Page 52 of Hell to Pay

The line went dead, and I imagined a beautiful chic Parisian woman across the ocean, shaking her head imperiously at the ineptitude of Americans.

I sat there, staring at the phone and tapping my fingers on the desk. Daisy said the people who’d bought private VIP villas at the Cantwell resort were super rich. If Piers Cantwell had been involved in human trafficking, if he’d planned to use the resort as some kind of hub for it, wasn’t it possible the owners of the VIP villas were involved?

And if they’d been involved when Piers was alive, if they were all part of Imperium Fratrum, what were the odds those people — people like Jean-Luc Laurent — were still involved?

I looked at the computer, contemplated digging around, seeing if I could find out the identities of the other villa owners, all of whom probably wanted their money back now that the Cantwell resort would be sitting empty for the foreseeable future.

But no, I wasn’t about to risk my new job.

I picked up my cell phone instead and scrolled to Daisy’s number. She’d given it to me when we’d left her house, had told me to call or text if there was anything else she could do to help.

And she’d seemed like she meant it.

She picked up on the second ring. “Lilah, hi!”

“Hey! I’m sorry to call out of the blue, but I have a question about those VIP villas at Cantwell.”

36

JUDE

The kid was leaningagainst the wall in front of the high school when we pulled up in the Rover. He looked younger, more unsure, than the other kids streaming out of the building, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him.

High school fucking sucked. Even for someone like me, who had probably seemed on top of the world, who’d had Rafe and Nolan to have my back. It was just confusing and scary and fucked-up in a million ways. Everybody said they were the best years of your life, but I’ve always thought that was fucked too. Who wanted the best years of your life to end when you were eighteen? You wanted four great years followed by sixty years of mediocrity, or worse, misery?

Nah, those people — the ones who said high school was the best time of your life — had watched too many movies from the 80s. They’d started to see their own experience through the rose-colored glasses of memory. They’d forgotten the agonizing insecurity, the terror of wondering whether you were normal, the complete and utter lack of control over your own life.

I saw it all in the slump of Matt’s shoulders, knew it was probably worse for him by the way no one stopped to speak to him on their way out, the way the other kids looked past him, like he was a piece of furniture or a tree in the landscaping.

“Want me to go get him?” Nolan asked from the passenger seat.

Rafe had gone ahead to the river to set up the kayaks and our gear.

“Nah,” I said. “Give it a minute.”

Honking would embarrass him.

He raised his head, looked around, then spotted the Rover. We hadn’t told him what we’d be driving — my bad — but the Rover, with its tinted windows and custom rims, wasn’t a typical car for Blackwell Falls. That honor belonged to the motorcycles driven by the Blades and Barbarians, the tricked-out Civics and Mustangs driven by the street gangs, the minivans driven by the moms and dads.

Nolan lifted a hand in greeting from the open passenger-side window and Matt pushed off the half wall and started toward us.

He was almost to the car when I saw a trio of swaggering jocks home in on him. I wasn’t even surprised when one of them — a guy in jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of four-hundred-dollar shoes — shouted over the crowd.

“See you tomorrow, freak!”

His two bros laughed, but not everyone was amused. A girl with long brown hair scowled at them and said, “Assholes,” while a guy in a sports jersey glared daggers at them.

Matt flushed beet red. It always sucked to be embarrassed but it sucked more to be embarrassed in front of your friends, and while Nolan and I weren’t exactly Matt’s friends, I was guessing he didn’t want to seem like a loser in front of us.

He opened the door to the back seat, tossed in his backpack, and got into the car.

“Hey,” Nolan said.

“Hey,” Matt said.

I was glad Nolan didn’t mention the assholes who’d been teasing Matt — that would only make Matt more embarrassed — but I stared hard at the douchebags as they crossed the street in front of the Rover and was heartened when the biggest one, the one who’d yelled at Matt, met my gaze, then moved faster across the street like he was scared.

Yeah, you better hurry, you little asshole.

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