“Say you’re sorry,” Lea hissed at all of them.
Sheepishly, they all raised a hand and called out an apology like a group of rowdy teens.
“Never mind that, just get,” Slaski said.
“We need to talk,” Lea said to Gibson. “Now.”
“We’ll follow you,” Gibson said.
It was a relief when she agreed. He didn’t like their chances of finding their own way back to Niobe at night.
It was a tense scene back at the Toproll. The darkest part of the night was over, and Lea could see the Wolstenholme Hotel coming into focus against the sky. She waited on the street for the two men while Margo opened up the bar. It had been a long night, and they’d all think more clearly in the morning. That would be the smart move, but smart moves seemed to be in short supply tonight. She shook her head at the yelling match outside Slaski’s house. They’d all acted like clowns. She’d need to be smarter if she hoped to see this thing through. The best place to start was to learn these men’s intentions before she let them out of her sight. They were still sitting in their car, staring at her, talking. Conspiring. Get a good look, boys.
“Are you coming?”
Inside the Toproll, Margo slipped into bartender mode and put on a pot of coffee. The bar wouldn’t get mopped down until morning, and the stink of stale beer and cigarettes clung to every surface. Lea could tell Margo was still adjusting to the shift in the nature of their relationship. The boss had become the employee, and Lea wondered if she’d been wrong to mix Margo up in all this. She’d always had a gift for bringing people around to her point of view, and Margo’s financial difficulties had made her an easy convert. But maybe this was one time that she should have left well enough alone. What had once seemed a complex but fairly linear puzzle was branching out of her control.
She watched two of those branches enter the bar. The skinny, tattooed one slipped behind the bar to pour himself a beer, but Margo shooed him away. He retreated grumpily to a barstool and sat staring at the row of taps. His companion stood silently at the door watching her, watching her like some microbe at the far end of a microscope. She didn’t care for it.
“You really screwed us back there.”
“I saved you.”
She’d expected him to yell, try to intimidate her, but his voice was calm and considered; it surprised her, and that angered her still more.
“The hell you did. Slaski is burned. He saw our faces.”
He shook his head. “Slaski wears contacts.”
“Contacts? And you know this how?”
“He was squinting. When he came out on the porch, he was squinting because he couldn’t make us out. We were blurs to him.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Hey,” he called over to the bar. “It’s a small town. Would Slaski know you if he saw you?”
“Yeah, he would,” Margo confirmed.
“But he didn’t. You’re fine,” he said, turning back to Lea. “So if you want to go back there later that’s your call. Now, can we talk?” He looked at his partner, then Margo. “Just you and me, for now.”
Lea led him through the back room to Parker’s booth. Hopefully Margo wouldn’t curb stomp his little friend in the meantime.
They sat across from each other. Up close, his eyes were beautiful and intuitive. In the middle of a fight, on a dark street, those eyes had seen Slaski squint and known why. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him. She guessed he was no more than thirty, but he felt older to her. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the beard. Or the tired lines at the corner of his eyes that no night’s sleep would begin to erase. It was a kind face. Compassionate. But one thing life had taught her the hard way was that a face bore little relationship to the man beneath. He could be a saint or a serial killer: the face would be the same.
He was smiling at her.
“What?” she asked.
“The drive over here, I’ve been thinking of what to say to you. To convince you to trust me.”
“And that’s funny how?”
“About a year ago, I was in your exact position. Sitting at a booth with a man that I didn’t trust. And he knew I didn’t trust him but made his case anyway.”
“Did you? Decide to trust him?”
“Not at first, no.”
“But eventually?”
“Eventually.”
“So how did he convince you?”
“Baited the hook with something I couldn’t walk away from.”
“You got something like that for me?” Lea asked.
“Nothing comes to mind.”
“Tough spot. What to do?”
“Well, my first instinct would be to play you. Manipulate you. It’s what I’m good at.”
“But . . .”
“But it won’t work on you.”
“So maybe stroke my ego? Tell me how smart I am. Come clean about how you were going to run a game on me, but can see I’m just too gosh-darn smart for that? Something like that?”
“Like I said, that won’t work on you.”
“Tough spot.”
“Tough spot,” he agreed.
“What to do . . .” She studied him over the brim of her coffee cup. He wasn’t wrong that she didn’t trust him—the guy was a regular snake charmer with those dancing eyes of his. But the thing was, he also wasn’t wrong that she might need to trust him. She saw now that her decision to move on Slaski had been born of frustration and fear. The fear that with all the recent arrivals in Niobe that Charles Merrick was slipping through her fingers. She’d reacted to the news about Slaski impulsively, trying to regain the upper hand. Instead, tonight had provided unequivocal confirmation of one thing: this wasn’t her world. Everything she had done up until now was predicated on the idea that no one else knew about the money. A head start had been her only edge, and now that was gone. It had taken her a year to cultivate Parker as a source and for him to identify Slaski. While Mr. Dancing Eyes had made Parker and Slaski in one night. One night.
“How did you even know to go after Parker?” She watched him consider how to answer the question.
Finally, he pushed his baseball cap back and said, “Because you’re Chelsea Merrick.”
She hadn’t heard her real name spoken aloud in five years. Her heart thundered in her chest. “My name is Lea Regan.”
He ignored her. “I’ll admit, at first I assumed you were working with your father, but you’re not. Are you?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Look, I appreciate you’re angry. You knew about the money before the interview, didn’t you?”
She gave no answer, but he carried on like she had.
“Slipped into Niobe quietly. What? Two years ago?”
How did he know that?
“Dug in, set up shop. Turned Parker—he was a good call, by the way. Probably had yourself a nice, simple plan for taking down your dad. But judging by all the new arrivals, nice and simple left town. It’s got to hurt.”
“It’s my family’s money.”
“Well, that’s convenient; your family has it.”
“That man is not my family.”
“It’s stolen money, Chelsea.”
“Lea.”
“The thing about stolen money, Lea, is if it gets stolen, no one’s going to the police. It makes your father a very attractive target.”