It’s Only Money, Honey

Soren led Tomas into the living room.

“Sit.”

The room smelled faintly of tobacco and old wood. Lamps glowed in the corners, their light too low to reach the ceiling. Bentley and Vette lingered in the doorway behind them.

Soren didn’t look at either of them.

“Stay.”

Tomas lowered himself onto the couch.

Soren studied him for a long moment. His expression was pleasant, almost welcoming, but there was something deliberate behind it. Something measuring.

Then he nodded toward the hall.

“You two. With me.”

Bentley and Vette followed him from the room. Their voices dropped to whispers. Tomas caught Bentley’s name and something about keeping his mouth shut.

Then—

SMACK.

Bentley stumbled backward into the doorway, one hand clamped over his mouth.

Soren stood in front of him, calm again.

“Go to your rooms.”

Bentley glared at him. Blood shone along his lower lip, but he said nothing.

Vette caught his arm and pulled him down the hall.

Soren watched until they disappeared. Then he returned to the living room as though nothing had happened and lowered himself into the chair across from Tomas.

“Tell me,” he said mildly. “What do you remember about living here?”

Tomas glanced around the room.

“I lived here?”

“For a time.”

“I don’t remember any of it.”

“No?”

Tomas shook his head.

Soren settled back in his chair. “Do you remember my garden?”

“No.”

“You used to pull the flowers.”

Tomas frowned. “Why?”

“You brought them to your mother.”

Something stirred at the back of Tomas’s mind.

Not a memory exactly. More like a dream he had forgotten waking from.

A kitchen table.

His mother sitting with her head lowered.

Flowers crushed inside a small fist.

Kay looked up.

One cheek was bruised. Her lower lip was swollen. A thin smear of blood disappeared beneath her thumb before she pulled Tomas against her and told him everything was all right.

The image vanished.

Tomas stared at Soren.

Soren watched him carefully. “I loved your mother.”

Tomas said nothing.

“She was young when we met. Restless. Running from a small town that bored her.” A faint smile touched Soren’s mouth. “Kay wanted adventure.”

“What did she find?”

“A man who could teach her the world.”

“And did she like the lessons?”

Soren chuckled. “Oh, yes. Your mother was a very good student.”

Tomas remembered Kay standing in the motel room.

I know crazy.

I lived with your father.

“You taught her to steal,” he said.

“I taught her many things.”

“She worked for you.”

“She worked with me.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

Soren’s smile thinned.

“No,” he said. “I suppose it isn’t.”

He leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee.

“Kay became the best earner I ever had. Clever. Fearless. Beautiful enough to make people careless. She could walk into a room with nothing and leave carrying everything worth having.”

Pride colored his voice as though Kay’s abilities belonged to him.

“But she wanted more,” he continued. “She decided she could do better on her own.”

“So she left you.”

“She stole my son.”

Tomas’s stomach tightened.

“You never came looking for me.”

“Your mother made that difficult.”

“She doesn’t seem difficult to find.”

Soren’s eyes cooled.

“She had assistance. People willing to hide her until she learned to hide herself.” He gave a small shrug. “Eventually, I let her go.”

Tomas didn’t believe him.

The bruised cheek returned to him. The blood on Kay’s mouth. Flowers crushed in his hand.

“Mercedes tried leaving once,” Soren added casually. “Bentley and Corvetta’s mother.”

The room seemed to grow quieter.

“What happened to her?”

Soren smiled.

“She wasn’t as successful.”

Footsteps creaked somewhere in the hall.

Tomas glanced toward the doorway, but no one appeared.

Soren leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“And now you’re here.”

His eyes gleamed.

“Willing to take your mother’s place.”

“That’s not why I came.”

“I know why you came.”

“Then you know I’m leaving.”

“You came because you wanted to know about your father.”

The words stopped Tomas before he could stand.

Soren studied his face, savoring the silence between them.

Then he said it plainly.

“I am your father.”

Tomas laughed once.

It came out too sharp. Too loud.

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

“My mother would’ve told me.”

“Would she?”

Tomas opened his mouth, but nothing came.

Bentley stepped into the doorway. One side of his mouth had begun to swell.

“He’s not lying,” he said.

Soren’s gaze hardened. “I told you to go to your room.”

Bentley ignored him. He looked at Tomas instead.

“He’s ours too.”

