Man in Black

by Melissa Shirley

  “No. Bullshit. I’m not doing it.” His father’s callous laugh shot through him, and Jesse slammed his hand on the desk. If his father was standing in front of him, Jesse would have choked him. “And you’re not doing it with my money.”

  “It’s my money, son, and it’s already been done. No going back now.”

  The utter calm of his father’s voice throbbed through his head. The it’s-too-late-for-you-to-act-on-it-now quality made him want to throw up. “I don’t want any part of it.” The words choked out of him.

  “I can take your name off the company, buy you out.”

  “With what? You already spent your money on this stupid deal. You don’t have the money to buy anything. We don’t have the money.” Jesse cursed his mistake in trusting the man who had screwed him over once, and now had cheated an entire town. He had to find a way to make this right.

  “Unlike you, my boy, I know how to raise the funds. Give me a number.”

  “Are you out of your mind? I built that company by myself. It’s mine. I only brought you in on that first project because I needed your help with the permits. This isn’t what I want.”

  The ice in his father’s tone chilled him. “Your company?” His father had been angry before, loud, but this new calm caused a shiver to creep up Jesse’s spine. “Then deal with the consequences. I can just imagine what your mother will say when she finds out you are blackmailing her town out from underneath her. When she finds out you’ve been in cahoots with that shady banker Phil Renfroe, you won’t really be a momma’s boy anymore, now will you?” Anger reached across the phone lines and smacked into Jesse as real as his father’s palm.

  “She’ll never believe you.”

  Maybe his father was getting senile. Was this stupidity a telltale sign of Alzheimer’s? There was no way the old man had been able to hide this kind of evil all Jesse’s life. It had to be something new.

  “Won’t she? She knows she raised a bright, ambitious boy. She knows how badly you hate that town. She’ll believe anything I tell her.”

  “Why are you doing this? What did these people ever do to you that you would do this to them? What did I do?”

  His father sighed. “Jesse, this isn’t about you. When I left your mother, it was because everything we had, including you, was hers. I needed to show her I could be something, I could do something more than stay in that town and be under the thumb of her power. I’m powerful now. She’ll have to see it.”

  “Because I made you that way. You stole my company. You didn’t earn the money or the pride. You stole it. Where’s the power in that?”

  “Do you think it’ll matter to her when I walk in and give the town back to her? When I ride in on my big white horse and make that hellhole solvent? Prosperous, even? She’ll take me back, and there isn’t one damn thing you can do about it. I’ve practically just gift wrapped the place for her. Besides, you’re the one that wired the money.”

  “Don’t you lay this on me. I did no such thing.”

  “Your password, your company, your account.”

  His father had betrayed him.

  “So, Judas, how do you plan to get me to admit that, to not wake her up right now and tell her what I know.” Despite the pounding in his head and heart, he calmed enough to add a deadly chill to his own voice.

  “Jesse, I have the paperwork to back it up. She’ll never believe you. She’ll think you did it, and now you’re remorseful. It’s always been your M.O. with her, and she knows it. Isn’t she the one who sent you away because you were so out of control? Because she thought you were unfixable? Of course she’ll believe it was you. Just another way for you to get back at her.”

  Honestly, he couldn’t guess what his mother would believe. “You have to undo this. These are real people’s lives you’re screwing with, Dad.”

  “I can’t undo it. It’s done. You’re out of time, Jesse.”

  “You could have just come to her and told her you love her and want her back. Why do this?”

  “Because you, my son, were trying to double cross me.” Jesse didn’t have an answer for that. Not that Malcom gave him a moment to answer. “Yeah. I knew it. I know you want your company back, and I understand. What can you be if you’re always standing in my shadow? Well, once I get your mother back, you can have your little company. I’ll have what I want. You’ll have what you want. And Rangers End will be fine. I promise you that.”

  Jesse wished for the old days when slamming a receiver into its cradle produced a smashing sound that traveled along the phone lines into the other person’s ear. Punching a finger into a screen produced no satisfaction whatsoever.

