Page 4 of Risk It All
“What are you doing here, Stuart?” she asked, wanting to keep walking toward the stairs but not trusting the creep enough to turn her back. Moving backward away from him felt too much like running, and she wasn’t scared of this little punk. Thanks to Jane regularly helping herself to her daughter’s tuition money, Cara was several years older than most of her classmates. Stuart Powers couldn’t be much over twenty, but he was already mixed up in Langston’s shadier side.
He’d been one of the many who’d tried to break into their house. Since Molly and John had caught him in the act, he’d been popping up around campus wherever Cara happened to be. He seemed to have the mistaken impression that she knew where her mom had hidden the stolen necklace—and that she could be intimidated into telling him where he could find it.
“Why are most students in a campus building?” He really did have the most punchable smirk in the history of the world. He stepped closer, and she backed away. Cara was so intent on keeping some distance between them that she didn’t even realize he’d cornered her until she felt the press of a recessed classroom door against her back. Shifting closer, he asked, “What do you think I’m doing here?”
Irritation spiked at the question, and she surged forward, knocking him hard enough with her shoulder that he took an automatic step back, giving her an opening. She moved quickly toward the stairs, too annoyed to be worried about what he’d do if her back was turned. “Quit stalking me.”
His low laugh followed her, and she straightened her shoulders, fighting the urge to glance back. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing just how creepy she found him. He was trying to frighten her. What he didn’t realize was that she dealt with scarier people every day. She’d faced downHenry Kavenski. After that, Stuart seemed like small potatoes.
Still, Stuart’s mocking laugh did make her uneasy, as much as she tried to hide it. Campus was her escape from the stress of bounty hunting, and knowing he was lurking around her, following her, ruined that feeling of safety.
Anger filled Cara as she rushed down the stairs, her shoes thumping on each step, creating enough of a clatter that she couldn’t hear anything else that Stuart tried to say. When she reached the ground floor, she couldn’t keep herself from glancing up to see if he’d followed her. The stairs were poorly lit, the steps quickly disappearing into the gloom, and she felt the prickle of goose bumps ghost down her spine.
That’s what he wants, the reasonable part of her brain supplied.He wants to freak you out.
Despite knowing that, she still had to hide a shiver as she shoved through the door out into the late-afternoon sunshine. As she strode toward the parking lot, pretending that she wasn’t relieved to see the clusters of students scattered around the area, Cara set her jaw. No more chickening out. She was going to bring in a skip and show her sisters that she could be useful in the field. That way, Charlie and Felicity could focus on finding their mom and bringing her back.
Cara was going to do whatever she had to in order to get their lives back to normal. She only had to be a badass for a short time, and then she could go back to worrying about normal things, like class projects and finding a student-teaching position next semester and whose turn it was to clean the bathroom.
Her cell phone dinged, the ringtone telling her it was a work call, and she pulled it out with brisk motions, caught up in a wave of determination. “Pax Bail Recovery.”
“Hey there.” Barney Thompson’s slimy voice made her wrinkle her nose. Between him and Stuart, she was getting a full dose of creeps today. “Which pretty Pax sister am I talking to?”
“This is Cara. How can I help you?” She put on her best professional tone. Before everything happened, she would’ve blown him off as quickly as possible, but now that he held their mom’s bail bond—which meant he’d own their house if Jane didn’t show up for her next hearing—Cara had to be polite to him, which just about killed her. That was another thing that needed to go back to normal as quickly as possible. She was going to relish being able to hang up on Barney again.
“I have a job for you.”
She had to bite her tongue to hold back a groan. The last skip Barney had wanted them to bring in had almost killed Molly multiple times, and Cara and her sisters had almost been blown up.
At her silence, Barney hurried to add, “He’s nothing like the last one. This one’ll be easy. A walk in the park, especially for you.”
“Whyespeciallyfor me? Cara asked warily.
“Because Abbott loves to get college students to do his dirty work, and aren’t you still in your tenth year there or something?”
She hadn’t been attendingthatlong. Seven years at the most. With effort, Cara swallowed her protest as he continued.
“I’m actually doing you a favor by telling you about him.”
“What’s he being charged with?” she asked.
“Tax evasion. He owes enough that the judge set his bail high.”
That was promisingly nonviolent. “Send over his file, and we’ll consider it.”
Barney’s grunt made it clear he wasn’t too happy that she wasn’t accepting the job immediately, but he just said “Fine” and hung up.
Cara had barely gotten into her car before her phone alerted her that she had an email. Still suspicious why Barney was so desperate to have them bring in a simple tax-evading skip—rather than siccing his own bounty-hunting dogs on the guy—she opened the file. After scanning the information, she was frowning more deeply. The skip, Geoffrey Abbott, appeared to be an easy job on the surface, but the name teased her brain. It sounded oddly familiar.
Setting down her phone, she started her car, eager to get home and research the guy. Familiar or not, he might be just what she was looking for to replace Henry Kavenski as her first successful capture. Her mood lifting for the first time since Stuart had swooped in to ruin her day, she backed out of her parking space and headed home.
As she drove, she tried to focus on Geoffrey Abbott, but another skip kept wiggling his way back into her thoughts.
“Stupid Henry Kavenski,” she muttered, slowing down to turn onto her street. “Get out of my brain.”
Despite her determination to drop his case, she knew it wouldn’t be easy to let this skip go.
* * *
