I want to hurt her. Badly. Physically hurt her. But me punching her would probably be something like a kitten fighting a tigre. Cute, but totally ineffective. The best it would do would be creating one of those viral videos.
“Anyway,” she continues, feigning boredom, “we need a new place now that Tempest has been compromised. I was going to suggest we’d use that sex bar of your other friend, or even the storage room of your chef friend.” She gives us a dark look. “Yes, I know all about your little friends. You guys are the talk of the town, you know? Never figured my son would turn out to be a little bitch, stuck to one cunt. We also know that everything we do will get back to the police. So that leaves us with a problem.”
Why are we standing here? Why are we listening to this woman? We should just turn around and walk away. The police have this covered, right? The FBI is involved. They should be fixing this.
“Now,” her voice turns lethal then. I never knew what they meant when I read those words in a book, but suddenly I get their meaning. “I need to redeem myself, which means you will have to find me a new place to store our goods. If not, I’m afraid my boss might request a not so willing meeting with Miss Pike and make sure she ends up like our beloved Julia Collins.”
My heart skips a beat. That’s the most direct threat I’ve gotten so far, and a shiver runs up my spine. It also makes it perfectly clear that the people she’s working for are the ones responsible for the death of Julia. Ever since Meggy got taken, I feel like it’s very important we catch the people who killed Julia, so it won’t happen to any other girls. Nobody deserves that and someone should definitely pay for it.
“Hell no, we won’t,” O spits. His fists are balled and he seems to be restraining himself not to punch her. But it’s not like we really have a choice, now do we? I don’t want to die. And I want to catch those bastards.
“Hell yes, you will. If you talk to the police, we will find out and take her anyway. And if we can’t get to her, there’s enough people you care about to take. One of the darling boys in your little relationship will do fine, now won’t they? Or we can always take your little pregnant friend. That would be extra tragic, now won’t it?”
I feel sick to my stomach, and my whole body is trembling. She’s really doing this. She’s threatening us, and I believe her. I believe she could make those threats come true.
“What do you want us to do, we don’t have a magical can full of places to store drugs and women,” O whisper-yells.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Her eyes are cold. So cold.
How the hell she birthed someone as good as Jonah is a mystery to me. His dad must have been some kind of Saint to even out the evil this woman is.
My writer brain wakes up, and just like in the police station to get Meggy back, my head starts plotting. It starts thinking laterally, seeking out options that don’t seem logical but could be a solution in the end. I’ve always been proud of the fact that I could see solutions in unlikely places, I’ve just never had to use the ability for crime. I’ve always identified with the good guys. Well, except for that time when Heath Ledger played the Joker, because he was awesome.
It takes about thirty seconds of me having my thinking hat on before I come up with something.
“O,” I whisper, “can’t we use the empty houses you sell?”
“What do you mean?” he asks me, never taking his eyes off of her.
“The houses you sell. Sometimes they’re empty. Can’t we use one of the empty houses when we need one? We won’t use the same house twice, so the chance of the police noticing is slim.”
I can’t exactly read the expression on O’s face, but that of Jonah’s mom lights up.
“Good girl,” she praises me, and unlike when one of the guys does it in the bedroom, this praise gives me the heebie-jeebies
“We can set up some sort of communication where you let us know when you need a place, and we’ll find a vacant place to use for the night. You won’t ever use the same location twice, so it’s safer that way.” I’m proud of myself for coming up with such a good plan on the fly, but I pray to fuck my face doesn’t show my ulterior motives. Yes, I’m taking the threats she’s making very seriously, but it’s also a way to get out of this mess, right? We could find a way to get this information back to those agents and they can catch them in the act and take them in.
O twists his face. He doesn’t want to be involved in all of this, and rightfully so, but we’re all in this together, and I need to get all of us out of this together as well. He takes out his wallet and reluctantly gives Jonah’s mom one of his business cards. He looks pained when he tells her to call that number when they need to set something up.
She pads him on his shoulder. “Atta boy.”
I feel like throwing up a little. The fake sweet smile reappears on her face, before she tells us to move along. And as much as I want to make a big fuck you statement by staying, I turn around and get the hell out of there. I don’t want to be in her presence.
O grabs my arm and we rush into the supermarket. “What the hell was that?” he half whispers.
“Me thinking on my feet,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I don’t want to help her!”
“Me neither, but this way we can gather some evidence. We’ve got the contact information of those agents, so we can bust their asses.”
O sighs. “I don’t want to get involved in more legal matters.”
“Neither do I,” I say, because I think we’ve had enough to last a lifetime.
“No, you don’t understand,” he continues with slumped shoulders. “I enrolled into a program to become a counselor. I don’t know if I get to work with kids if I keep getting involved in matters like these.”
That surprises me. And that’s a damn good reason to not want to have any more questionable behavior on his part. Of course, I focus on the part that’s really important here. “And when were you going to tell us this?”