Abby slowly moved forward. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I need your help. Come on. Put the gun down and let’s talk.”
“Stop right there. Don’t take another step.”
She continued forward as she spoke. “You’re not going to shoot me, John. Come on, put it down before someone gets hurt.”
“I will shoot you. Don’t take another step.”
She shook her head and stepped forward again. John’s hand slightly shaking, the gun aimed vaguely at her chest.
“Put it down, Jo...”
The click of the gun’s hammer harmlessly hitting the bullet free chamber silenced the room. The accountant was stunned and pulled the trigger again and again.
“Looking for these?” Abby produced a handful of bullets from her pocket and let them spill from her hand onto the carpet.
John stared at the bullets, speechless.
Donny actually laughed out loud.
Abby moved so fast, neither man had a second to react. In one swift motion, she grabbed John’s left hand, slammed it into the wall just to the side of his head, and drove the blade of her knife through his palm, nailing his hand to the drywall.
He screamed, eyes bulging at the sight of the large blade pierced through his hand. Abby held her hand over his mouth to muffle his screams as she yelled in his face. “Do I have your attention? I asked you nicely to help me. Now shut up and listen.”
John managed to stifle his screaming though the pain was still intense.
“I’m going to take my hand away,” Abby said. “If you scream, the knife won’t be going into your hand next time. Got it?”
John nodded.
She took her hand away, and he alternately gasped for air and glanced at his hand as blood starting trickling from the wound.
Abby took a step back and pointed her gun at him. “I didn’t want it to go this way. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
“OK, alright,” he said, catching his breath. “What do you want?”
Abby smiled and looked at Donny. “Now that’s more like it, isn’t it?”
Donny smiled back. Wow, was all he could think.
“Now,” Abby said, shifting her weight from side to side. “It’s pretty simple. There is a particular piece of shit named Bryce Haydenson laundering money for you. He kidnapped my daughter, so you’re going to tell me where I can find him.”
John shook his head. “You’ve got something mixed up there. Haydenson is dead, at least a year now.”
“No, he’s not. He’s alive, he’s laundering money for the family, and you’re going to tell me where he is.”
“I can’t,” John said. “You’re wrong. I swear he’s dead. And if he were alive, I’d have no idea where he would be. The money laundering goes through here, but I’m on a need-to-know. Rosso keeps me in the dark. Ask him yourself if you want.”
“I did. He told me Bryce is alive, and he’s upstate laundering money. It was the last thing he said before he died right in front of me. Now, I’ll believe you that you don’t know where he is, but you’re going to tell me how to find him, or you’re going to join Rosso.”
She stared into his eyes and studied the pain and confusion on his face. He obviously hadn’t heard, which was a good thing. Is he gonna break?
A photo on his desk caught her eye. It was John, with a woman too attractive for him, and a young boy. She turned back to him with a stare, “And then they’re next. Got it?”
“Fine!” He spat the words out. “Fine. Christ, just get this thing out of my hand!” He had so much adrenaline pumping through his veins, he could hardly feel the pain—at least until Abby ripped the knife cleanly back out through the wound, drawing a yelp from him.
Donny had already located a first aid kit and tossed some gauze pads and medical tape at him. “Why don’t you clean that up before you get blood all over the place?” He leaned down toward Abby and whispered, “Nice job. You had me a little freaked out, though. When did you take the bullets out of the gun?”
She winked. “I’m full of surprises these days, huh?”
They allowed John a few seconds to sit down and dress his wound before getting back to business.
“So, how do we find him?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve got an idea. But it’s all I’ve got, I swear.”
“Let’s hear it,” Donny said.
“You said upstate, so I’m assuming you’re talking about New York.”
“That’s the only upstate I know,” Abby conceded.
John nodded. “The majority of the cash gets shuffled around here in the city. Into one business, out to another, lots of cash-heavy places. Bars, restaurants, you know, stuff like that. We don’t do everything in town though. We’ve got a monthly drop that goes to Vegas. I know, cliché’ right? But if you want to clean a ton of cash that’s still the best place to do it. There’s another out of town drop too, but I don’t know where the money winds up. Every Monday at ten in the morning, two guys show up with New York tags on the car. I hand them an envelope with $9,900, and they disappear for another week.”
“Any idea where they go?” Abby asked.
John shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen them around here. I always figured they were bound for NYC. They’re the only contact I have with New York, I swear.”
Abby was curious, “Why such a specific amount? $9,900?”
John opened his mouth, but Donny spoke up, “Any deposit a business makes over $10k the banks have to report to the feds. Laundering 101: don’t move too much cash at once, or you’ll get pinched. Right, John?”
He nodded. “We can only do so much in the city. That’s why we have the Vegas drop. And New York.”
“So we’re looking for a business upstate.” Abby was lost in thought for a moment, and then sighed, looking at Donny. “Where the hell do we start?”
Donny glanced at his watch. “In a little more than an hour it looks like.”
Abby furrowed her brow.