Tomas stared at him.

Bentley gave a bitter little shrug.

“You’re like a brother,” he said. “Apparently that wasn’t a metaphor.”

Vette stood farther back in the hall, one arm folded across her stomach. She wouldn’t look at Soren.

Tomas looked from Bentley to Vette and then to the man sitting across from him.

Fragments shifted inside his head.

Bentley recognizing him in the drugstore.

Soren already knowing who he was.

The way Bentley and Vette spoke around things instead of about them. As if they had spent their whole lives hearing half of every story and had learned to fill in the rest.

“Why did she run?” Tomas asked.

Soren sighed. “Your mother was ambitious.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“She wanted what I had.”

Tomas saw the bruise again.

“Did you hit her?”

Bentley’s gaze dropped.

Vette went still.

Soren smiled without warmth.

“Your mother had a talent for provoking people and then pretending to be surprised by the consequences.”

Tomas stood.

Soren didn’t move.

“I’m leaving.”

“No,” Soren said. “You aren’t.”

Tomas started toward the door.

“I’ve made some unfortunate investments recently,” Soren continued. “Petty theft and land deals won’t be enough to correct them.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

Tomas stopped.

Soren clasped his hands loosely in front of him.

“Because tomorrow, you and the twins are going to solve my problem.”

“How?”

“You’re going to rob an armored truck.”

Tomas stared at him.

“No.”

Soren snapped his fingers.

The large man in the black suit moved from the shadows near the hall. Tomas hadn’t even realized he was there.

One massive hand closed around Bentley’s shoulder and drove him to his knees.

Vette rushed forward.

“Let him—”

Soren backhanded her.

The crack silenced the room.

Vette’s head snapped sideways. She staggered into the wall.

Tomas lunged, but the man in the black suit shifted between them.

Soren caught Vette by the arm and twisted it behind her back.

She gasped.

“Stop!” Tomas shouted.

Bentley tried to rise. The large man forced him down again, one knee between his shoulder blades.

Soren’s voice remained calm.

“You wouldn’t want to upset your father, Corvetta. Is that how Mercedes raised you?”

Vette’s face went pale.

Tomas curled his hands into fists. “Let them go.”

Soren looked at him.

“Do you really think you can leave the party so soon?” A faint smile touched his lips. “It’s just getting started.”

He tightened his grip on Vette’s arm.

She bit down on a cry.

“If you walk out that door,” Soren said, “I will take my time with them.”

Bentley stopped struggling.

“And your mother,” Soren continued. “I hear she’s having trouble with Mr. Kincaid.”

Tomas’s chest tightened.

Soren saw it.

“If Kincaid isn’t protecting her anymore…” He tilted his head. “Who will protect her from me?”

The room fell silent.

Tomas looked at Bentley pinned beneath the man in the black suit. At Vette’s reddening cheek. At the fingers digging into her arm.

He had come to Pelican Point because he thought getting away from everyone would keep them safe.

Instead, he had brought himself straight to the man Kay had spent years escaping.

“I’ll do it,” Tomas said.

Soren released Vette immediately.

She collapsed against the wall, clutching her arm.

“Good,” Soren said pleasantly. “You always were a good boy.”

Tomas felt sick.

Soren stood and smoothed the front of his shirt.

“Get some sleep. Tomorrow we work.”

He walked toward the hall, then paused beside Tomas.

“You have your mother’s instincts,” he said. “But you have my eyes.”

Tomas stared straight ahead.

Soren smiled and disappeared down the hall.

The large man followed him.

No one moved until a door closed somewhere upstairs.

Bentley slowly pushed himself to his feet.

Tomas looked at him. “How long have you known?”

Bentley wiped the blood from his mouth.

“Known?” he said. “Not long.”

“Suspected,” Vette said quietly. “A long time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Bentley gave a humorless laugh. “We met you yesterday.”

“That didn’t stop you from bringing me here.”

Vette flinched.

Bentley looked toward the staircase.

“We didn’t know what he wanted.”

“You knew enough to warn me.”

“Yes.”

“But not enough to keep me away?”

Bentley’s expression hardened, but the anger wasn’t directed at Tomas.

“In this house, knowing enough has never been the same as being able to stop him.”

No one had an answer to that.

No houses.

No traffic.

Nothing but scrubland, telephone poles, and heat lifting off the asphalt in shimmering waves.

