Journey to Cash Read online

  “Death threats, the patriarchy.”

  “This is serious, you guys,” Reyes said.

  “Okay, how worried do we need to be?” I took a sip of coffee and tried to look invested.

  “What did Kallen tell you?” Reyes asked.

  “Not much. Henry tried to kill her. He probably wants to kill me and Nate and, I don’t know, whoever else he blames for destroying his life and making him a fugitive,” I said.

  Duarte nodded. “That’s a decent description, actually.”

  “What do you guys know?” Nate asked.

  “Kallen was out hiking when Brewer ambushed her.” Reyes aimlessly spun his glass of tea. “She fought back. It’s possible she broke his fingers or hand. She almost certainly broke his nose. She definitely stabbed him in the side.” He finally looked up. “We’ve been checking hospitals and clinics, but nothing so far. We also don’t know anything about his targets or his motivations yet.”

  “Well, he considers it personal,” I said.

  Reyes huffed. “Yes, definitely.”

  “How’d you know that?” Duarte asked.

  “Last time he tried to execute her,” Nate said. “On her knees. With a gun. Mobster style. It was a business transaction. Cash said this time he tried to strangle her. That’s intimate, personal.”

  “Which is why we think he might come after you two or Clive. Really anyone who he blames for the trajectory of his life,” Reyes said.

  “But that’s all speculation?” I asked.

  Reyes shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “What are you guys doing about it?” I asked. Reyes and Duarte seemed confused by the question. “You called me to update us. So update us. What’s the plan? How are you going to catch him? Are you going to park a cruiser outside my house until you find him? Are you covering anyone else’s residence?”

  Reyes nodded a couple times. “For the time being, Sac PD has a cruiser outside your place.” He looked at Nate. “And Davis PD is covering your apartment. EDSO are doing the same for Kallen and Mr. Braddock.”

  “EDSO?” Nate asked.

  “El Dorado Sheriff’s Office.”

  I tried to figure out why Laurel would have an El Dorado sheriff escort, but couldn’t. “I don’t understand.”

  “What part?” Reyes asked.

  “The El Dorado sheriffs.”

  “Hey, they have just as much investment in catching him as we do.” Reyes shrugged. “More, maybe. To have one of their own become a cop killer, or an attempted cop killer is bad news.”

  “No. Laurel. Is she in El Dorado County?” I asked. Next to me, Nate shifted uncomfortably.

  “Yeah, Placerville.” Reyes looked confused at my confusion. “You know that’s where she’s been, right?”

  I frowned and shook my head. I felt like crying suddenly and I couldn’t quite process why. I needed this meeting to end. “No, but it doesn’t matter.”

  Nate briefly touched my knee under the table. I nodded that he could take over. “So is someone meeting with Clive to tell him why there’s a cop parked at his farm?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Do you remember Agent Michelson from the FBI field office?” Reyes asked. Nate and I nodded. “He’s at Braddock Farm with one of the EDSO investigators right now.”

  “And how long is this going to go on for?” Nate asked.

  Duarte raised his hand a couple of inches off the table like he was asking permission to speak. “We don’t know. The FBI, Sac PD, and EDSO all have open files on Brewer, but we haven’t had any significant leads in the last year. This is the most contact anyone has had.”

  “But you’re going to do something, right? We can’t live in a police state forever,” Nate said.

  “It’s not exactly a police state to have police protecting you,” Reyes said.

  “I’m a six-foot Chinese dude with a criminal record. Feels like a police state to me.” Nate looked pointedly at Reyes. Reyes shrugged and leaned away from the table.

  “Brewer dropped his cell phone when he attacked Kallen. The FBI team is working on unlocking it. We’re hoping we get some information from that,” Duarte said.

  “Well, you can call Davis PD off my place. I’m going to stay with Cash until this is resolved,” Nate said.

  “Great. I’m sure they have other uses for those resources,” Reyes said. There was a hint of irritation in his tone. Nate’s comment about police states had clearly pissed him off.

  “I assume you’ll keep us apprised of the situation?” I stood.

  “Of course.” Reyes stood when I did. Duarte scrambled to follow suit. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

  Nate and Reyes nodded at each other. It was all very tension filled. I didn’t know if it was me reeling from the revelation that Laurel apparently left me to live a scant forty miles away or the polite masculine energy radiating between Nate and Reyes, but regardless I didn’t like it.

  I grabbed my coffee and left. Nate followed me. We started walking back to my place. The air held the promise of heat for the afternoon.

  “He was being a dick, right?” Nate asked.

  “Yeah. Definitely.”

  “I don’t care if he’s a cop. He’s Latinx. He knows exactly what it feels like to be a brown dude threatened by a police presence.” His voice rose in a hint of anger. In all the time I’d known him, it was the only real display of anger I’d seen.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing.” We waited at the corner for the light to change. Nate tapped the light pole as if it would make things go faster.

  “You’re allowed to be pissed about this,” I said.

  “Thanks for the permission to get angry?” The light changed and he took off.

  I hustled to catch up. “I’m just saying you’re not in the wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter. How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Wow, so we’re both just going to be masculine about our emotions?”

