by Rachel Rust
My dad knew very little about what had gone on that night. He didn’t know how much peril I had been in. He understood that my classmate had been a drug dealer, and that I had unwillingly been tossed into a wrong-place-wrong-time predicament of illegal activities. But he had no idea that the “unwilling” part didn’t explain why I had willingly gotten into Victor-turned-Eddie’s car, or why I had willingly followed him out to The Barber’s warehouse, or why I had willingly assisted him in finding his colleague’s kidnapped son. I had very much put myself in danger that night—willingly, and more than once.
My dad also didn’t know about the photos in my bedroom upstairs. Or the fact that my drug-dealer classmate was really an FBI agent. Or that I had his phone number. Or that I had kissed him.
There was a lot my dad didn’t know, and I was perfectly fine with that. I didn’t need him constantly looking over my shoulder—if only I had the guts to tell him that, too.
I grabbed my car keys, muttered a good-bye and left for work.
Chapter Three
The mall parking lot was nearly full when I arrived. Which meant I had to park far away, and then haul ass through Macy’s and down a long interior hallway to get to work.
As I rounded the final corner to my store, a hand waved at me. It belonged to Shawn, one of the mall security guards. He was about ten feet tall, with a quick smile and slow lanky steps. Back on my first day of work, Shawn had been in line behind me at the Dairy Queen in the food court. We had both ordered a strawberry kiwi smoothie, which in his mind translated to best friendship.
Shawn was nice, just not my type. The Rapid City mall was not very large, meaning I saw him most days and he always tried to strike up a conversation. He was soft and unassuming. A good guy, but I seemed more attracted to the arrogant, hard-headed type of guy, which was exactly how I had labeled Eddie when I had first met him. Back when he was undercover as a high school senior, I hated him. I had hated him right up until I didn’t—until I began to fall for him. His smile. His pretty eyes. His annoyingly antagonistic charm. The way he had kissed me on that gravel road.
I forced Eddie from my mind as Shawn walked up to me.
“Going to work?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Well, then, have a fabulous day.” He tipped his head and gave me a little salute. I held in a laugh as to not embarrass him more than he had already embarrassed himself—a fact his reddened cheeks gave away.
We said good-byes, and I headed into the store.
November had a light-blue neon sign which was ugly and outdated, especially considering the sophistication of the clothing inside. My manager, Angela, was at the front counter when I walked in. She smiled at me. The woman smiled at everything, not out of friendliness but nervousness. Like a tic she couldn’t control. And her nervousness was only exacerbated by brown curls poofing out of her head in all directions, and her penchant for large geometric prints. Today it was large teal circles on a black dress.
“Hi, Natalie,” Angela said in her usual rapid-fire pace. “Good, good, you’re here. You can help me unpack some boxes in the back. If that’s okay with you … I mean, is it?”
I nodded with a small smile. “That’s fine.” The woman had no idea how to delegate or manage anything on her own. Nothing from her mouth was a statement or order. Everything was a question, as though she was afraid we were all going to revolt against her.
On my way to the back stockroom, I passed by my coworker Luke, who was cleaning out a dressing room. Customers were slobs. They’d put on a happy face when they wanted help, and then leave piles of clothes in their wakes … and not buy a damn thing.
Luke glanced at his watch and then whipped his head quickly around to look right at me. His red hair was shellacked in place and didn’t moved at all when he did. “You’re barely on time.”
I didn’t respond. I was on time, and that’s all that mattered. But Luke liked to think of himself as my superior in some way, simply because he had worked there a whole day longer than I had. And apparently he had worked at men’s clothing store in Denver for two years before moving to Rapid City. But at November, he was nothing more than a newbie sales associate like me. No power, no authority.
Angela was already tearing into boxes when I stepped into the back room. I doubled-checked that my phone’s ringtone was on before shoving it into my back pocket. I didn’t care what the rules were about not using our phones while working.
If Eddie called me, I was going to answer. I had to speak with him. There was no other option.
Together, Angelia and I unloaded three packages of shirts, and one of scarves. We hung things up that needed to be hung up. We steamed blouses that were littered with fold creases. We tried on scarves, picking our favorites, before finally punching a price tag through each of them.
Once freed from the stockroom, I grabbed a feather duster from under the front counter and proceeded to walk around the perimeter of the store, dusting surfaces that didn’t really need dusting. Retail was like that—crazy busy one minute, dusting clean surfaces out of boredom the next.
Kelly Clarkson played overhead and my mind got lost in the melody as I flicked the duster with the beat. I got so caught up in the song that I dusted the shoulder of a customer who had leaned against the wall, patiently waiting for me to notice him.
I quickly drew back the duster. “I’m sorry.”
The man was about thirty with brown hair and light-blue eyes that danced under the bright white lights of the store. They pierced into mine, becoming even more dazzling when he smiled at my startled state.
He glanced at his shoulder that I had just dusted. “No problem. It probably needs cleaning anyway.” His gaze caught mine again. He cocked an eyebrow and grinned. “I can be a little dirty at times.”
My entire body flushed warm, and I chuckled nervously. “Is there something I can help you find?” Like the button to my pants? I mentally slapped myself for the thought.
