I knew something about that entire conversation was off, and I knew my car door wasn’t unlocked when I went into the pharmacy. Here I thought I was losing my mind, but no. Sterling Grady hoodwinked me in order to drop an envelope with twenty-five grand into my car without my knowledge. Just as the light changes to green, I grab hold of the window crank and roll it down. The two cars in front of me take their time to get moving, and I take advantage of this by grabbing the envelope from the seat beside me. With my left hand full of twenty-five grand, I lift it out the open window and wave it at Grady behind me. My eyes are intently focused on the rear view mirror. I can’t see the look on his face, but he’s definitely paying attention. His mouth opens, and he’s shouting something over his ridiculously loud engine. It takes me a moment to realize he’s screaming, “Don’t do it!”
Don’t do what? Oh, he thinks I’m going to drop it out of the window. I shake the package at him as I start to roll away. His eyes dart around nervously as he changes gears and follows me. He’s still shouting and occasionally using one of his hands to point menacingly at me. He must actually think I’m going to just toss the money out the window. But I couldn’t do that, could I?
My fingers loosen and, before I can stop myself, I’ve let it fall onto the pavement. I can barely see Grady holding up traffic in my rear view as I drive away from the scene of the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I’m a block away before I can breathe again, but I haven’t calmed down. By the time I get into the staff parking lot, I’m having a mild panic attack, my chest heaving and my lungs straining for air. I haphazardly park the Jeep and turn her off, but I don’t move.
“I dropped,” I mutter aloud in a dumbfounded whisper, “twenty-five… twenty-five…twenty-five-fucking-thousand dollars out of my moving vehicle.” Before I know it, I’m slapping at my steering wheel and cursing myself for my own stupidity. I don’t regret getting rid of the cash, no, I’d made that conviction already. Lisa Grady told me weeks ago that arguing was going to invite trouble, and now I’m afraid I just invited more trouble that I can handle. But I can’t just sit in my car and think about that all day. I have a low-paying job to get back to, and a life to resume living, holed-up at my desk and in my own home because I’m avoiding everything Forsaken. I just don’t know how much longer this can go on for—the following, the fighting, the chasing, and the total departure from sanity.
Maybe I should just take the money and be done with it. I can figure out a way to get right with that somehow. I’ve contemplated telling Grady why I’m not comfortable taking the cash, in full detail, but he wouldn’t care anyway, so what good would it do? It wouldn’t.
I grab my shopping bag and my purse and head inside the office. Margot immediately notices my arrival and looks up from her homemade sandwich. I must look awful—she pouts at the sight of me. I wave her off and don’t even try to explain. No good comes from her thinking about Grady or my possible relationship with him. She tries, she really does, but curiosity gets the better of her. We live in a small town, and gossip is what small towns do best.
The first time Margot brought Grady up was when I’d returned to work after the whole shoot-out thing. It was a necessary conversation that I hated to have. The second time she brought him up, it was after Cheyenne and her friends made a trip into the office. Margot zeroed in on how Cheyenne had come over to my desk, asked how I was feeling, and then asked why she hadn’t seen me at her house again. I told her it hadn’t worked out with her dad, and that was when she informed me that he told her we were still seeing each other. Cheyenne left all confused, and Margot asked if it was serious between Grady and me. The best response I could muster was that the only thing Sterling Grady is ever serious about is his daughter and his club. That pacified her for a while, but when Cheyenne’s visits to the office became more frequent and her excuses for visiting less and less plausible, Margot started doing this thing with her eyeballs that tells me she’s holding back a million questions that are killing her to keep inside.
I toss the bag and my purse down on my desk and pull out my chair. A door slams with such force that I jump in place. I don’t even have to look to know who it is. Had I given myself even a moment to consider the consequences for tossing the money out the window, I could have talked myself out of it. Grady may not be the heartless monster I once assumed him to be, but that doesn’t mean he’s not angry with me. It just means he probably won’t hack me into tiny bits. Anything else, though, is a distinct possibility.