“Today’s Monday,” he said. “If what he’s sayin’ is true, our two guys from New York will be here for the drop in about an hour and a half. We grab ‘em and ask where they’re going, or we can just follow ‘em.”
Abby tried to play it off that she knew that, but couldn’t. She was exhausted and had completely forgotten what day of the week it was.
Donny smiled at her. “It’s alright. You’ve got a lot on your mind.”
“I guess we should get comfortable, then.” Abby noticed John examining his newly bandaged hand, “You’ll be OK. The knife went in pretty clean, I don’t think I hit bone.”
The three spent an awkward time together over the next hour. They considered tying John up, but that didn’t make any sense given that he would have to be untied to make the hand-off to the New York guys. For the time being, he seemed cooperative, so they simply asked him to sit and stay quiet, and he obliged.
“Can I at least have my coffee?” John asked.
Abby granted him that, and the three occupied his office in silence until the shrill ring of the telephone made them jump. Abby looked at the old-school, desk-mounted phone. That thing must be thirty years old, she thought.
“I should answer it,” John said.
Abby nodded. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
John lifted the receiver, and Donny leaned in close so he could hear both ends of the conversation.
“Hello?”
“Hey, John, it’s Mark.”
“Oh, hi. What’s going on?”
Donny mouthed, Who’s Mark?
John covered the receiver and whispered, “One of the guys coming for the drop.”
“Listen, I dunno if you heard,” Mark continued, “but I guess some shit went down at Rosso’s last night. Did you hear?”
“No, no, I didn’t. What happened?” John said, feigning surprise.
“I guess the old man is dead; some of the other guys, too. I dunno, I didn’t get the whole thing, but the place got hit pretty h
ard.”
“Holy shit! The feds?”
“I don’t think so, but we don’t wanna take no chances. We’re not coming this morning.”
Donny pulled away and looked at John, whispering harshly, No, get him here! You get him here!
Abby pulled her blade from its sheath and tapped the family photo on the desk. John got the message.
“Mark, um...” John thought for a second. “If something did go down, I’ve got to get this cash out of here. You can’t skip the drop. If something did go down, Rosso’s instructions are to go ahead with business as usual. The old man knew he didn’t have long, so him being dead is no surprise to anyone.”
“I know, but I’m not comfortable gettin’ too close to things, ya know?”
“Listen, I haven’t heard anything, and there’s nothing going on here at the office. It’s me, my coffee, and a bunch of numbers. The usual alright? I’ll make some phone calls, but in the meantime, I’ve got to get the cash out of here. Swing by, grab the envelope, and hit the road. No one will ever know you were here. Same as always.”
Mark was quiet on the other end. He knew his boss probably needed the weekly influx of cash.
“Mark...”
“Fine. We’ll be by in thirty, but if we get pinched, I swear to God you’re a fuckin’ dead man. Got it?”
“Loud and clear.” John smiled. He was used to being threatened. It seemed to have become a way of life in the past couple of hours anyway. “See you at ten.” He hung up the phone and looked at Abby. “Happy?”
“Yes, very. You did fine,” she assured him. “They usually park right out front?”
“Yeah, they pull up to the curb. They’re not in here for more than five minutes.”
Abby looked at Donny. “We should be down the street a bit. We’ll pull out in traffic behind them and follow at a safe distance. Sound good?”
“You got it,” Donny said. He looked at John. “We’re going to need your car.”
“Of course,” John said, rolling his eyes. He opened his briefcase and tossed the keys to Donny.
Abby caught the lid as he tried to close it. She reached in and removed his wallet from a pocket in the briefcase. She flipped through it and found what she was looking for. Sliding his license from its slot, she read his address aloud. “Evanston, that’s some nice real estate out there.”
“It is,” John conceded, swallowing uncomfortably.
Abby slid his license into her front pocket. “If you breathe a word to anyone about me being here—if you give these guys any kind of warning—I will hunt you down. You will make the handoff and go about your day as though absolutely nothing happened. Is that clear?”
John nodded.
“Good.” Abby looked at her watch. “If they’re coming at ten, we should go. It’s going to take us a couple of minutes to get into position.”
“Let’s do it.” Donny pointed at John. “You heard what the lady said, right? We’re not screwing around.”
“Don’t worry,” John assured them. “You don’t want any trouble, and neither do I.”
As Abby and Donny walked down the alleyway to retrieve John’s car, she asked, “Do you really think we can trust him?”
“I think so. He knows we mean business, and he knows we’ve got his address. He’ll play nice.”
“I guess we don’t have any choice, do we?”
“Nope.” Donny unlocked the car and opened the passenger door for Abby. “Come on.”
* * *
John sat behind his desk waiting for Mark to come through the door. He tried to act casual and sip his coffee, but the full weight of what was happening had started to settle on him and he was nervous. If Rosso was really dead, he had some phone calls to make. Specifically to the feds, and to his wife to tell her it was time.
For now, he had to concentrate on the task at hand.
Mark walked through the door, gut first as usual, his slicked-back hair almost dripping with product. He attracted attention wherever he was, mostly because his labored breathing made it appear as if he had just completed a marathon even though he had only walked the ten feet from the car to the front door.
