by Zahra Girard
It’s a slog.
A slog through years upon years of neglect, a chaotic disorganization reflecting the depression nesting in his mother’s venomous mind.
Every semi-relevant sheet we find, we scan, we categorize, we set aside in either the garbage pile or the maybe-relevant pile. There’s not much that goes in the garbage pile. Other than a vague mention of a loan paper, we don’t know what we’re looking for, and anything even possibly related to Eleanor Dunne’s finances gets put aside. I’m starting to get a picture of her financial situation, and this picture was painted by Salvador Dali on acid.
Blaze takes a seat at my feet, grabs a thick ream of coffee-stained papers, and begins filing through them. “Where would you be if you weren’t here, helping me get a handle on this mess?” He says. “And you can’t say you’d rather be at work.”
“Work would definitely not be part of it. Because, for one thing, I don’t have a job. For another, I hated it there.”
“I think I recall you mentioning once or twice that you went to Stanford and studied finance. I think you’d be pretty at-home in working at a bank.”
I shrug. “I can do it. But it wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted. And it doesn’t matter any more, anyway.”
“It matters right now. I asked you a question, and we’ve got nothing but time.”
I give him a look that’s somewhere between ‘please stop talking’ and ‘leave me the hell alone’. Blaze doesn’t get the hint.
“Come on,” he says. “Tell you what: I’ll go first. If I wasn’t dealing with this mountain of bullshit, I’d either be riding the I-5 corridor in Central CA with Mack, Sarge, or Crash, or I’d be out hiking in the mountains.”
I frown. “Why the Central Valley? It’s ugly there. Just flat dry land and towns and cities all smaller than Torreon. There’s nothing to do. Or see. It’s just flat and gross.”
Surprisingly, he nods. There’s a mischievous smile on his face. “It is flat. And not much to look at. It’s not like the mountains, it ain’t somewhere pretty that you’d want to spend a lot of time at, but that flatness — that open road — lets you see for fucking miles and go so goddamn fast. Sometimes, we’ll cruise along — just going ten, fifteen over the speed limit — waiting for some cop to get it into his head to pull us over. The older ones know better, but the rookies? There are few things that make me smile as much as the look that comes over their fresh faces when we crank the accelerator and let those kids know just how fast our bikes can go. Now it’s your turn, Tiffany.”
I sit up, let my eyes flicker away from the page to take in the expectant look on his ruggedly handsome face. “My turn?”
“I told you mine, you tell me yours.” He grins a little at that.
I roll my eyes, but I will humor him, because I like the shine in his smile and how, for all his talk about breaking the law, teasing cops, he makes me feel safe.
“Fine. If I weren’t here — and if my foot was healed — I’d pack up my car with a picnic and a good bottle of wine and a nice dessert, like the apple crumble from the Starlight Bakery downtown. I’d drive out to one of the trails in the mountains outside of town — there are some that no one else knows about and they are so peaceful — and I would go for a long, long run. Just me. On my own for hours. I would run until I was sweating buckets and so tired that I couldn’t think about anything else going on in my life. And then I’d come back to my car, I’d spread out a blanket and eat every last piece of cheese and salami and slice of bread I’d packed, and then I’d wash it down with wine. I’d forget about everything else. About being here, about being in Torreon, about being unemployed.”
Blaze shuffles some papers he’s sorting and frowns. “You know, this was supposed to be a cheerful thing to talk about. To take our minds off the fact that my mom has more paper in this room than a fucking library and I feel like I’m being forced to make up for every single homework assignment I skipped back in the day.”
I shrug. “Sorry, but being here — not here, here, but back in Torreon — isn’t the most cheerful subject for me.”
“Why did you come back? Why’d you leave Stanford and whatever big opportunities at the stock exchange or whatever that you had waiting for you?”
“It was Goldman Sachs, actually. I interned with them my junior year. They were going to hire me once I graduated.”
“They’re a big name, I take it?”
