I finally got to read a story to Olivia the other night.
I palm my cell phone, wanting to look at it again, silently cursing my stupidity for being so wrapped around the axle about a girl.
Except I know it in my gut. She’s not just any girl. She’s the girl.
It hits me, right there, that realization crashing against me full force like a ton of bricks.
“We’re going to grift the town,” Iver says.
“It’s so dramatic when he says it that way,” Tempest says, rolling her eyes. “You’re always so over-the-top with these things.”
“You need a little more flourish in your life, darling,” he says.
“I have just enough flourish, thank you.”
“Look, maybe we just let it go,” I say, shrugging.
“Fuck, are you kidding?” Silas asks.
“No, I’m not joking. I’m aggravated,” I tell him, the edge returning to my voice with a vengeance. I don’t want to screw around here with them. Don’t they get that? “It’s not like one of us can’t just go kick the hell out of Sheriff Easton and get his confession on tape or something. Shit, I can go wail on him myself.”
“That doesn’t solve the issue with the town,” Iver points out.
“We’ve looked into the mining company, the one buying people off their property,” Oscar says. “These people are no good. They're the worst kind of business. They have a history of destroying towns, blowing into a place like West Bend and bribing law enforcement, stealing people’s homes out from under them. Then, they strip everything from the land, make a windfall, and pull up out of a place, the town totally destroyed, residents left in the lurch."
“So what?” I ask, feeling suddenly defensive and noncompliant. “This isn’t my fight. I’m not Robin Hood, taking from the rich and helping the poor.”
“One of those assholes – the mayor or sheriff – killed our fucking mother, and you don’t even give a shit, Luke?” Silas’ voice gets louder as he stands close to me, looking like he wants to push me.
“You’re going to… what? Avenge her death, Silas?” I ask. “Make those bastards pay? Why? She didn’t do jack shit for us.”
“You don’t want to be involved? Fine,” Silas says. “Why’d you even come up here, anyway?”
“I’m just saying, there are options other than running some complicated con scheme here,” I point out. “What does that even do? Send them to prison? So does a murder confession.”
“But a murder confession doesn’t help anyone else,” Oscar says. “Like Letty Weston, Tempest’s grandmother.”
“Your grandmother lives in West Bend?” I ask flatly.
Tempest nods. “She’s in a retirement home, but still has her property, said no to the mining company’s offers on the place. But the company has a real bad habit of making sure that people who say no end up saying yes.”
Autumn has said no to the mining company, I remember, pulling up that conversation from somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Listen to the plan," Oscar says. "Then decide if it has merit."
So I sit and listen to the plan and the background they have on everyone. Besides the shit about the shady mining company, Emir dug up stuff about the sheriff and the mayor, dirt that’s enough to convince us that they’re rotten to the core, corrupt and poisonous to West Bend and its residents.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking of Autumn and Olivia and how the hell to keep them as far away from this as possible.
Oscar lays out a map, plots of land marked with red marker. “The mining company is going after the europium on the properties, we know that,” he says. “That’s what your father had found, what he told the geology teacher at the high school about. That teacher is long gone now, paid off by the mining company to disappear or –“
“Or made to disappear,” Silas says grimly.
“Yes,” Oscar agrees. “He’s gone and no one else knows about the europium.”
“Well, no one except the people in this room,” Tempest says. “And the mayor and the sheriff.”
“So the mining company has been picking off people one by one,” Iver says, sipping from his champagne glass.
“Not literally, though,” I say. “It’s not just coming in here and murdering –“
Oscar holds up his hand. “Literally, no,” he says. “It’s buying parcels of land, mostly, which is legal. Technically. Duping residents about the value of their property isn't the worst thing a company can do.”
“But we do think they’ve done worse,” Tempest says. “Intimidation, outright threats – there have been rumors floating around. It's not official representatives from the mining company, but they’re obviously behind it.”
“So, what are the properties marked on the map?” I ask, stepping forward for a closer look.