He nodded. “Yes, there is. It’s my mother’s sixtieth birthday tomorrow, and she never buys herself anything nice and my sister has instructed me that I should get her a purse because she’s getting her some shoes, and, apparently, these things go together.”
I smiled. “Often they do, yes.”
He looked around the store, and I couldn’t help but absorb his features. His profile was sharp, his nose straight and strong. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days and my fingers twitched, wanting to run through the brown whiskers on his jawline—a jawline that appeared etched from stone.
“I’ve been told you sell a lot of nice purses here,” he said, looking back at me and making me once again stare into his baby blues.
He was totally wrong. We didn’t have a good selection of purses at all. At least not compared to the department stores on either end of the mall. Those large stores had entire sections devoted to bags, and enough volume to color-coordinate their merchandise. Our purses were dispersed throughout the store, next to outfits they matched. Each mannequin in the window had a purse, plus there were probably another eight in various locations. Definitely not a good selection. And not competitively priced either. He would have been better off at Macy’s.
But I put on my best salesperson smile and said, “We do have a lot of great purses.” I motioned in all directions. “They’re placed all around the store. Are you looking for any particular kind?”
“Black or dark gray. That’s what my sister says to get.”
We had two black purses and one medium gray. I laid them out on a small display table. He spent all of five seconds looking at the three and then pointed to the one on the left with a large silver buckle in front. “That one.”
I knew without looking that the one he chose was the most expensive. Two hundred and forty dollars to be exact. I moved to show him the price tag, but before my fingers reached the tag, he waved it away.
“Price doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
I led him to the front
counter to check him out … literally and figuratively. Luke kept a wary eye on both of us, and I couldn’t tell if he was scrutinizing my sales capabilities, or because he thought the customer was cute. Probably both.
Angela hovered as I rang up the purse at the register. Nervous perhaps that I would mess up the transaction, but more than likely she just wanted to be near our cute customer. The customer handed me a credit card with the name Brandon Sabato. Italian. Like me. Except there was something about him that didn’t look like a Brandon.
I put the purse into one of our large bags with braided cardboard handles and then handed it over to him. He smiled, and Angela sighed behind me.
He took the bag. “Grazie.”
“You’re welcome.”
He winked a crystal-blue eye. “Buona serata, Natalie.”
I smiled and then enjoyed the view of his perfect ass walking out the door.
Angela stepped up beside me. She nudged my arm and laughed. “Oh my God, he spoke Italian, and he said your name. Couldn’t you just die?”
I laughed with her—for a moment. Then my smile fell.
I hadn’t told him my name.
Chapter Four
Our name tags at work only had the words November and Sales Associate. They didn’t have our first names for security purposes, according to Angela. Brandon disappeared around the corner and into the hallway. I wanted to chase him down and ask him how he knew who I was. But the store’s phone rang and startled me. I answered with a shaky voice. It was just someone inquiring about store hours, and nothing more mentally challenging, thank God.
I went about refolding shirts on the front tables while a sickening feeling crept in. It couldn’t all be coincidence, could it? A stranger who knew my name. The pictures arriving in the mail.
Maybe he had been the one who had taken those pictures. I glanced around my surroundings: Angela in her polka-dot dress, racks of clothes lining the walls, and the melodies of Coldplay coming from unseen speakers. It was all so normal and boring, causing me to question my own sanity.
I shook my head and forced thoughts of the photos from my mind, convincing myself I was being overly dramatic in thinking some customer was really a criminal hell-bent on harming me.
But deep down I knew it was possible. Stranger things than that had taken place only two weeks ago. My drug-dealing classmate had turned out to be an FBI agent. I had been drugged and kidnapped—in the very town I had once thought so boring and safe.
Danger and mystery knew no boundaries. It was present in every town, every city, but few people realized it. I certainly hadn’t until I was thrown into the dangerous underbelly of my own hometown.
I kept my eye on the store entrance for the rest of my shift, but Brandon never appeared again. And Eddie never called me back as I spent the rest of the evening putting new clothing out on racks, helping customers find sizes, and avoiding Luke’s critical eyeballing.
Eight o’clock rolled around as I finished helping a mother-daughter duo who had spent nearly an hour trying on clothes, only to buy one scarf.
Angela waved me off. “It’s eight, go ahead and go home. You’ve had a long day … well, we’ve all had a long day, I suppose, but you did a lot today with all those boxes and helping a bunch of customers.” She paused for a quick breath. “I really think you’re doing a good job. Do you like it here? Do you feel like you’re getting the hang of things okay, do you think we’re—”
“Things are going fine,” I said, cutting off her neuroses.
She exhaled with a smile, seemingly thankful to be relieved of her rambles.
After collecting my things, I said good-bye and cautiously stepped into the mall hallway. I neared the food court and a now-familiar pair of blue eyes watched me as he sipped a soda that had the logo of the ninety-nine-cent pizza place. Brandon didn’t smile or make any other motions to suggest anything friendly or unfriendly.
Maybe he liked shitty pizza and mall food courts. Or maybe he liked taking secret photos of girls and anonymously mailing them.