When he doesn’t react to my surprised look except to show genuine curiosity, I realize he’s serious. “Yeah. They’re kind of big.”
“So why come back?”
Metal tang floods my mouth; I’ve chewed my lip so hard that it’s started bleeding.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Blaze raises an eyebrow. I’m sure he intends it to look perturbed, but somehow all that comes across is how hot he looks. The way his eyes always burn with some kind of emotion — curiosity, protectiveness, confidence, passion — keeps me riveted. It’s not an unpleasant situation to be in, I could look into his eyes for longer than I’d like to admit.
“You know why I’m here: I have to help my mom. Even if she doesn’t want it.”
I shake my head. He’s not getting out of it that easily. If he intends to pry into my life, he will have to open up some of his.
“That’s not what I’m asking and you know it. Tell me why you left the smokejumpers,” I say. My voice is so harsh it surprises me, but I don’t flinch or show any outward regret; maybe this will discourage him from putting his nose where it doesn’t belong. “So, come on, Blaze, put it out there: tell me what happened.”
“You really want to know?”
“Would I be asking if I didn’t?”
He doesn’t say it out loud, but I can see the thought flash across his face — you really don’t care why I was fired, you just don’t want to talk about why you came back — and he’s right. It doesn’t matter why he lost his old job or what crimes he’s done; people make mistakes and none of what he’s done in the past will change the reality of our present situation. All he needs to do is change the subject, admit he doesn’t care about what happened to make me come back to Torreon, and then we can move on to what’s really important.
But then he surprises me.
His eyes drift down to his feet, his voice changes — it gets warmer, fuller, deeper — and his fists clench, as if he’s grabbing hold of a memory that wants to squirm and fight with all its power to stay out of the light of day.
“You’ve got to understand that I loved my job. Loved it. I never thought I would want to make a lifetime career at something, but this was it. The fire crew is like a brotherhood, and it’s just you, your brothers, against this primal force of nature. I mean, you’re in the middle of nowhere fighting this uncaring, unstoppable force: fire. I’ve seen fire lines miles wide and parachuted into the middle of the fucking mountains with nothing more than a pack of gear, an ax, and twenty men on my crew, and it was our job to stand up against this wall of flame,” he says. His voice drops to this guttural, sensual rumble. “Oh, it was fucking heaven. Days and nights of burning hell and everything I could want.”
“What happened?”
He continues on, like I didn’t even speak. “And I was fucking great at it. While I was on the line, I never got tired, I could go for fucking days and days and the only thing I would think about is what I needed to do in the next hour, the next minute, the next second, to make my brothers safe and halt the fucking fire in its fucking tracks. God damn, do I fucking miss it. I had this purpose. Never thought I’d have it — figured I was going to be some almost-dropout who drifted from job to job barely getting by — but I got lucky. I even made captain. And then, one night, I fucked myself harder than should even be physically possible. Ruined it all.”
He stops. Transfixed by him, it takes me a moment to find my voice. I wheel my chair closer to him and put my hand on his powerful shoulder. It’s so easy to picture him on his job, decked out in fire g
ear, covered in sweat and ash, ax slung over his shoulder, and a giant grin on his face because he’s the maniac who loves walking a hair’s breadth from death. I like that picture of him more than I would’ve expected.
“Blaze, we don’t have to —”
“We do. Just listen, all right?” He says. “It was the end of wildfire season. The crew and I were spent; I hurt down to my bones because I’d gone six days straight on just four hours of sleep and we all were looking forward to some time off. I still remember it like it just happened yesterday: we were in this bar, O’Reiley’s, in some podunk town in Northern California, three hours drive from everywhere. One of the boys on my crew, this guy named Jake — who was like a little brother to me — got drunk. Too drunk. I sent him home to sleep it off because he was the type to get rowdy and start shit and I wasn’t going to have any of that on my first night off. That night was supposed to be all about having a good time free of any bullshit. Not a minute after I sent him away, I hear this fucking ruckus from the parking lot. I poke my head out, and there’s these guys ganged up on Jake and I see one of them’s got a knife. And I just fucking lost it. I went out there to stop it. They didn’t want to go peacefully, and when the one with the knife tried to show how tough he was, I nearly put him down for good. When it was all over, I was jobless and heading for a stint in Chino.”