Vette rolled Tomas’s silver sedan sideways across the road and killed the engine. She climbed out and raised the hood.

Bentley checked his watch.

“Relax.”

Tomas sat in the back seat, gripping his knees.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep not doing it.”

“You said the same thing before you brought me to meet my father.”

Bentley’s jaw tightened.

Vette leaned through the open driver’s window.

“The drivers were paid.”

Tomas looked at her. “Paid?”

“Paid,” she repeated. “They stop. We take the money. Everybody goes home.”

“That still sounds like robbery.”

Bentley opened the rear door.

“Technically.”

“Legally.”

“Also technically.”

Tomas didn’t move.

Bentley gestured toward the road. “Come on.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the broken-down motorist.”

“That feels like a role I’m underqualified for.”

“You stole this car and drove it halfway across the state.”

“I’m growing into it.”

Bentley almost smiled.

“That’s the spirit.”

Tomas climbed out.

The sun pressed against his shoulders. Sweat gathered beneath his shirt before his shoes touched the road.

Far down the highway, something red appeared through the heat.

The armored truck.

Vette lowered the hood until it rested without latching. Bentley disappeared around the sedan and crouched behind the guardrail.

Tomas stood beside the car, trying to look like someone with ordinary problems.

The armored truck slowed.

Its brakes hissed as it stopped twenty feet away.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the passenger door opened.

A large man climbed down. Thick shoulders strained against his uniform shirt. Dark tattoos crawled past the cuffs at his wrists.

Tomas recognized him immediately.

The man from the High Striker game.

The one Vette had hit between the legs.

Recognition flickered across the man’s face.

“Well,” he said. “If it isn’t sledgehammer boy.”

Tomas sighed. “Morning.”

The guard approached with a careful, slightly wide-legged stride.

“You hit me with a sledgehammer yesterday.”

“Technically, my friends did that.”

“You were holding it.”

“They surprised me.”

The guard stopped beside the sedan and looked beneath the raised hood. Then he looked at Tomas.

“You kids are early.”

Tomas nodded. “Traffic was light.”

The guard adjusted his belt, grimacing as he shifted his weight.

The driver leaned toward the open passenger door.

“Everything all right?”

“Fine,” the guard called back.

His gaze stayed on Tomas.

“Here’s the problem.”

Tomas waited.

The guard hooked a thumb toward the truck. “That thing is full of cash.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“And the price we agreed on?” The guard shrugged. “I’m not feeling it anymore.”

Tomas swallowed.

“I’m just here to pick up the keys.”

“Then go pick up more money.”

Behind the guard, Bentley slipped across the road and moved toward the rear of the truck.

Tomas saw him.

The guard saw Tomas see him.

He smiled.

“You’re stalling.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re bad at it.”

“I’m new.”

The driver leaned farther across the cab. “What’s going on?”

“Negotiations,” the guard said.

Bentley had nearly reached the truck.

The guard began to turn.

Tomas panicked.

He pulled off his shirt.

The guard stopped.

“What are you doing?”

“Sunburn.”

“You don’t have a sunburn.”

“Preventative measures.”

Tomas waved the shirt over his head.

The guard stared at him.

Tomas began moving his hips.

Not well.

The driver leaned toward the windshield. “What the hell is happening?”

“I’m distracting you,” Tomas said.

“You’re terrible at it.”

“It worked at the carnival.”

“That wasn’t dancing.”

Tomas twirled the shirt faster.

The guard lifted a hand. “Kid.”

Tomas reached for the button of his jeans.

The guard pointed at him.

“Don’t.”

WHUMP.

Bentley stepped in behind him and brought a weighted blackjack down across the back of his skull.

The guard collapsed face-first onto the asphalt.

At the same moment, the driver shoved open his door.

Vette stood on the running board with a small pistol aimed at his chest.

“Morning,” she said.

The driver froze.

“Easy.”

“Hands where I can see them.”

He raised his hands but glanced toward the dashboard.

Vette saw it.

“So did I,” she warned.

The driver lunged for the alarm.

Vette caught his wrist, yanked him halfway out of the cab, and struck him behind the ear with the pistol.

He crumpled beside the truck.

Bentley looked down at him.

“I thought he’d be bigger.”

Tomas pointed toward the unconscious guard. “You already used that line yesterday.”

“He’s unconscious.”