  “Huh?”

  “Kallen left you to find herself. I thought it was mostly a proximity thing. Like she couldn’t stay in Sac and you’re in Sac. But she went to the next county, which kind of suggests that it had nothing to do with proximity.”

  “Cool. So you’re not going to let me lie to myself about this at all?” I asked.

  “Oh. I didn’t know that’s what we were doing.”

  “I mean, we could like talk about our feelings and shit, but also what if we buried them deep down instead?”

  “Sounds fucking dope.”

  We turned up the walkway to my front door. We could hear the Mario Kart music before we even opened the door. Lane and Andy had cleared the living room floor and covered it in pillows and blankets. A reverse fort, if you will. Lane was lying on her stomach with her feet crossed in the air behind her. Andy had pulled a cushion off the couch to set up a lounge chair of sorts against the couch front.

  “Oh, man. Staying the weekend at your house is the best.” Nate bumped his shoulder against mine. “Guys, I want in on the next game.” He vaulted over the couch and landed on one of the remaining seat cushions. Lane and Andy made grunting noises in affirmation.

  “You want a beer?” I asked Nate.

  “Not right now,” he said without turning away from the screen.

  “I think Mom’s out back having one though,” Andy said.

  “Cool. Thanks, tiger.” I grabbed a beer and went out back.

  Robin turned at the sound of the door. “How did it go?”

  “Okay. They don’t have any info and we’re going to have a cop babysitter until they sort it out.”

  She sighed. “Oh, fun.”

  “It could be worse.” I sat next to her. She gave me a questioning look. “I could have a seemingly perfect woman pretend to be my girlfriend but really she’s an undercover cop investigating me. Or I could have my secret girlfriend actually be a cop who is here to use the cover of protecting me so she can spend the night, but then she experiences such cognitive dissonan
ce from being in a relationship with me that she leaves, literally abandoning the city she’s lived in her whole life.”

  “What an oddly specific hypothetical of worseness.”

  “I’m imaginative.”

  “I like that about you,” she said.

  “Aww, thanks.”

  “So I take it the gallery opening went well? Aside from the hypothetical ex-girlfriend showing up.”

  “Yeah. Kyra already sold like six pieces. It’s pretty great.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Cash.” Robin took my hand and held it. “You’ve done something really cool.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled. Coming from Robin, it mattered. “I need to tell you about something. I need friend advice.”

  “What’s up?”

  “A couple hours before the gallery opening, my mother showed up here.”

  Robin cocked her head and stared at me. The realization slowly overtook her expression until she uttered an erudite, “Huh?”

  “Yep. That mother.”

  “No.” She said it very authoritatively. Like she’d considered all the possibilities and simply decided against my mother reappearing.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did she want? Was it weird? How did she look? I thought she was dead?”

  “She wants to get to know me. And it was super fucking weird. I kinda thought she was dead too.”

  “Wasn’t she a drug addict?” Robin asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Big time. She looks fine now. Clean. Happy.”

  “That’s wild. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you about it. What the hell do I do?” I asked.

  “How did you leave it?”

  “Kyra called with a gallery thing and I pretended I had to leave right away.”

  “Nice. Very mature,” she said.

  “She told me she would like to hear from me. She’s staying with Clive. I guess I should call her? Should I call her?”

  “If you want to.” Robin shrugged. “It’s totally up to you. If you’re curious, then go for it. If you’re not, it’s okay to say no thanks.”

  “There’s not really anything I want from her.”

  “That’s good. It means you’ll be more impartial if you do call her.”

  “I feel like I should care more than I do.”

  “Maybe your lack of feelings has all just been leading to this moment.” Robin sipped her beer. “Or, you know, you’re a deeply broken person because your mother abandoned you at a young age and that’s why you lack normative emotional responses as an adult.”

  “It’s a real toss-up.”

  “Guess we’ll never know.” She held out her beer and I tapped mine against it. “Have you talked to Clive about it? Are you talking to him at all?”

  The door behind us opened. We turned in time to watch Andy, Lane, and Nate rush outside.

  “Mom, guess what?”

  “What, bud?”

  “We are going to put wood slats in the back of Gracie-Ray,” Andy said. Nate and Lane nodded enthusiastically.

  Robin looked at me in question. I shrugged. “I thought that was the plan all along,” Robin said.

  “So did I,” I said.

  A week after getting the truck for her birthday, Andy declared that she was going to replace the wood in the bed. It had been seven months. “No, I mean, yeah. But we were waiting because I had to save up for supplies and then we were waiting because of the weather, but look.” Andy pointed at the sky.

  “It’s summer,” Lane said.

  It certainly was.

  “Great. What do I need to do?” Robin asked.

  “Nothing, honestly,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, I’ve got the plans Lane made me.” Andy held up the hand-drawn specs Lane had given her for Christmas. “We just need to make a hardware store run.”

  “You guys don’t mind?” Robin glanced at Nate and Lane.

  “It’ll be fun,” Lane said.

  “Yeah. Plus the lady folks need an escort.” Nate nodded confidently.

