Bell to Pay

by Jeremy Waldron

  “The thin air doesn’t bother me, I’m not hung over, and I want to feel my best so, I guess I’ll choose the health and wellness option.”

  “Excellent choice.” Brunette wagged her head. “Let’s get you set up.”

  Loxley was well aware of where Donny’s eyes were pointed and what his hands were doing. He kept his spine straight and his pulse even as he followed Brunette to an empty chair, two down from where Donny was leaning back with his eyes half-closed.

  “This should only take an hour.” Brunette connected Loxley to the hydrating IV drip. She was wearing a perfume that warmed the base of his spine. “You should feel a boost in hydration almost immediately, and the energy kick will follow shortly after.”

  Loxley thanked the young woman and settled in with a magazine, preparing himself mentally to stay for the next hour. He paid no particular attention to Donny, and he was certain Donny hadn’t recognized him—though a close look would certainly give him away.

  Five minutes passed before the doorbell jangled at the entrance.

  Loxley flicked his gaze to the man who’d just arrived and listened to Brunette speak to him as if he was a regular customer. He was tall, lean, with short cropped dark hair and a clean five o’clock shadow. Loxley knew who he was immediately—had seen him around with Sam—and when Brunette led him to the chair next to Donny, Loxley wasn’t at all surprised to see the man tap Donny’s knee.

  Donny opened his eyes and sat up in his chair. Loxley knew by the way the two men were talking that they had planned to meet here. Did Samantha also know their secret? Loxley doubted it as he pretended to read his magazine, appearing to ignore what they were saying, and watched the man hand Donny the yellow envelop he had tucked under one arm when he had arrived.

  “She has a file on you,” the tall man told Donny. “According to her notes, has been investigating you and your business since Josh Stetson’s trial.”

  Loxley stared into his magazine but kept an ear on the conversation, making notes of new information he could use to his own benefit—a justification to kill, if he doubted the reasons he had already.

  “Shit.” Donny’s head hit the back of his chair. “I fuckin’ knew it.”

  There was a moment of silence before the man said, “We can make this go away.”

  “You keep saying that,” Donny said through clenched teeth, “but look what happened to that other guy. He’s dead.”

  Loxley smiled, knowing they were speaking about Richard Thompson.

  “That had nothing to do with this.”

  Donny glared at the tall man through narrow slits. “How can I be so sure you’re telling the truth?”

  “You have my word.” The man shifted in his seat, touched his IV. “When’s the last time you spoke with Stetson?”

  “Not since he’s been locked up.” Donny dropped his tone to a whisper. “Why? You think he has something to do with this?”

  The man shrugged. “He counted on you to have his back no matter what. Wouldn’t be that difficult to arrange a visit and get him to agree to tell his side of the story.”

  “I’ll have his back when he gets released. Besides, let’s not forget that Stetson did that to himself.” Donny leaned forward and touched his side, near his waist. “Look, I know I don’t have much time, but I need you to get me everything she has on me before I leave town tomorrow night.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Get me what I ask and I’ll make sure you get what you need.” Donny eyed the man. “Just like you’ve always wanted.”

  “And if she makes it impossible for me to get what you want?”

  Loxley lowered the magazine and turned his head to face his next victim. Donny flicked his gaze around the IV bar, barely glancing at Loxley. But that brief look was enough. Loxley knew Donny had no idea that he was nearly dead and nothing could save him now.

  “Figure it out,” Donny said to the man, ripping his IV from his arm. Donny Counts marched out of the building without saying another word.

  Loxley watched Donny leave and turned to find his friend staring.

  “Amazing stuff, huh?”

  Loxley smiled. “Incredible.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After several grueling hours beneath the lamp, I was free to go. Lieutenant Kent Baker of the Denver Police Department, and longtime ally and someone I thought of as a friend, walked me to the door assuring me that my interrogation wasn’t personal.

  “But Samantha, this isn’t over,” he said in a serious tone. “And I’ll need you to continue to cooperate until it is.”

  Baker was left over from the days of when my husband, Gavin, wore a badge and we were like family. Baker knew as well as I did that Gavin’s legacy lived in both of us, and it was important to maintain that solid foundation. But what I couldn’t say was how fractured I felt by the department’s betrayal at what happened here today. I still didn’t understand the alphanumeric key code, but I had my suspicions on who might have put my article in Thompson’s hands.

  I held his eyes for a moment before saying, “And by cooperating, you mean to hit pause on my own reporting?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “Whether you’re with us or against us.” Lieutenant Baker didn’t blink. “Chief Watts is more concerned with how the TV reporters will spin this than he is with whatever you decide to put in print.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should take his words as a compliment or treat it as a slap to the face. But I knew what he was saying. TV had ratings to chase, where us paper reporters only had subscribers to maintain—which currently wasn’t all that many readers.

  “No matter what more gets said about Thompson,” I tipped my head back and took one step forward, “there will be a shift in the public narrative. If I’m going to hold off on telling my side of what happened here today, the department is going to have to let me in on what you all know.”