“Still counts.”

Vette jumped down.

“Are you two done critiquing the dialogue?”

Bentley considered it.

“Probably.”

They moved quickly.

Bentley took the keys from the guard and opened the rear doors. Eight heavy canvas bags sat inside the cargo hold, secured behind a steel partition.

Cash from businesses throughout Pelican Point.

They carried the bags to Tomas’s car two at a time. Tomas struggled beneath the weight of his first one, but he refused to ask for help.

By the fourth, he had learned how to brace the bag against his chest.

By the sixth, Bentley had stopped watching to see if he could manage it.

They shoved the final bags into the trunk and back seat. Vette forced the trunk lid down and leaned on it until the latch caught.

The empty road stretched in both directions.

The guard groaned.

“We need to go,” Tomas said.

“Yeah,” Bentley answered.

But he didn’t move toward the driver’s side.

Vette stood beside the sedan with the keys in her hand.

Tomas looked from one of them to the other.

“What?”

Bentley walked to the open rear door and pulled out Tomas’s black duffel.

Tomas frowned. “What are you doing?”

Bentley set the duffel on the shoulder of the road. He took the armored-truck keys from his pocket and placed them on top of it.

Then he stepped back.

“I’m sorry.”

Something in his voice made Tomas’s stomach drop.

“For what?”

Bentley met his eyes.

“We aren’t taking this money back to Soren.”

Vette opened the driver’s door.

Tomas stared at them.

“He’ll kill you.”

“He has to find us first,” Bentley said.

“He’ll go after everyone else.”

“That’s why you can’t come.”

“I wasn’t asking to.”

“You would.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Bentley gave him a sad smile.

“You came here alone because you thought it would protect your mother. You agreed to this because he hurt us. You would absolutely come.”

Tomas looked at Vette. “Where are you going?”

“We’re not telling you,” she said.

“So this was the plan?”

“Not until last night,” Bentley said. “Then Soren put all three of us in the same room and told us exactly how much our lives were worth to him.”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“The truck runs,” Bentley said. “Your bag is right there. You can get back to town.”

“With two unconscious guards and my fingerprints everywhere?”

“They were paid to stop. They aren’t calling the police unless they want to explain why.”

“That guard changed the deal.”

“Which means he especially isn’t calling.”

Tomas stepped toward Bentley.

“Give me the keys.”

Bentley didn’t move.

“Bentley.”

“You’re like a brother.”

Tomas felt his throat tighten.

Bentley glanced down, then back at him.

“Apparently that wasn’t a metaphor.”

Vette moved quietly behind Tomas.

He heard the scrape of her shoe against the asphalt and started to turn.

Bentley’s voice softened.

“But the devil’s lies never lead to paradise.”

CLANG.

Metal struck the back of Tomas’s head.

The sky flipped beneath his feet.

Bentley caught him before his face hit the road and lowered him carefully onto the shoulder.

Pain split Tomas’s skull.

He tried to push himself up, but his arms no longer understood what he wanted.

Bentley crouched beside him.

“Lo siento, hermano.”

Tomas’s vision fractured.

Three Bentleys.

Three Vettes.

Three silver cars pulling away beneath a white-hot sky.

The engine faded.

For a while, there was only the road.

Then another vehicle appeared through the blur.

A white Ford Taurus braked hard behind the armored truck. The doors flew open before it stopped moving.

“Tomas!”

Courtney.

Her shoes struck the pavement.

Something red shot past her, straps reaching and pulling against the road.

Red.

His eyes are open.

“I see that.”

They’re moving.

“I see that too.”

Is that good?

“It’s better than them not moving.”

Courtney dropped to her knees beside him.

“Tomas, can you hear me?”

He tried to answer.

His tongue felt too large for his mouth.

Red’s strap curled around his ankle.

Help me lift him.

Courtney stared at the strap.

“Wait. Aren’t you not supposed to move someone with a concussion?”

We are not leaving him in the road.

“Good point.”

Hands slid beneath Tomas’s arms. Red’s straps tightened around his legs.

They lifted.

The world rolled sideways again.

“Tomas, stay with us.”

Courtney’s hair brushed across his cheek.

He tried to focus on her face.

“If you’re getting ice cream…” he mumbled.

Courtney leaned closer. “What?”

“…sprinkles.”

Moron.

The world finally went dark.