  “Hey, Nate, what’s the difference between oak and pine?” Lane asked.

  “Excellent question. Andy, why don’t you take this one?” Nate clapped his hand on Andy’s shoulder.

  “Oh, no.” Andy made a pained face. “I couldn’t possibly use my lady brain to understand something so complex.”

  “Right you are. Well, we better go.” He gestured grandly to the door.

  Lane crossed her arms. “Hey, Nate, what’s the difference between an orbital sander and a belt sander?”

  “If you have to ask me, then maybe you’re not qualified to do this,” he said.

  Lane grinned. “Hey, Nate, should we stain or varnish the wood?”

  “Yes?” He held the door open in the hope Lane would stop asking him questions.

  I turned to Robin. “There’s no part of this that can go wrong.”

  Chapter Four

  Nate texted for me to open the side gate when they were a couple of blocks away. Robin helped me wrestle it open. We hadn’t opened it since we built flower beds five years earlier.

  “Well, this is going to be a problem.” Robin stared out at the street with her hands on her hips.

  “What?” I dropped the gate and hustled to stand in the opening with her. My car was parked in the driveway leading to the gate. “Hmm. Yeah. That’s going to make it hard to drive back here.”

  “Andy can move it,” Robin said.

  “That’s the whole point of having children, right? So they can move vehicles when you’ve had too much to drink.”

  “Of course. That’s why I had Andy.”

  “I’ll grab my keys for her.” I went up the steps to my back door.

  “My beer’s almost gone,” Robin called after me.

  “I got you, girl.” I pulled my keys off the hook by the door, snagged two beers from the fridge, and went out front to wait for Andy.

  A minute later, they pulled up at the curb. Andy turned down her stereo and leaned out the open window of Gracie-Ray.

  “Hey, Cash, you planning on moving your car?” she asked.

  “I thought I told you to turn down your stereo when you’re a block or two away,” I said.

  “I forgot.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Nate said.

  I pointed at Nate and nodded. “Someone is going to steal your stereo.”

  “Message received.” She rolled her eyes. “Can you move your car now?”

  I held up my keys. “No, but you can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I cannot currently operate a motor vehicle,” I said. Lane laughed.

  “We were gone forty-five minutes!”

  “And we drank another beer while you were gone. That means we have had two beers in about ninety minutes. What is the legal cutoff?”

  Andy took a deep breath and blew it out. “One alcoholic beverage per hour unless you are under the age of twenty-one in which case any alcohol puts you over the legal limit.”

  “Very good.” I’d always been responsible about booze and driving, but Robin and I had agreed to be extra clear about following the rules since Andy had gotten her license. Largely, we were finding it a convenient excuse for our own laziness.

  Nate laughed and climbed out of the truck. “I’ll move your car.”

  Lane crawled out after him. “I’ll direct you into the backyard, Andy.”

  “Thanks, guys.” Andy put Gracie-Ray in reverse and backed up so Nate had room to pull out.

  I left them to play musical cars and went through the gate to the yard.

  “They get it sorted out?” Robin asked.

  “Yep.” I handed her a beer. “We should probably think about food at some point.”

  “Because it’s midafternoon and we’re already unable to drive cars?” Robin asked.

  “That and they’re all going to be occupied and won’t realize they are hungry until they are starving.”

  “Aww, you’re a go
od dad.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Andy’s engine revved and Lane started directing her into the yard. They managed to bypass the planter beds, which was pretty excellent. Nate followed the truck and closed the gate. Andy climbed out. The three of them stared at the pile of supplies in the truck bed.

  “You ready?” Lane asked.

  “Heck yeah I am. What do we do first?” Andy asked.

  Lane pulled the plans out of Andy’s back pocket and studied them very seriously. “Unload the truck.”

  “Wow. Really using those engineering classes,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, it’s good I drew up these plans.” Lane held them up.

  “Give me that.” Andy took the plans and set them on the deck. “Keep an eye on this. It’s very important,” she said to me and Robin.

  “On it,” I said.

  We watched them unload the truck. Lane kept everything in very specific piles. Wood and strips of metal were propped on the flowerbeds. Tubs of chemicals and brushes were placed on the ground underneath. Hardware was gathered on the edge of the deck next to the specs.

  Nate and Andy hauled out the piece of plywood lining the bed and tossed it aside. They started deconstructing the bed, which apparently required removing about fifty bolts from under the truck. Our view quickly became a pair of Vans, a pair of retro Nikes, and Nate’s leather high-tops sticking out from under the truck.

  “So I know the mom reappearance is a big deal and all, but can we discuss the Laurel reappearance?” Robin asked.

  “We could, but what if we didn’t?”

  “Or, conversely, what if we did?”

  “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  Robin sat up straighter. “Everything. What did she say? What did you say? How did she look? Was it weird? Are you still in love with her?”

  “Oof. Okay. She said Henry attacked her and she didn’t want me to hear it from someone else.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed like a stretch.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That it was shitty to disappear then show up and drop a bomb then disappear again.”

  “And?”

  “And she agreed it was shitty and left.”

  “So why did she really show up?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I’ve been asking myself the same question since last night.”