Bad Company (7 page)

She twisted, pulling the quilt close around her to keep out the chill air.

Half a minute more and she’d stir, make coffee. Hell they were getting domestic in their old age!

The cabin door opened and thunked shut, and moments later she heard one of the Lexus doors open and close.

The cabin door opened again almost immediately. That was speedy!

Chill evening air cut through the main part of the cabin and in through the open bedroom door. Had he really left the place open so he could go back and forth from the auto?

She opened her eyes and he was standing in the bedroom doorway, watching her.

He...

She opened her eyes wider and stared.

It wasn’t Denny!

“Who–?”

“Pleased to meet you,” said the stranger.

She couldn’t make out much in the gloom. A guy. About six foot. Dark thigh-length coat hanging open over a white shirt, dark pants. A glint of glasses when he moved his head.

“You must be Cassandra Dane,” he said, moving into the room. He walked as if he owned the place. As if he had rights over everything within.

Just then she heard a shout from outside. Voices of at least two men. A thud. The bang of an automobile door... engine revs and the tearing sound of tires spinning in dirt and stones.

More shouting. A gunshot.

Cassie jumped at the sound and sat upright, clutching the quilt around herself.

Her eyes darted between the window and the stranger and it felt as if her heart was going to explode out of her rib-cage.

Another roar of engine revs and wheels in dirt and then nothing.

Moments later the cabin door banged against the wall, then slammed shut. Two men walked in. She’d seen them before. The tall guy, Luis: she’d last seen him over the barrel of the Glock handgun he’d been aiming somewhere between her eyes. And the other, shorter and balder and built like a barrel of muscle, was Al, the one who’d taken the lead the last time they’d held her up. Now he came into the bedroom while his partner hung back in the doorway. He muttered something into the stranger’s ear, then backed away.

And now the new guy, who was clearly in charge, took a few steps further into the room, so that he was standing right by the bed. He smiled at Cassie, his hands spread, looking something like a priest saying farewell to his congregation. “That was your boyfriend, Denny,” he said. His voice was cultured, almost without accent. “He’s gone. And judging by his recent record of departing the scene, I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again very soon at all.”

That spread of the hands again. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brady Lowe, and I hope you’ll forgive my anger but Denny McGowan swindled me out of nearly ten million dollars recently.”

§

He backed away and prodded at Cassie’s discarded clothes with a toe. “You might like to get dressed before we continue this discussion,” he said.

“Not with you watching,” she told him.

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but you have no choice. It would be sloppy of us to give you the privacy to find another way out, or maybe to find that handgun Denny stole from Luis this morning.” With that he stepped across and ushered Al and Luis out of the room before closing the door and leaning against it.

Cassie stared him out, but he wasn’t going to give any ground.

She let the quilt fall and stood, still meeting Brady’s gaze.

The night air had a bite to it, now. Sally clearly hadn’t been heating the unoccupied cabins.

Cassie stooped and gathered her clothes, and when she straightened Brady’s gaze was roaming all over her, like an auctioneer assessing livestock.

“Denny always did get the girls,” said Brady. “But it was never long before they saw through him. He was like that at college and he’s like that now.”

Cassie remembered what Denny had said about his break-up with Brady: it had been about the money, but there had been a girl, too. Was Brady hoping something similar would happen here, too? Was he hoping to win her?

Or worse...

Out here, he didn’t have to win her at all.

Out here he could do what the Hell he wanted.

“H
ow did you find us?”

The question just spilled out. It was a way for her to be taking the initiative, rather than letting Brady Lowe take the lead. He’d opened the bedroom door again now and Al had joined them, a handgun hanging casually from one hand at his side.

She took a long blink and visualized the tattoo on her shoulder.

Don’t fuck with me
.

Eye contact again. Brady seemed amused, if anything. He seemed to be enjoying this, as if it were some kind of power kick for him.

He reached into the pocket of his coat just then, and produced a handgun of his own, checked it, then slid it back into his pocket. All show.

“It wasn’t hard,” said Brady, finally. “For all the bravado and bull, Denny’s an amateur. I’ve been protecting him all his adult life. I’m always the one picking up the pieces, digging him out of his latest scrape. In better times we were like brothers. In worse times... well, these
are
the worst times, don’t you think? So yes, Denny: he’s an amateur who doesn’t have a clue what to do when he gets in deep. And you? Cassandra Dane, only child of Billy Ray Dane. Where would you run to when the pressure was on? It wasn’t hard to work out. I’d say it would be a choice between running back to Brooklyn or holing up in the woods where you have some friends, wouldn’t you?

“When Al and Luis followed you out of Bangor on the interstate you could have been heading back down all the way to Brooklyn, or maybe Boston to catch a flight. But when you took Route 2 you were always going to be headed here, weren’t you? You didn’t make it hard for us.”

Cassie knew these cabins well. She’d cleaned every surface of them for two seasons, after all.

Al and Luis had the bedroom door covered. Behind her, as she stood by the bed facing Brady, another doorway led into the small shower room. There was a window in the shower room, but only the small top panel opened: she’d have to smash the glass to escape through there. Above the shower a hatch led up into the cramped loft-space under the cabin’s sloping roof, but that was the only access – no other way out of that space once you were up there.

Here in the bedroom that just left the window. Jump feet first and she might get through without cutting herself to shreds and she might then land on her feet and she might then be able to run and dodge their bullets, but... this wasn’t a movie.

She had to face it: there was no way out.

She stared Brady down. “So what now?” she said.

“I wonder how Denny dressed it all up for you?” he said, ignoring her question. “I bet it was a good story and he came out of it well. The sympathetic victim, am I right? Did he blame me? I always suspected he’d blame me if it came to it.”