“For self defense?”
“You didn’t see how they turned out, Tiffany,” he says, grinning. There’s a part of him that’s proud of his handiwork, regardless of the outcome. Then his expression changes. There’s regret on his face, but also bittersweet fondness. “But the judge didn’t hear the full story of what happened. Those guys who attacked my friend didn’t talk to the cops, and I told my friend to keep his mouth shut. He had a wife, a kid, and I couldn’t have him losing his job.”
“So you took the blame? All on your own?”
He just nods.
It stuns me into silence for a moment; all I can do is just look at him and see him in an entirely new light; for all his bluster and bravado, he’ll tear himself down in a heartbeat if it means it’ll protect someone he cares about. This criminal has a bigger heart than many who walk on the right side of the law.
“Does anyone else know?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Nobody. Not my mom, not anyone in the MC. You’re the first I’ve told, and I hope I can trust you to keep it between us. If it got out, there’s a chance Jake could wind up in legal trouble. His daughter’s starting third grade, soon. That little girl will be going places, and she needs her daddy in her life. Last time I saw her, before all this shit went down, she was just a little thing, but already she was talking. I bet she’ll grow up to be a smart one, like you.”
I sniff. Rub something out of my eye. “Maybe. But I don’t feel like such a smart one most days.”
Now it’s his turn to put his hand on me. To give me strength with a squeeze and a caring look. “Tiffany, you can talk to me. You know my greatest fuck up, but I can share more if it’ll make you feel better. Because I’ve screwed up so many times in my life — and a lot of them have been the kind of failures that’ll make your eyes go wide with how fucking incredible they are — that I know that I can never judge anyone.”
My heart is pulsing with the need to open my mouth and tell him. Deep down, I know he’s telling the truth; I could tell him anything and he’d never hold it against me. Declan ‘Blaze’ Dunne is a fuckup of the highest order in the noblest of fashions.
My heart and mind square off over sharing the truth. I want to talk to him. I want to tell someone the truth about why I left Stanford and the promise of a career with one of the most prestigious financial institutions in the world; talking would hurt me terribly — even the idea of it lights my cheeks with shame and makes my heart quake in regret — but I still want it.
I want to share my pain.
I open my mouth. Wrap my tongue around the words that’ll let him in on the shame and remorse that I’ve carried for years; shame that I’ve buried beneath a mountain of lies and a sea of tears.
Then my wandering eyes catch something; something that we’ve been looking for all these hours — a name, a sum, and another name. A familiar name.
My face falls into a mask of despondency. I look to Blaze and hold the sheet up.
“This problem is way bigger than we realized.”
Chapter Ten
Blaze
“Fuck, that’s your old bank.”
She nods. “And that name signed at the bottom next to your mom’s name? Do you recognize that one?”
I squint. “No. It’s fucking terrible handwriting. I can’t read a damn thing.”
“It’s Anna Ebri. My old boss.”
“That bitch.”
Tiffany nods. “That bitch.”
“So she set this up?”
“She was always pushing us to get these kinds of things set up. To get people to take out loans they didn’t need. Especially if they might not pay it back. Anything to get the bank’s hooks into people. I thought it was unethical — and I’m happy to say that I was not good at selling people on these kinds of loans — but now I’m starting to suspect there’s something more to it.”
“What do we do now?”
She smiles. “We do our homework.”
“Fuck. Are you sure there’s nothing else we can do?”
“What do you mean?”
“We know Anna’s behind this, why don’t we go pay her a visit?”
Her smile turns into a frown. “Do you remember how I told you I would help you, but only if you kept the criminality to a minimum?”
“I said nothing about doing anything illegal.”
“You might not have said it, but you have that look.”