  “Shit.”

  15

  Ryhan rolled over and looked at the alarm clock next to the bed. 9:21. Whoever set the church bells to ring must not have checked the clock. It took a few extra seconds before it registered. Church bells. Monday morning, not Sunday. Not on the hour or half hour. “A town meeting?” she whispered to herself. “Probably voting on throwing me out of town. Bitches.”

  She threw back her comforter, pulled on some clean clothes, and raced across the street to the city hall. The packed meeting room buzzed with noise. Jesse, with his mother and the entire planning commission, stood at the front on a raised stage that normally held only the six chairs belonging to the city council.

  Mrs. Megalos banged a gavel several times, but the chatter continued until Jesse stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

  When silence fell over the crowd, he nodded once. “Thank you all for coming. It’s no big secret that Rangers End is in trouble.” He raked his hands through his hair and looked out at the back of the room before lowering his gaze to a stack of papers in front of him. He lifted and straightened them before he continued. “There’s a company that, through its lawyers, purchased the debt you owe, your business loans, your farmland, the mortgages on your homes and cars. They might as well have purchased the bank itself. Anyway.” He glanced at Lucia, and Ryhan frowned. “This company is planning to call in those loans unless you’re willing to part with your town square.”

  Random voices around the room shouted out questions. “What company?”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Why the town square?”

  “What can we do?”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  Ryhan wondered that one herself.

  Jesse held up a hand, ignoring the bulk of the questions. “I’ve been working with my mom and the town lawyer all night long to come up with a plan that could either void the deal or find a way out of it. Unfortunately, the transaction was completely legal and airtight. We can’t wiggle out of it through any loophole because there isn’t one.” He glared at Phil Renfroe, the president of the Rangers End First Community Bank. “But, with Lucia’s help and my mother’s, we came up with a plan. Lucia, who has the most to lose, assumes the most risk. Her fortune is on the line, and to be honest, I don’t know if this will work or not. It’s a bargaining chip, but it’s all you have, and we have to move quickly.”

  Lucia stepped forward, slowly. “I am going to sell pieces of my grandmother’s land to any of you who has a loan with the bank, or I suppose, this company now.” She swallowed hard. “I’d hoped the land to be my legacy, but who needs to be remembered, right?” Her once proud voice became small and a single tear trickled down her wrinkled cheek. She flicked it away, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I will sell you the land for whatever money you can spare.”

  “Then”—as Jesse spoke, he helped Lucia to a chair—“you will sell the land to the MJM Development for the amount of your loan. To make this right, you could voluntarily make payments to Lucia, give her at least the money she deserves for whatever portion of the land you buy, but that would be up to you. It isn’t part of the deal that can be enforced.”

  Ryhan walked out. Something about it made her stomach quiver. What about that property had this company so desperate to have it? She headed downstairs
to the land office, knowing, since the whole town had finally shown up for a meeting, it would be unsupervised and unlocked. Her two favorite things at the moment.

  Checking the hall like a paranoid 007, head ducked low and eyes shifting back and forth, she stepped inside the room, walked behind the counter, and chose the computer closest to the door in case she needed a hasty exit. She had no idea what to look up, but one lucky keystroke led to another, and she had the information in front of her.

  She couldn’t believe it. Oil. A lot of oil. The town sat on top of a reservoir large enough to make overseas purchases less important. “Holy crap.”

  She didn’t have to be a genius to see that the deepest point of the reserves sat directly beneath the town square. She pushed print, then clicked another icon to perform a different search. As she read the information, her eyes clouded with tears. It just couldn’t be true.

  Ryhan ran back into the meeting room, almost tripping over her own shoes in her hurry.

