“But you won’t?” I asked, cocking my head.
“What would I do with a quarter of a million dollars?” he asked. “I’ve got everything I could ever want or need in Drum.”
He was full of shit, but I refrained from telling him so.
“Is that why you came back?” I asked before I thought better of it.
“You mean from prison?” he asked without shame. “You heard, huh?”
My cheeks flushed. “Yeah.”
“I figured,” he said. “I came back because, for better or worse, Drum is my home. I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
I had never felt that way about anywhere, not since my mother had died. I wasn’t sure I ever would again. It made me feel like a coward, but my only plan, currently, was to live my life on the run. A small voice inside my head begged me to stop my father, to destroy him, but I had no evidence against him, and he had resources beyond my comprehension.
When we drove into Drum, Wyatt turned into the parking lot of the garage and pulled to a halt. It was a two-bay garage with a waiting area to the left of the building. It looked like it had once been a service station, but the pumps had been removed. Wyatt’s tow truck was parked on the side of the building, and a dark sedan was parked out front. The garage brought back memories of Henryetta, Arkansas. Neely Kate’s boyfriend, Jed, had worked on my borrowed car. But although he was now a mechanic, he had a background in the criminal underworld, and he was the one who’d secured my new identity a couple of weeks ago.
A new wave of grief hit me, but I quickly shoved it down. If I wanted to survive, I didn’t have the luxury of grieving.
Wyatt reached for his door handle. “If we’re lucky, Junior will have figured out an estimate for your car.”
I followed Wyatt into the small waiting room area, which was really two folding chairs under the windows overlooking the parking lot, facing a tall counter. As I got closer, I realized it was a two-tiered counter—a higher counter for the customers and a lower desk area, which held a desktop computer and keyboard, along with a mess of papers.
Wyatt walked around and booted up the computer, then opened the browser tab. “Have at it,” he said. “I’m goin’ to check with Junior to see how he’s makin’ out on your car.”
I sat down on the stool and dug into my purse, pulling out a small notebook that held my VPN login information as well as Charlene’s social media logins. I logged into the VPN site, which assigned me a VPN in California, then signed into Facebook. The number of unrecognizable people in my feed caught me off guard, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I was looking for Austin.
He wasn’t Charlene’s friend, but I found his profile easily enough. He hadn’t made his email address public, though, and he hadn’t posted in a while. I had better luck on Instagram—he’d posted a foodie pic at a restaurant the day before. Relief flooded me. Yesterday, Austin had been alive and well. That was a good sign.
Maybe the best way to keep him safe was to not contact him at all.
Maybe I could ask my friends in Arkansas to do it instead.
I signed into the email account that Jed had set up for me, unsure how to get my message across without just coming out and saying what I meant. I needed to be cryptic in case my father ever linked me to this account, but I couldn’t be too cryptic or they wouldn’t understand.
Hello, my darlings,
I hope you are well. I’ve gotten myself into a pickle, but I have no doubt that things will work out, so try not to worry.
It has come to my attention that my past is rearing its head again, and this time it has teeth. Can you let my friend in Texas know that dangers lurk, and he needs to protect himself? I worry for you as well. I’m sorry for any trouble I’ve brought you.
C
My heart panged with loneliness. I’d lived with Rose and her sister for two months, and Neely Kate had been around so much it felt like I’d lived with her too. I owed Jed more than I could ever repay. They were true friends, close friends, and there was every likelihood I’d never see them again. My father’s Dallas crime syndicate was moving into their small Arkansas county. Someone in his organization had discovered I was hiding there, and I’d been forced to flee. I’d already spent two weeks grieving the loss and knew I needed to find a way to move on, but at the moment, it all felt so hopeless.
“You upset because you found out you’re not gettin’ the reward?” Wyatt asked in the doorway.
I jumped, pressing a hand to my chest. “Do you always sneak up on people like that?”
“It is my office.”
I pressed send on the email and shut down the page, then made sure I’d signed out of Charlene’s social media accounts.
“Just having a moment,” I said, signing out of the VPN and closing that page too. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours.” I closed my notebook and returned it to my purse.
He watched me for a second, as though scrutinizing my answer, but I didn’t owe him anything…other than what it cost to fix my car.
“Do you have an estimate yet?”
He leaned into the doorframe. “Not entirely. It looks like the oil pan was rusted out and something punctured it. The hole was small enough that it wouldn’t have leaked out all at once. If you’d been driving for a few hours, the puncture could have happened during the drive and the oil might have finished leaking out at the overlook.” He paused. “You could have checked the oil in the morning before you took off and your dipstick would have read fine, so it’s not a matter of you lettin’ the oil run too low.”
I gave a small nod. “Thank you for that. Believe it or not, it makes me feel better.” I grimaced. “So how much will it cost?”
“Well, we found some other things too. Your timing belt needs to be changed and your brakes are about shot. Did you notice any problems on the hills?”
I grimaced. I had.
He must have taken my expression as my answer. “If you don’t change the timing belt, it could make it to Wilmington, but I’m hesitant to let you go without fixing the brakes. It definitely won’t pass any state inspection if you end up movin’ to North Carolina.”
My heart sank.
“I’ve gotta search around for parts,” he said, “but since it’s a Honda, it’s gonna cost you more.”
“Of course,” I said in a dry tone. When he looked insulted, I said, “That wasn’t an insinuation that I thought you were cheating me. Just that I know some car parts run higher than others. Give me a ballpark estimate.”
He hesitated. “Twenty-five hundred.” Then he added, “I’ll throw in the tow for free and cut as many costs as I can on the brakes. Like I said, I don’t feel good about letting you drive down the mountain as they are now.”
Holding on to the counter, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
“I might be able to find some used parts to lower the cost.”
“By how much?”
“Maybe a few hundred.”
The now-familiar burning in my eyes was back, but crying wasn’t going to help a damn thing.
“I’ll be upfront,” he said. “A good portion of that is labor, but Junior…he’s got a wife and kids. I’d give you a discount on labor, but he needs the money.”