Twenty feet to his left stood Shawn, in line at the pretzel place. Hand rested on his holstered walkie-talkie, he patiently waited for his doughy order. My feet changed trajectory—straight toward him, and I forced my eyes to ignore Brandon, if that was even his real name.
“Hey, Shawn,” I said.
He smiled widely. “Hi, Natalie. How’s your evening going so far?”
Potentially creepy. “It’s all right. But, um … will you walk me to my car?”
He stared at me for a moment before answering. “Yeah, sure. Everything okay?” His gaze darted around the food court.
“Things are fine,” I said, scrambling for an excuse. “But I promised my dad I wouldn’t walk alone at night.”
“Sounds reasonable,” he said. The curly-haired girl behind the counter handed him his pretzel.
We left the food court, and Brandon didn’t follow. But with a quick glance back, I noticed he watched us walk away.
Shawn and I made our way through Macy’s. “Another nice night,” he said as we stepped outside.
It was nice, but I rolled my eyes all the same. Why did people talk about weather when there was nothing else to talk about?
“Supposed to be even hotter tomorrow,” he said. “A chance of rain on Thursday and—”
“Where are you from?” I interjected.
“Oh, um, I’m from a little town in the middle of Wyoming. Grew up on a cattle ranch.”
“You’re a ranch hand?” His frame seemed way too skinny to lift hay bales … or whatever it was ranch people did.
Shawn laughed. “No, I’m definitely not a ranch hand. That’s why I moved here. I have two older brothers who are back home working for our dad, but the ranch has never been my thing. I’m enlisting in the Army as soon as I get rid of a little debt. But eventually I want to be a cop. Or maybe FBI.”
I nearly choked on my breath. Before meeting Eddie, I hadn’t given the FBI much thought outside of movies and TV. But now they were an oddly familiar presence in my life. I’d never be able to see or hear those three initials the same way again.
“I’m going to New York City in the fall,” I said. “Columbia University. I don’t know what I want to major in yet, though. My dad’s an orthopedic surgeon, and he wants me to go into pre-med, but I don’t want to be a doctor.”
The words fell out of my mouth so easily, and I was unconcerned about Shawn’s reaction to me not wanting to be a doctor. If only it was that easy to say it to my dad. To let him know I would not be following his footsteps into the world of white medical coats.
Next to me, Shawn chuckled. “Glad I’m not the only one thumbing my nose at the family business.”
I laughed along with him. In his company, the world seemed almost ordinary as we continued to talk about school and future careers. Shawn was a normal guy, talking about normal things. He was friendly, and it felt good to have a regular conversation that didn’t include topics like drug dealers and cops.
We made it to my car without incident. I turned to Shawn. “Thanks for walking me.”
“Anytime,” he said with a slight smile. And I knew he meant it. Even in the low light, the blush in his cheeks was evident.
“Good night,” I said with a little wave. He walked away as I got into my car.
In the darkness of my driver’s seat, I pulled out my phone and dialed Eddie again. His voicemail picked up. I didn’t leave another message.
I started up my car. As I reached for the gear shift, my arm bumped something on my center console. An envelope with Natalie scribbled on the front.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
I glanced out the back window in time to see Shawn re-enter the mall. He was gone. I was alone—in a dark parking lot. My finger hit the lock button, and all four doors clicked.
With shaking hands, I ran a finger along the envelope flap to open it, leaving a wake of jagged paper behind. I lifted a single sheet of lined paper from inside, scared of w
hat this anonymous gift might contain.
On the sheet, just two sentences were written in block penmanship:
What would Columbia think of its newest student partying at a drug house?
I don’t think junkies are awarded scholarships
From the bottom fold of paper, a small, wrinkled square of aluminum foil fell out onto my lap. In the center was a burn mark and some kind of residue.
I didn’t have to be a druggie to know what it had been used for. And the visual of it in front of me was enough to give me heart palpitations. There was now drug residue in my car, and somewhere outside in the darkness lurked someone who thought up the sick joke to put it in my car—to break into my car. I always locked it. Had someone jimmied my door? It was the only explanation as there weren’t any broken windows.
I stared at the handwriting again and my jaw and fists clenched. Someone had taken the time to write those threatening things about me and my academic future. My entire future. Not to mention my past. Years of hard work had resulted in that scholarship that had been so hastily written about by an unknown source onto this piece of paper. Someone was fucking with me, and now it seemed more personal than ever.
Without touching it, I scooped the aluminum foil up with the paper and refolded it, then put it in the envelope.
Fifteen minutes later I pulled into my driveway at home. My dad was in his office. His door was shut, but I could see him through the glass panes of the French doors. I hid the incriminating envelope inside my purse and ran up the stairs before he could bring up the Camp Coyote job again.
“Natalie!” he called out.
“Shit.” I trudged back down and walked into his office. “What?”
His face was tight, lips pursed. “Just thought you’d want to see this.” He placed a newspaper onto his desk for me to see. I was pretty sure my dad was the only person under fifty who still read a physical newspaper. He was an old-school nerd like that.
I picked up the paper, which was open to the obituary section. I scanned the black-and-white photos and the names under each. The second-to-the-last name nearly stopped my heart.