  “You bastard,” she shouted, eyes wild, arms flailing with papers clutched in her fist. She rushed the stage and shoved against his chest. A hush fell over the crowd. “You sorry, sorry son of a bitch. Do you need the money, or is this just some revenge thing? Some kind of get rich quick, screw over your old friends as a bonus kind of deal?” She shook her head and pushed him again. “This was your business here?”

  His heart fell. “Ryhan, listen, I know how it sounds.” His arms reached out, but she stepped away and turned toward the still seated crowd.

  “You’re gonna wish you never came here.” She hissed the words before speaking to the crowd. “He’s screwing you guys. You’re looking at the owner of MJM Development.” She gave him another shove. “I should have known. No guy is this cool, this perfect.” She smacked her palm against her head. “He’s not here because he’s trying to help you. He’s here because this town is a gold mine. You remember that old TV show where the guy is out shooting at some food and up through the ground comes black gold? It’s oil, people. Gallons and gallons of oil.” She rooted through the stack of papers. “He doesn’t give a fat damn about your loans. It’s the oil he wants. He already bought it.”

  “Get off the stage, slut!” someone yelled.

  “Hey, call me what you want, but I have proof.” She shook the pages fisted in her hand at the crowd. “Jesse Megalos owns MJM Development, and he bought your loans. He wants the land, not your money. The money from your loans is nothing compared to the money he has or he will have when you all line up to sell him Lucia’s legacy. Then he plans to slap a big ugly oil well right in the middle of town. Your little wedding gazebo won’t get much action then, will it?” The fire in her eyes blazed higher when she glared at Jesse. “I guess you weren’t done trying to prove you’re too good for little old Rangers End. You just found bigger, better ways to ruin the begonias.”

  “Azaleas,” Lucia chimed in, coming to stand between Ryhan and Jesse. Ryhan shot her a look, and she backed up a step.

  “It’s not what you think, Ryhan.” He turned away from the hatred radiating off her.

  “What? Did you think a bunch of hicks wouldn’t be able to figure it out? That we were all too stupid to know what you were doing? I should have listened to the gossip. You were a shit then, and time’s done nothing but enhance your stench.”

  “Wow, low blow, movie star.”

  “Oh, blow this.” She smacked her hand against the table. Several men in the town stood and made their way toward the stage. She pinned them back with a heavy look. “Kicking his ass won’t make him feel any more kindly toward you, won’t save your houses or your businesses.” She shook her head. “No wonder he thinks we’re stupid.” She turned to Jesse, tears in her eyes. “It was all just some crazy ploy to get your hands on the oil, right? All of it.”

  “Ryhan, just let me explain.” Never had he begged anyone for anything, but in this moment, with so much on line, his knees were ready to buckle at the thought of losing her. “Please.”

  “Oh, save it, Jesse. You’re not the first mistake I’ve made.” She shook her head and set the papers she held on the table in front of his mother. “You need to save your town from your son.”

  With every step she took away from him, his heart grew heavier. When she shoved the clear glass door out of her way, he closed his eyes, unable to stand seeing her walk out on him.

  He turned back to the crowd, rolled his eyes and leapt off the stage. Racing through the door and across the street, he caught her by the arm. “Wait.”

  “Leave me alone, Jess.”

  “No.” She jerked away, and he let go, but she stood looking at him, her sad blue eyes blinking rapidly. “I came here to get the land, yes, but I didn’t do it.”

  “Well, good for you. You’ve grown a conscience. But I saw the evidence, Jesse. You worked it all out so the land is yours.”

  “I’m trying to help these people. I’m trying to save their homes and their businesses and their lives.” The words he needed to make her understand stuck inside his throat.

  “Really? Because you love this town so much? Because you want to make it right? You used us, all of us. Planting flowers and playing nice so you could steal the land right out from under them.” She shook her head, ignoring the fact that the flowers did look nice, and no one had forced her to be quite so nice to him. “But why me? I was doing fine until you came along. And now, look at me.” She wiped her tears on the back of her hand. “I’m not fine. And it’s all because of you.”