“Hey, John.”
“How are you, Mark?”
Mark looked around suspiciously. “Fine. Listen, I don’t wanna be rude, but let’s make this quick. I wanna get outta town, ya know?”
John walked over to a large cabinet and opened it to reveal an ancient safe. With a couple flicks of the wrist, he dialed the combination.
“What happened to your hand?”
John looked down. “It’s stupid. I was trying to get the pit out of an avocado and slipped. Cut my hand wide open.”
“That’s what you get for eatin’ fuckin’ vegetables.” Mark’s glottal laugh seemed to squeeze itself out exclusively through the folds where his neck should have been.
John grabbed a medium-sized yellow envelope with exactly $9,900 in it and handed it to Mark, who slid it into his briefcase and nodded to John.
“Nice doin’ business with ya, Johnny. Take it easy.”
“The pleasure was mine,” John said to his back as Mark waddled out the door.
When he was alone, John locked the door, emptied the rest of the cash from the safe into his briefcase, and slid out the back door where he walked a block over and hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the cabby asked.
“Evanston, as fast as you can get me there.”
13
ABBY AND DONNY FOLLOWED the black, late-model Lincoln on I-90. They were a few hours outside of the city, traveling through a section of pavement in dire need of resurfacing. The suspension on the Lincoln in front of them was being subjected to an endurance test by the combined 650-pound weight of its passengers.
Had Eric been with her, he no doubt would have recognized the two men in the Lincoln as the ones who had tried—unsuccessfully—to kidnap him at the airport, though somehow they had become even larger.
After the first uneventful thirty minutes, Abby had mercifully fallen asleep, waking up a few hours later as refreshed as one could be in such a situation. Not entirely sure why, after stretching and cracking her neck, she reached over and playfully scratched the back of Donny’s head.
He shined his warm smile, and a flash of Eric crossed her mind. Abby instantly felt guilty and pulled her hand away.
“Why are you helping me, Donny? Why are you still here?”
He shook his head. “I used to think you had low self-esteem, but maybe it’s that you have no self-esteem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Really, Abby? Don’t you know why I’m here? Don’t you know how special you are? It killed me to see you in the condition you were in toward the end with Bryce before we got you out. The only thing that hurt worse than that was saying goodbye to you, thinking I might never see you again. You were going off to Trial Island, the memories of the last ten years of your life—including me—to be wiped clean. Then, from there to disappear off the grid. When you really disappeared, despite my own feelings, I was happy for you. But when you turned up dead, the day the news broke... man... I’ve never felt so low in my life.”
Abby watched as he went quiet and shook his head.
“I felt like it was my fault, you know? Like I should have been there for you. I felt so fucking helpless. And now?” He gestured to her sitting next to him. “The second I saw you at Rosso’s all those feelings just came rushing back. So, to ask me why I’m helping you?” He quietly shook his head again, thinking a moment before his tone took a harsh change. “I didn’t think. I just acted. It was what I was compelled to do. So here we are.”
They sat quiet, letting his words hang in the air. Abby couldn’t tell if he was angry with her or the situation. Either way, it hurt. She didn’t want to pull him in, to hurt him, to put him in danger like she did Eric. She thought about asking him to pull over. She could get out and go on by herself, but as she mulled that over, she realized, for better or worse, t
hey were tied to each other now because the men back at the house knew he had helped her.
There was so much more that Donny wanted to say. Behind his gruff façade, the conversation continued in his head. To lose you AND the rest of my life at the same time—I would have gone crazy, so I stayed here. I thought about leaving a million times the week after you left, but where would I go? Montana, was it? I don’t know anyone there, and I wasn’t ready to start over. Part of me thought you might come back someday, or wished you would.
Abby broke his interior monologue before long. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I had no idea you were even still around.”
“Don’t be. I made the decision to stay and to get involved.”
“It’s a lot. Trust me, I get it. Trial Island was our plan, though. I’m sorry you had to go through what you did, but you know that’s not entirely my fault. Don’t be mad at me for what we planned together.”
“Sorry, I know,” Donny said. “It’s just... I know it was the right thing to do, I just didn’t realize how hard it was going to be for me. Sorry, I should have said something before.”
“No, no, I get it, and I needed to hear it. I honestly have no idea what you ever saw in me. I’m not the same Abby you knew a few years back.”
“No? Are you sure about that?”
She chuckled. “Oh, I’m sure. Have you not been paying attention these past couple hours?”
“Sure, some things have changed. Physically, mentally, you’re stronger; a fighter. Focused. Hell, that’s probably an understatement. But you know, inside I think you’re the same. We are who we are. Different traits might come out, but at our core, we’re the people we’ve always been. That’s my take on it anyway.”
They were quiet a moment before Donny continued.
“You said you have no idea what I ever saw in you?”
“Yeah, I mean... what is it, honestly? There must be something to me I’m not seeing. You put your life on the line to get Ava and me out a couple years back, and you’re doing it again. And Eric...” She stifled a tear at the thought.
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