“Well, they were their hauls,” I say quietly.
“The last thing that the replica guy made was a Harry Winston necklace worth over two million dollars. The night that they broke into that estate on Nantucket to make the exchange, they found his partner’s body in the Belle Isle Marsh.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me all of this.”
“Because you’re with him and he’s a dangerous man. He killed two people that I know of and who knows how many others,” Owen says.
“It’s not him,” I say under my breath. “Crawford isn’t even his real name.”
Without missing a beat, Owen says, “He used to use his biological father’s real name, Reed. But when he was in high school, he changed it.”
I rub the back of my neck. I’m drowning under the flow of information unable to come up for air.
“You don’t know if it’s the same person,” I insist. “Nicholas Crawford is a generic name. Besides, why the hell would he still use that name if everyone knew it?”
“Everyone knew him as Nicky C. Besides, he was always cocky, and an arrogant enough bastard to keep his old name. As a fuck you to the boss, to his associates, to me.”
“You?” I ask.
“I’ve had some…dealings with him myself. We didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.”
“What happened?” I ask.
There’s a long pause.
“You know I can’t talk about any of that here. I’m due for a parole hearing soon. I can’t implicate myself in anything. But it was nothing illegal.”
I furrow my brow until I realize that he had added that last sentence for the recording. His previous statement was a sidestep, it wasn’t anything that he should’ve said.
“You need to stay away from him, Olive. You need to just ghost him until he stops calling. He probably doesn’t know that I’m your brother. You did just meet in the coffee shop, right? Just ghost him for a while until he gets the point. He has a short attention span when it comes to females.”
I clench my jaw. I’ve always hated the way some men refer to women as females. The word is so scientific and cold.
“I can’t do that,” I say quietly.
“Why not? Because you have feelings for him?” he says in a mocking fashion. When I don’t reply, something occurs to him.
“Oh, shit, I forgot. You took fifty grand from him. Fuck!”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You took Mom’s debt from Marlo and now you owe Nicky C a debt. That’s…that’s not good, Olive.”
I hear a tinge of fear, something that I’m not used to hearing from Owen.
“I don’t owe any debt to Nicholas Crawford or this Nicky C,” I explain. “He doesn’t even know the details of why I needed the money.”
A robotic voice interrupts our conversation. “You have one minute remaining.”
“Get the fuck out of the city, Olive!” Owen says. “Drive, drive out west. Buy some new documents. Start a new life. Run as far as you can!”
17
When he asks me for a favor…
Owen’s words reverberate in my head long after he hangs up. It’s exactly the advice that I gave our mom when I heard about her debt. I cradle my phone in my lap and run my fingers around its soft corners.
His words come back to haunt me. I try to convince myself that he’s lying. No, not lying, wrong.
Nicky C is not Nicholas Crawford.
It’s a common name and he wouldn’t be stupid enough to use it if he were trying to live under a different identity.
But that’s a big if.
My attempts to convince myself fall flat.
Nicholas Crawford is Ashley’s brother. We all grew up in the same neighborhood and city.
He told me that the reason he wasn’t there for her was that he was running the streets.
That’s a euphemism for being in a gang, or part of some sort of organized crime syndicate.
He didn’t try to hide it. In that case, chances are he knew Owen, or at least of him.
Does that mean that he wanted me to tell Owen? Does that mean that he didn’t care if he were found out?
Besides these and about a million other questions, there is the undeniable truth. Nicky C worked with replicas and only stole things that he could replace with these fake trinkets. That’s exactly what Nicholas Crawford did to get Kathy Moreno’s bracelet.
But what about that story he told me? It came out so naturally. So effervescently. Like he didn’t have to think about it once. As if it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That’s what people like us do, though, isn’t it? We lie.
We cheat.
We deceive.
So, why wouldn’t he lie to me?
My phone rings again. My body jolts from surprise. It’s another collect call. Owen got more time.
“What are you going to do?” he asks, his words dripping with fear.
“I don’t know. I’m sitting here trying to figure it out.”
“You need to run, Olive.”
“I can’t.”
“You need to get out of Boston.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not there,” I say quietly. “I’m in…Hawaii.”
“What?” he snaps.
“Maui, to be exact.”
He takes a deep breath. “Why the fuck are you in Maui?”
“Nicholas invited me. We’re here on vacation.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Owen whispers under his breath.
“Listen, I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me. Nicholas is…a really great guy. He has this amazing house here and we are really getting along.”
“You are so stupid, Olive,” Owen says. “How can you be so smart and such an idiot at the same time?”
I purse my lips. Anger starts to rise from the pit of my stomach.
“Please don’t put me down, okay? I get enough of that from Mom.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” His tone changes immediately. “I am just so worried about you.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
“You keep saying that but it’s not going to make it anymore true. How about this? How about you just say you have to get back home for something and come back to Boston?”
“I thought you told me to get away from Boston?”
“That’s when I thought that’s where you both were. But I should’ve known that he was a coward who was going to be hiding out in some billionaire’s paradise while the rest of us rot in prison.”
This jealously gives me pause for concern.
“What did he do to you exactly?”
This catches Owen by surprise. He clears his throat and then mumbles, “No, nothing. He didn’t do anything to me…but the organization suffered and he killed his partner…”
I narrow my eyes and press the phone closer to my ear. Something doesn’t sound right. He’s hiding something, but why? Is he hiding it because he is being recorded and doesn’t want to admit to any more crimes? Or is he hiding it for some ulterior motive.