  She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to protest. “I know. I’m the one that hopped into bed with you, my mistake. But you acted like you weren’t the biggest asshole in the history of assholes.” She turned to walk away, then marched the three steps back to stand in front of him, close enough he could smell her shampoo and feel her fury. “Rick was bad, but he never pretended to be something other than what he is. You snuck under my radar and that pisses me off. You paraded around here like some superhero”—she emphasized the word—“when all along you were just a villain in really nice jeans.”

  “Ryhan, please let me explain.”

  She turned and stalked away, leaving him standing in the middle of the street with an ache in his heart and an urge to hop in the car and get the hell out of town. Again. His father could deal with the fallout. Let him face the town.

  Instead, he walked inside, a new plan forming in his mind.

  16

  Inside her apartment, with the shades drawn and the radio on, she let loose the dam holding back her tears. She cried the ugly tears of heartbreak as she consoled herself with a tub of ice cream that she’d saved for a special occasion. Instead of fussing with a bowl, she sat cross-legged on her sofa with the carton and a spoon and ate until her brain froze and her eyes dried.

  She needed a plan and sitting around crying about her love life, if it could even be called that, and her unemployment only made her feel worse. So he’d turned out to be a disappointment. She shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  She had a life to live, and she needed a change. Maybe in another place she would find a way to reinvent herself into something other than a magnet for trouble. She had one paycheck coming from Grover’s and one from Kelly’s. That would be enough to get her out of Rangers End and maybe somewhere with bright lights and big buildings would refresh her soul enough to heal her broken heart. She hadn’t been to the city since Lana brought her here. Or, she could find another small town. Somewhere like Rangers End, where no one knew her history. Somewhere with plenty of dogs to walk and dinners to serve, but clean and shiny, like a new penny.

  Moving to the desk, she opened her computer and set to typing. She found a small town in Illinois that looked promising. They needed a library assistant. She clicked on the apply icon and sent her resume across the wires. She explored the town through a virtual tour and couldn’t wait to share her news with Lana. Even if she didn’t get this job, she had a destination now. A quirky place where blending in consisted mo
re of standing out. Perfect.

  With her plan in place, she returned the ice cream to the freezer and started packing. She would store her furniture at Lana’s, take her clothes, and be on her way. She booked a train ticket on her emergency credit card—if this wasn’t an emergency, nothing ever would be—and made a hotel reservation, then started packing.

  She had no reason to stay in Rangers End now that everyone hated her. Leaving made sense. It had absolutely nothing to do with Jesse or the memories of him dancing around in her mind.

  Nothing.

  At.

  All.

  She had one night to get her affairs in order. What affairs? She had to shut off her cable and internet. It took one phone call, three minutes on hold, and an additional minute to make the arrangements. Outside, a flurry of activity on the square caught her eye. What the hell?

  Every citizen in town bustled with banner flags and twinkle lights, hanging them across the town square. The old men who played checkers every single day still played at their tables on their oversized boards, but everyone around them hurried from one area to another. Booths sprouted up with the usual signs—funnel cakes $1, and Kisses for Quarters.

  Ryhan stood at the window, not looking for Jesse, but not falling over in surprise to find him, clipboard in hand, directing the action. His long legs, the way his hair glistened in the sun, the muscles in his forearms as he pointed across the square—she would have recognized him in a thick fog.

  She shook her head and kicked at the floor with her toe. This town had let him pull the wool right back over their eyes, even after she’d gone out and found the evidence against him. No wonder his deal had been so easy to pull off.

  As though he’d heard her thoughts, he turned around to face her window and stopped, his arm in the air, mid-point.

  She wanted to move, to put the curtain back and step away, Instead she reached up and traced his outline in the window. Somehow, he’d overcome the crowd hate and managed to stand in the middle of them as their leader. A vague sense of loss tingled in her chest, and she brushed the curtain back in place. Through the flimsy lace, she watched him stare at her as the activity around him continued.