“He said you made some bad deals and tried to cover it up,” she said, her brain spinning.

Brady nodded.

“He said he tried to sort it all out with one of the people whose money you’d blown.”

“That figures. And you believed him, of course?”

She had. Why shouldn’t she? But now... Brady didn’t have to say anything more than that for her belief in Denny McGowan to vanish in a puff of smoke. That simple question –
And you believed him, of course?
–was like pulling a loose thread and watching her trust unravel.

Somewhere deep inside she felt a hollow ache. Denny... Another in her long line of bad choices.

“Last night at Pappy’s,” Brady continued. “It was no accident Denny turning up there.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

“You see, our big investor – the bad money Denny roped in to try and save us – his name is Billy Ray Dane.”

It got worse. It just got a whole lot worse.

“So no, Denny turning up at your door last night was no accident. He was just doing the same thing I am: trying to find favor with Billy Ray Dane by delivering him his estranged daughter...”

§

She’d successfully shut him out of her life until that night three years ago. She had a room then, a place in one of the nicer parts of Brownsville where the crack-dens actually had doors, as one of her friends had once put it. A room, three jobs, night school when she could manage it. She’d started to feel that a corner in her life had been turned. She was doing okay.

A banging on the door and Cindy yelling through that it was for her and there were two guys there. Black suits, skinny ties, shades – they were either something from the Blues Brothers or gangsters and she knew it was the latter when one of them said, “Billy Ray sends his regards,” then reached into a pocket, revealing a gun in a shoulder holster, and produced an envelope.

This was Billy reaching out to her.

She took the letter and the two heavies stayed there.

“Was there something else?”

They stared, impassive, and then finally the guy who’d handed her the letter said, “Billy said there would be a reply.”

Cassie gave him her best
Don’t fuck with me
look and the guy actually blinked, which she took as a small victory. “You give him any reply you like,” she said. “Just get off my doorstep, you hear?”

With that, she stepped back and slammed the door. She was actually surprised the door shut – shouldn’t the guy have put his foot in it to stop it closing or something? Maybe he’d thought the better of it.

She leaned against the door and gave a great big sobbing, shuddering breath. Had she really just slammed the door on an armed gangster sent by Billy Ray Dane? On two of them!

The letter...

She’d opened it, eventually, much later that evening. She’d almost burned it straight away, but she’d never have been able to live with the curiosity. She hated the way Billy could insinuate his way back into her consciousness so easily: ignore the letter and it’d eat away at her; open it and she’d be drawn deeper into whatever game he was playing now.

He’d included a number for her to call.

She held herself in check. Didn’t do anything for nearly a month. Gave herself time to get over the shock, to calm down and think rationally. And then she hit that point: the one where you just
know
. She didn’t want him in her life. She didn’t have that need. And whatever his need was that had prompted this, she didn’t care. He was a stranger and you can’t screw up your life just to satisfy the needs of a stranger.

So she’d screwed up her life by fleeing.

She didn’t want him to track her down again. Didn’t want to go through this another time. She’d left Brooklyn, left New York for the first time in her life. A new start in Vermont, then up here to the White Mountains where she’d found Marshall and Sally and something that had felt more like home than anywhere she’d been in the longest time.

§

“So what if his daughter doesn’t want delivering?”

She didn’t expect Brady to just shrug.

“I’m no kidnapper,” he said. “Denny might try to trick you back into daddy’s arms, but then Denny McGowan is, much as I regret to say this about my old buddy, a liar and a crook. That’s his call to make, though. Me? I can tell you Billy really is a different man. He wants to meet you so you can find that out for yourself and I’m happy to pass that message on, but I’m no gangster. Sure, Al and Luis can get a little heavy-handed and I genuinely apologize for them if they’ve scared you. But Billy only wants to meet you of your own free will.”

It was all too much. She didn’t know what to believe. Had Denny really just been conning her? Was it all a trap?

Nothing about Brady inspired trust but, perversely, that made his version seem even more credible: she didn’t have to believe him because she
liked
him.

“Billy Ray Dane has been all kinds of bad in his time,” said Brady. “But in my dealings with him I can tell you he’s a good man at heart and there’s a place in that heart for you. That’s all I have to say. He said to find my own words and that’s it.”

That priestly spreading of the hands again.

“It’s your call, Ms Dane,” he said. “If you really don’t want to let your pop back in then just walk away right now. I’ll tell him I gave it my best shot and I’ll cover your back. I’ve settled with Billy: he asked me to do this one thing and he’d write off my debts to him and that’s it. So make your choice, Ms Dane. It makes no difference to me. From now on this is just between me and Denny McGowan.”

Billy Ray Dane had done it again: insinuated himself. By giving her the choice he’d made it even harder for her to just walk away.

She opened her mouth to speak and–

The cabin door burst open and Luis was backing towards the bedroom, his gun hand half-raised, suspended in mid-air as he stared down the barrel of a hunting rifle.

At the other end of the rifle was Sally, the smallest person here but easily the most fearsome.

At her shoulder was Marshall, looking almost as fierce, his rifle swinging steadily from side to side as the pair advanced into the room.

Oh God no!

She loved them, and she so desperately didn’t want them hurt.

She stepped out from by the bed and moved to the doorway, coming to stand in the line of fire in front of Al and Brady. “It’s okay, guys. It really is okay.”

Sally and Marshall looked at her.

“It’s okay.”

She was in control.

It was a strange realization, particularly now, when she was the only one in the cabin not packing a gun, but she really was the one calling the shots, probably for the first time in her life.