I smirk, raise an eyebrow. “A look? I get a ‘look’ when I’m about to do something illegal?”
“It reminds me of this kid who tried out for the track team. His name was Eddie Donaldson. He was a Freshman, and he tried out for pole vault, but didn’t pay attention to any of the coach’s instructions. Because he was a teenage boy, and like all teenage boys, he thought he knew everything. Eddie had that same look on his face right before he yelled ‘Hey, check this out’ and then took off running full-bore to do his jump. Poor Eddie reached his zenith, and then promptly caught himself on the pole. It was a terrible accident.”
“What do you mean when you say he ‘caught himself on the pole’?”
Tiffany gives me a level look. “I mean, even if he could’ve gone to Homecoming, he wouldn’t have been able to have any fun with his date afterward.”
Sympathetic pain stabs me right between the legs. “Fucking hell. Poor Eddie.”
She shakes her head; Tiffany is colder than I’ve given her credit for. “He deserved it. He didn’t pay attention to any of the risks, and he ignored the advice of the experienced people who tried to tell him otherwise.”
“Basically, you’re saying that if I go and have a chat with Anna or scope out her house, I might as well jump dick-first into a giant pole?”
She nods. “Yes. They’d both accomplish the same thing.”
This woman can be ice cold; it’s terrifying and hot at the same time.
“Fine. I’ll stay away from Anna,” I say. “But what’s our course of action here?”
“Homework. This is just the start, Blaze. We can’t solve this with guns and bare-knuckle fights; we solve this with our brains. Trust me, I handled trickier problems than this when I interned with Goldman Sachs, we’ll find a way out for your mom.”
I nod. Turn my focus back to the piles of papers, and start digging. Tiffany keeps her head down on the work, shuffling through paper after paper, muttering, quietly swearing, and stopping every so often to jot down notes on the back of some kid’s term paper.
Paper flutters to the floor.
And this time, Tiffany’s swearing is less than silent.
“This is bad.”
I look up at her. She’s staring at
her sheet of notes and shaking her head.
“We knew that from the start. What’s changed?”
“I mean, there’s a lot of essential paperwork that should be here — stuff that, because your mom is kind of lax about throwing things out, would definitely be here — but it isn’t. And I’ve looked through everything in all the piles around the desk. It looks like whoever put this loan together deliberately made it so convoluted so as to be hard for the client to pay it back. This looks predatory.”
Papers crinkle as I clench my hands into a fist. “They’re targeting her?”
Despite everything I’ve promised to Tiffany, I’m already envisioning getting on my bike and paying Anna a visit.
Tiffany extends a hand, palm out, in a calming gesture.
“It could be. Or maybe there’s more going on that we don’t know about. The only way to figure this out for sure would be to get ahold of all the paperwork.”
I’m about to open my mouth when the doorbell chimes through the house. Cautiously, I rise from my seated position on the floor and step to the window of my mom’s office that overlooks the front yard. Peering down, I see three thick-necked sons of bitches that look exactly like the kind of assholes I’d shoot for even talking to my mother.
“Who the fuck are these people?” I growl. My hand’s already winding behind my back, reaching for my gun.
Before I can wrap my hands around the grip, Tiffany rises from her seat and hobbles to my side. Soft fingers touch my wrist, bringing my vengeful hand to a stop.
“I know them,” she whispers.
“I didn’t figure you to be the type to hang around street muscle. Who are they?”
“Well, I know two of them. They both work at the bank. As security guards.”
I squint, scoping out first their ride — an unassuming white van — and then sizing up man standing at the front of the pack of thugs. He’s got slicked-back hair, he’s heavyset — thick arms, thick neck, and a barrel gut — and he’s got two wicked scars on his face. There’s a tattoo on his forearm: the splayed-eagle insignia of the US Army. Resting against the hip of each of these men, hidden by their shirts but visible to anyone with even half an eye for it, are some heavy-duty pistols. The kind bank security guards definitely shouldn’t be carrying.
