Page 64 of All the Ways You Save Me
I stand up and pace across the room. “You involved me in this, and you didn’t tell me? How could you do that?” This is so bad. How could I have been so stupid? All that money they paid me—I wasn’t just picking up dry cleaning and delivering lunch. I was crossing state lines with kilos of cocaine.
Jason lunges to his feet. “I did this foryou.”
“Forme? How could this be for me?” I spin on my heel and pace back.
He waves a hand in my direction. “You were about to get stuck in a going-nowhere, minimum-wage job and probably end up living in a trailer for the rest of your life. I could tell you wanted out, that you wanted more, but you had no way to make it happen.”
I grind to a halt.
“You and Madeline wouldn’t have lasted through next fall if you’d stayed in Maple Ridge working as a mechanic while she went off to college,” Jason continues. “Maybe at first, you guys would have kept in touch, but pretty soon the calls and texts would have stopped coming.”
My gut churns because he’s right. Everything he’s saying is exactly what I’ve been thinking since the day I met Madeline. “Butcocaine?”
Jason stares me down. “What did you think we were delivering?”
I open my mouth, but don’t know what to say. It’s a fair question. WhatdidI think they were paying me piles of cash under the table to deliver? On some level I knew it wasn’t perfectly legit or I wouldn’t have felt the need to be secretiveabout my second job. But I think I assumed the company was evading taxes or something. That maybe they had guys like me and Jason delivering equipment to keep it off the books. I never imagined I’d become a drug runner.
“We obviously need to go to the police,” I say.
“No fucking way.” Jason’s head wags back and forth. “These aren’t the kind of guys you mess with.”
I pause. I don’t know shit about stuff like this. At least in the movies, the guys trafficking drugs are the guys who will kill you and dump your body in the woods. But this isn’t the movies. “Maybe the police can protect us. Maybe we could help them catch these guys and send them to prison.”
“Sure, maybe they’ll protect us. But what about my family? They can’t protect my mom and dad, my cousins. Everyone.”
“Maybe your parents could help. Can you ask them for the money to cover it?”
“They’d lose their shit.”
“I know it’s asking a lot. But they’re your parents. They’ll want to protect you. We’ll tell them it’s not your fault, that you didn’t know.”
For the first time, Jason looks hopeful. “Maybe that could work. How much do you think one of those boxes of cocaine could be worth?”
“I guess we could look it up.” I grab my laptop from the coffee table and flip it open. “How heavy was the box? Was it one of those with the stamps on the side that looks like it holds computer equipment?”
Jason nods. “Yeah, the red swirly logo.”
I freeze with my hands over the keys. I’ve delivereddozensof those boxes.Holy shit.“Okay.” I start typing. “So, they weigh, like, what? Maybe twenty pounds?”
“That seems right.”
I type,How much does 20 pounds of cocaine cost?and I honestly can’t believe this is my life. I glance over at Jason, wholooks equally shocked. We scan the first article.Eighteen pounds of cocaine seized in a drug bust in North Dakota worth $700,000.
“Jesus.” Jason gasps.
I click the next article.Twenty-two pounds of cocaine seized on a freighter anchored near Baltimore worth over $1 million.
“So, twenty pounds would be worth… ?” Jason’s lips twitch like he’s going to cry again.
I click on a few more links. “Less than a million, like maybe nine hundred and fifty thousand.” It sounds like Monopoly money to me. These articles might as well have said a billion dollars. A trillion. A gazillion. But maybe Jason’s parents could afford that. His mom is a doctor, his dad runs the biggest law firm in central PA. “Can your parents come up with that?”
Jason’s tears spill over again. “Jesus, Adam. My parents don’t have that kind of money. I know they seem wealthy, but their mortgage is high, and they have a lot of expenses. They’d have to sell the house and their cars, and use my college fund. And still, it would take months for them to access that kind of cash. These guys aren’t going to wait that long.” He flops over on the couch and curls up in the fetal position. “I’m dead. That’s it. I’m dead and so is my family. These guys know where I live.”
I lunge to my feet and start pacing again, agonizing over the situation. He might not be wrong. Guys who traffic cocaine are not just going to write off a million dollars of inventory. Jason could be in real trouble and so could his family. They’ve been so good to me. I can’t stand by and let them end up in harm’s way.
“Adam.” Jason’s voices breaks. “Madeline could be in danger, too.”
My heart stops.