  Lieutenant Baker’s eyes narrowed. “We’ll be in touch.”

  By the time I exited the station, it was evening and the temperature was falling. As I made my way to my car, I began catching up on missed phone messages. Mason was at work, Heather too. All was good on the home front, and it put a smile on my face knowing I hadn’t been missed. Then the calls came from the girls.

  I listened to the first message from Erin. “Sam, I’m meeting up with the girls at our spot. You should come. Call me.”

  There was a call from Susan. “Samantha, we’re all at the Rio and it’s just not the same without you. Take a break from whatever you’re working on and come join us.”

  An hour later, Allison called. “Sam, where the hell are you? You’re supposed to be buying tonight. Call me. I need to know you’re alive.”

  I sent a group text confirming they hadn’t left. They all responded at nearly the exact same time, getting me to laugh and releasing some of the day’s tension from my chest. Sliding my key into the ignition, I thought how a drink and time spent with the three women who understood me best was the exact recipe I needed to decompress from the storm I just endured.

  Fifteen minutes later I was stepping up to the bar and ordering a margarita before plopping my butt down in the booth next to Ali. She put her arm around me and I laid my head against her shoulder before guzzling half of my drink in an impressive, and somewhat embarrassing, manner, the girls watching with disbelief.

  “My god, girlfriend, I can’t wait to hear what’s on your mind.” Susan’s jaw dangled as she stared.

  I laughed and wiped my face with the back of my hand, feeling exhausted as soon at the alcohol seeped its way into my bloodstream.

  “You look tired.” Allison was the first to see the look of exhaustion pulling my face down. “And a bit beat up.”

  “Where did you disappear to?” Susan wrapped her lips around her own straw and asked.

  I glanced to Erin who knew about my visit to the Thompson residence but, for whatever reason, had kept it a secret from th
e girls. “You wouldn’t believe the afternoon I had.” I summed up my visit to Thompson’s house and what led to me having to take a trip downtown to answer some questions.

  “The cops are investigating Thompson’s death as a homicide?” Susan sounded surprised.

  My brow twisted when I apologized for keeping my story a secret.

  “You could have told me, you know?” Susan said, pressing her lips together in a thin line.

  “I kept the lid on this one.” I flicked my eyes to Erin. “Had to.”

  “Susan’s already forgiven you,” Allison assured me before rolling her eyes to Susan. “Haven’t you?”

  Susan leaned forward and propped herself up on both her elbows. “I have this fear that I’m going to mistakenly find myself promoting another scam now.”

  It wasn’t my intention for Susan to doubt her clients, but now it made sense why she seemed to be glaring at me from behind a curtain of dark lashes.

  Allison took a carrot from the appetizer plate and snapped off a bite. “Don’t worry, Sam. I got Susan’s back on this one. We’re planning to check out this new client of hers together, isn’t that right?”

  Susan nodded and smiled at Allison. Then she paused a second before asking me, “Did I inadvertently make Richard Thompson rich?”

  I slid my hand across the table and draped it over hers. Her hands were warm and soft to the touch. Susan had organized enough fundraisers for Thompson to be concerned, but none of it mattered. “You didn’t know. At the time, neither did I.”

  “What’s in the past is in the past; don’t beat yourself up.” Allison nodded, speaking not only to Susan, but to all of us.

  Erin was still stealing glances at me and I could tell by the look on her face that she was still waiting to hear me confirm if Thompson had been murdered or not. Without speaking, I looked her in the eye and confirmed her suspicions with a single head nod.

  “You were right,” she said lightly.

  “Wait, what?” Susan glanced around the table. “Thompson was murdered?”

  The three of us shushed her and told her to keep her voice down. Then I said, “I don’t know what the police found, but the department just doesn’t send four homicide detectives to a scene without reason.”

  “What does this mean for your story?” Susan asked.

  “The story goes on.” Allison flicked her gaze to me. “Right?”

  “If Thompson was murdered, I need to learn what the police found and whether he was killed because of the dirt I uncovered on his charity foundation.” I fixed my gaze on Erin. “And we need to know if LilJon was behind it, like he seemed to be suggesting.”

  Allison and Susan shared a look of concern and I knew I had opened up a huge can of questions that were soon to follow.

  “Wait.” Allison held up one hand. “Are you saying you know who the killer is?”

  Erin took her eyes off of mine and flicked her gaze to Allison. “We might.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Erin pulled up the message LilJon left on our message board and passed her smartphone around the table so that everyone could read what it said.

  No one knew what to say or how to respond. It was creepy enough that Thompson might have been murdered, but now that it seemed like Erin and I were being watched by the man who could be his killer, the hair on my arms was permanently upright.

  A minute passed in silence before the table fully erupted like a propane explosion. A dozen different theories and thoughts twisted around the booth in a dizzying array of possibility. Suddenly, it wasn’t speculation that Thompson had been murdered, but truth, and everyone had an opinion as to why.

  “Whoever wrote that was watching us work,” I said.

