started my own company on the back of it.”
Will explained everything to me, slowly and meticulously. I swung like a pendulum between understanding why they had done it, why they had gotten into it, and being appalled by the fact that they had.
When he came to the end of his story, he lifted his hand and left it hanging over my stomach. My own hands were folded there, though, I hadn’t even realized I’d put them over my belly. He looked up at me, a question in his eyes.
I nodded my consent, and he laid his hand gently over mine. “When Rayce came to me about this job today, I told him no. I made it clear that I was done. When I found out about the baby, I went to him and told him I was in.”
“Why?” My brain was struggling to put the pieces together. Was it my fault, or the seed’s fault that he’d done this? That didn’t seem right.
“I did it for you and the baby,” he confirmed my worst suspicions in a tone so factual it was like he was telling me it was sunny outside. “I want to be able to provide for you, to give you everything I never had.”
My gaze landed on the stacks of cash again, and for a quick minute, I imagined keeping it. Life always seemed to be such a breeze for rich people. They had no worries except for how to spend their money on any given day.
But they worked for that money, a voice whispered from the back of my head.
Another voice countered, so did Will.
It wasn’t like the money had simply fallen in his lap. My internal argument raged on while my mind drifted to what life would be like for our child if we had a head start like that. Pregnancy and birthing expenses would be covered, so would all the baby gear and luxury items we wanted.
Like Will had said, we’d be able to give the baby a great education. I would probably be able to stay home with him or her if I wanted to, and Will could keep building his company.
The picture my mind sketched was just about idyllic, until it hit a snag when I looked into the imagined blue eyes of a little boy or girl who looked so much like Will. Eyes that would look up at us, eyes that would look at what we did as an example of what he or she did in life.
“I don’t want this,” I whispered then. There was no way I’d ever be able to look into our child’s eyes day after day and know we’d only been able to provide all that because Will had stolen it from someone else.
It didn’t even matter to me that the bank probably had insurance that would reimburse everyone, the money still didn’t belong to us. Mixed into that pile of cash was someone’s college savings, someone’s pension fund. There would be grocery money and school fees and savings for that one luxury someone had been wanting to spoil someone else with for months.
“You have to find a way to give it back.”
Will’s eyes rounded, his brows knitting so close together there was almost no space left between them. “What?”
“I don’t want anything to do with this money, Will. I can’t. We can build a life on what we have with your job and mine, but we can’t keep this money.”
I got up from the couch, making sure I gently dislodged his hand. “I appreciate that you want to provide for us, but I can’t be part of something like this. I’ve never had this much money in my life, and as nice as it would be, I don’t need it. Not if it means having something like this on my conscience.”
And then, despite having told my friends that I wanted him even if he did have bad stuff in his past, I walked away from Will. There was no way I could start this new chapter in my life, the one where I would be a mom to someone, being part of something like this. I just couldn’t.
Chapter 35
Will
Rayce was being held in a prison just over ninety miles from his apartment. For three days, I’d been going out of my mind with worry over him. When I finally got the call from the lawyer I knew handled any and all of Rayce’s cases telling me where he was, I was in the truck before we even ended our call.
To say I’d been through three days of hell was an understatement, but I knew it would pale in comparison with what my brother had gone through over the same period of time. I hadn’t slept much, hadn’t eaten much, and hadn’t been to work. I also hadn’t heard from Heidi and spent all my time berating myself and cursing my choices.
My heart and mind were both equally split between worrying about Heidi and Rayce, obsessing about both of them and second-guessing all the choices I’d ever made concerning either of them. Particularly those choices I made on Tuesday. What a clusterfuck of a day.
Since Rayce had told his lawyer that he could call me to let me know where he was, I guessed at least he was still speaking to me. Heidi? Not so much.
Figuring I had to start with one of them, and considering that Heidi wasn’t taking my calls or coming to the door when I went to her place, I couldn’t wait to see Rayce. I would have liked to have gone to see him with better news, but things were what they were.
At least I’d get to see him with my own two eyes. I needed him to be okay, needed to know what I could do to help him. There had to be something I could do, and whatever it was, I would fucking do it.
The correctional complex loomed ahead of me all too soon. The square brick buildings, guard towers, and miles of fencing made my stomach churn. I was staring at the very thing that had been my worst nightmare for years, and yet it was Rayce’s reality now.
Gravel churned under my tires when I stopped and handed over my identification to three different guards. They checked the truck and got a good look underneath her too. Apparently, they weren’t leaving anything to chance around here.
If I’d harbored any dreams about breaking Rayce out of prison, they’d have died right there. It’d be a lie to say the idea hadn’t come to me a few times in the dark of night, but I’d always dismissed it as soon as the bright sun shined holes all over that plan.
Plus, I was done with the shady, illegal side of life. Whatever Rayce needed from me I would do for him, no questions asked, as long as it was legal. This was a hell of a time to grow a conscience, but he had been right about one thing that day. I had a kid to think about now.
After seeing Heidi’s reaction to the money, despite how much easier it would make things for us, I was finally starting to understand the responsibility that I would be entrusted with when the baby came.
If I’d thought I’d gotten it before, I’d been dead fucking wrong. It took the fierce determination in Rayce’s eyes when he told me to get the fuck out of there, the look on Heidi’s face when she told me she wanted no part of that, and several days of intense reflection to realize just how wrong I had been.
Making things right with Heidi was a work in progress, but I wouldn’t give up. She’d pretty much given me all the clues about how I could do it, it had just taken some planning before I could actually do anything about it.
Meanwhile, I had no idea how to make things right with
Rayce or even if I could. Guilt had settled heavily on my shoulders once I realized he had actually been arrested, and there was a big part of me saying he wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been for me.
The more logical, rational part of my brain remembered Rayce’s argument: that he was never going to stop until he got arrested. He had been planning to pull this job, with or without me.
But I’d left him there. There was no getting away from that. We’d had a few minutes, at most, to get out and I’d gone without him. Whether he’d ordered me to do it after making me swear multiple times I would do what he told me to do felt pretty damn irrelevant now.
Gravel creaked and gave way as I headed into the prison, still holding on to my identification. My nerves felt like they were all exposed on my way into the building. Hands shaking, I handed over my ID to guard after guard. I went through security checks, scans, and signed in twice before I was finally ushered into a small room.
It felt like I was in physical pain the farther I was led into the prison. This is where they’re keeping my brother.
The room was small and brightly lit with fluorescent lighting. One of the bulbs flickered, though, casting bursts of shadow across the room. No one here obviously cared about the possibility of triggering a migraine or an epileptic fit.
Why would they? The scum of the state got sent here. Nobody cared about their well-being. And now that included Rayce.
A shudder traveled down my spine. I have to get him out of here.
The room I was told to wait for him in smelled like piss, pain, sweat, and fear. A glass barrier divided the room in half, with immovable metal benches as chairs on both sides. They were riveted to the wall and floor.
In fact, everything in the damn room was nailed down. Not that there was much besides the bench, glass, and small lip of a counter to lean your arms on while talking. There was a phone mounted on either side of the glass and some signs against the wall stating the rules, but that was it.