“Not okay.” I lean in, hissing, so only she can hear me. “I just lost all means of keeping my sister clothed and fed with a roof over her head. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve motivated you, Mason.” She reaches into the inside pocket of her suit jacket and removes a white envelope. Pressing it against my chest, she raises both eyebrows. “One week’s wages. Not enough to grow complacent on, but enough to pay some bills. If you want more money, you need to give me something I can work with. Give me something great that means I can put Zeth where he belongs and I’ll give you six month’s wages. How long could you take care of Millie with that? Pay for her meds? Keep her in Pokémon, or whatever kids are playing with these days.” She gives me a pointed look. “You see, I can be quite benevolent when the mood takes me. But I can also throw whoever the fuck I want under the bus if it means I get closer to accomplishing my goal. Understand?”
Shit. She’s made it virtually impossible for me to do anything but play ball with her. I take the envelope from her and look inside. There are seven crisp one hundred dollar bills inside—I don’t know what she thought Mac was paying me but she’s just given me a fifty percent pay raise. I consider the notes tucked inside the envelope, trying to figure out how to make this right, but I can’t. The bitch owes me. She took away my livelihood, she owes me big time. And yet the money is dirty, feels dirty, makes me feel dirty. I want to throw it back in her face.
Instead I slip it into my back pocket.
“I’ll get you what you’re looking for,” I tell her. “It doesn’t seem like you’ve given me much of a choice.”
Lowell smiles a smug, terrible smile that makes me feel sick to my stomach. “Good boy, Mason. I’m so pleased you’ve come to your senses.”
I leave the drug store before I can go on the hunt for something caustic enough to kill her. I need to know Millie’s safe. Mac’s going to be on the warpath—if he’s alive, of course—and he’s going to be looking for revenge. He’s a sick fuck. No doubt about it, he’d take his anger out on a child if the opportunity arose. He knows I leave my sister with a sitter, but thankfully I’ve never mentioned who I leave her with. I call Wanda, and she confirms that Millie’s safe and sound, a little tired but doing just fine.
The key’s in the truck’s ignition, ready to be turned, and my hand is on the gear stick, ready to throw it into drive, when I see Lowell flit out of the drug store and cross the street, running toward a fairly unassuming blue SUV, the kind so generic that you barely notice them among the sea of other generic SUVs that flood the roads. She hops in the front driver’s seat and straps herself in, and the whole time, my mind is ticking. Tick, tick, ticking. I don’t know when I decide to follow her. It’s not really a conscious decision. It’s only when I’m pulling up outside a modest two story building in Greenwood and Lowell goes inside that I realize what I’ve done. Fuck me. If she saw me tailing her, I’m in for a world of hurt. I was careful, though. I made sure to move a few cars back, never in the same lane of traffic unless absolutely necessary.
Lights go on inside the house. Movement: a dark shadow shifts from one room to the next, and then the hall and upstairs lights go on. Lowell appears at the window for a second, a coffee cup in her hand. She draws one curtain closed across the glass in front of her, and then the other. For all the world, it looks like Denise Lowell just arrived home and is settling in for the night.
And now I know where she lives.
Chapter Sixteen
SLOANE
“How the fuck could you be so reckless?” Oliver pulls off his rubber gloves and hurls them into the HAZMAT bin by the door. “I—I don’t even know what to say, Sloane. I just can’t…fucking…believe…”
I knew he wasn’t going to react well, but I had no idea I was going to render him speechless. The blood test he’s just performed has confirmed once and for all that I’m pregnant, and he is none too happy about the revelation. “Have you thought about your options?” he asks. His back is to me, so I can’t see the look on his face. I can picture it, though: so much disappointment and worry there.