  “Are they still?” Susan fingered the necklace draped around her neck as she looked to the faces stationed around us.

  “I can only assume they are,” I muttered as I twirled the straw through my ice.

  Susan looked me in the eye. “You’re not a suspect, are you?”

  “They certainly made me believe I was,” I said, summing up the questions the detectives asked and how it was related to my story. “They found a printout of my story on Thompson’s desk inside his home. It was postmarked two days before it went to print.”

  “This isn’t good, Sam,” Erin said. “Someone is setting you up.”

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so hot. Susan didn’t like this, and neither did I. Anyone with access to my and Dawson’s shared folders was on my list of potential suspects to be tracked down and interviewed, but that might not even yield any results.

  My mind churned as I thought about how the paper got hacked—how Travis had his intern Brett working everyone’s private computers, updating the security software. Then I turned to Allison and asked, “What do you know about key codes?”

  Allison quirked an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

  “A key code was found with my article on Thompson’s desk.” I shared more of the specifics, said I had seen it only for a moment, and everyone sat still waiting to see where Allison would take this next.

  “Was the string of code alphanumeric?”

  I nodded, producing a pen and jotting down the first few characters of the code. I couldn’t remember past the sixth digit.

  Allison glanced to my example. “Did it contain a QR code?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  The table was silent as they listened to Ali and me volley back our questions and answers. Suspense built, buzzed in the air overhead, and I could see the spark in her eye the further down the path we traveled.

  The crease between her eyebrows deepened. “Did the code happen to begin with a 1or 5?”

  Slowly, I nodded, pointing at my example. “One.”

  Allison licked her lips and cast her gaze to the table as she took a moment to gather her thoughts. When she was finished thinking it through, she asked me, “Sam, do you have a digital wallet?”

  “Digital wallet?” I had no idea what she was referring to.

  “Yes. A digital wallet refers to a cryptocurrency vault. Do you have one?”

  “No. Is that what the key code is?”

  “By what you’re describing, it sounds like that’s exactly what this is.” Allison sat upright and explained, “There are two sets of key codes—one private, one public—and both are needed to transfer and pay with Bitcoin.”

  “When you asked about it beginning with 1 or 5, what did it matter?”

  “Because that determines who is paying and who is receiving.”

  “And a 1 means what exactly?”

  “That’s the public key code, or, in other words, the code that receives money, kind of like their account number.” Allison continued on, breaking things down as best she could when explaining QR codes and that most who use virtual currency elect not to go the paper wallet route like what it seemed the detectives had found on Thompson’s desk. “That’s highly unusual and certainly something to make note of. Whoever was setting this up should have used a seed phrase instead. Much safer.”

  I nodded, blood thrashing in my ears, now certain why I was called in for questioning. They were hung up on a digital wallet, something I knew nothing about.

  “But why would this key code have been found with Sam’s article?” Susan asked.

  Allison lifted both her eyebrows. “Hate to say it, Sam, but it appears that someone was trying to make it look like you were the one blackmailing Thompson with your article and getting paid in Bitcoin.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Donny, baby, you shouldn’t have.” Rose took Donny’s face between her hands and pressed her lips against his.

  “You’re worth it.” Donny’s lips fluttered against her mouth as he pushed his fingers through her long cascading curls and deepened his kiss.

  Rose moaned and giggled as she pulled away to glance once again at the diamond necklace Donny had just clasped around her neck. Her cheeks burned with color and her eyes lit up with love.

  “I ha
ve more where that came from.” Donny ironed his hand down her side, landing on the flare of her hip.

  Rose smiled and gave him a look that said, you shouldn’t have. Then she leaned in and swiped her tongue against his as Donny opened the front of her shirt and pulled it down her arms. Peppering kisses across her neck, Donny pushed Rose onto the couch and she wrapped her body around his. Soon they were naked and making love on the couch, Loxley missing out on all the action.

  Busy responding to work emails on the monitor opposite the love nest, Loxley caught himself unknowingly rubbing his arm where the IV had been placed earlier in the day.

  He glanced down and ran his index finger over the bruised vein, feeling noticeably more alert since his impromptu health and wellness check with Donny Counts. “I should personally thank you,” he said, turning to the monitor where Donny was just finishing up with Rose, “for introducing me to the hydration bar.”

  Loxley watched Rose slide out from beneath Donny and leave the couch first. Her breasts were small but firm and did nothing to entice Loxley to follow her to the master bath where he knew she was going.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” he whispered to Donny.

  Not long after, Donny disappeared off screen and Loxley listened to their conversation as both of them showered. Ignoring most of what they said, Loxley busied himself with system maintenance checks and made sure everything was in order. Tonight was the night Loxley planned to kill Donny.

  Little John, the cat, jumped into Loxley’s lap and purred loudly. Loxley rubbed his ears and continued working. He hadn’t originally planned to kill Donny today, but after what he heard at the hydration bar he knew he had little choice if he was going to do it before the opportunity passed. Loxley hurried home and immediately went to work.