Page 18 of Outlaws’ Runaway

“Yeah.” I sit quietly for a few moments, not sure what to say. Words aren’t enough and they don’t change anything. “Anyway, she and my uncle Walter owned a laundry business together. Well, she was the owner, but he started it with her and did all the accounting. Holland Laundry Services. They handle washing for businesses. Restaurants, gyms, motels like this I guess. When she died, she left her share of the business to me. I went home for the summer, but I wanted to finish studying and Uncle Walter encouraged me to go. It made sense since he knew the business, right?”

“That’s the uncle that’s looking for you, right?” Savage asks.

I nod. “I didn’t hear much from him when I was studying. Everything seemed like it was going fine. I noticed a couple of the employees who had been there for a long time quit, but new people were hired. It wasn’t really until I finished school and went home that I noticed something wasn’t right. We lost contracts, and I found lots of notices for missed maintenance. I asked Uncle Walter about it, but he said the economy was hard for everyone.”

“Doesn’t sound like a guy who has a million dollars sitting around.”

“He’s not! But I started getting a bad feeling about the answers he was giving me because on paper, it looked like profits were up, and he and my aunt were driving brand new cars. He started pressuring me to sell him the business, and that’s when I started snooping around. I snuck into his office to go through the books because I didn’t think he was telling me everything.”

Crank laughs. “Sneaky.”

“It was my company! I don't think that counts.” I wrinkle my nose at him. “Anyway, I was right. Only maybe half of the books matched up to anything we were actually doing. There were customers listed that I’d never heard of or seen on orders, and others that I knew weren’t making as many drop offs as were listed in the system. I made copies of everything and stashed it away before I confronted him. I’m not dumb, I didn’t tell him I had proof. I just wanted to give him a chance to explain, figuring he’d gotten into trouble and needed help.”

“I bet that went well. I’m sure some middle aged guy loved being called out by his cute little twenty year old niece,” Poe says with a smirk.

I shudder, remembering how furious he was. “I’ve never been yelled at like that in my life, and all I got for it was being told I was too young and stupid to understand accounting and how the real world works. We argued so much, but in the end, I went to the police because I didn’t want to lose what my mother worked so hard to build.”

“And yet you’re still here, talking to us.” Poe chuckles darkly, flexing one hand into a fist. “I've yet to see anything that they can't make worse.” From his tone, it sounds personal.

“They were worse than useless. They gave me a contact and I sent him my files, but a few days later he just closed my report and told me not to bother them again unless I had a real crime to report.” I slam my fist into the bed, but the soft bounce off the mattress isn't very satisfying. “And I think he told Uncle Walter, because suddenly he was freezing me out of everything. He even told me I shouldn’t go in anymore if I was going to keep disrupting.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t listen,” Savage comments dryly.

“Of course not! I’d been studying the books and noticed that the phony work orders usually came on Thursdays. I snuck in after closing and hid out in the delivery area, waiting to see what happened. Even if I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously, I wanted to know. A truck showed up in the middle of the night and they unloaded a single laundry cart. After they left, I checked inside. It was mostly what seemed like already clean towels, but at the bottom was the bag.” Telling the story for the first time is a little exciting. Okay, it was obviously a really stupid idea, but it was still exciting. “I opened it up, saw the cash and freaked out. That’s money laundering, right?”

Savage nods. “Sounds like it.

“A little on the nose if you ask me. Laundering through a laundry,” Poe says with a snort. “Probably mob. Small businesses like your mom’s are perfect. I bet your uncle saw an opportunity when nobody was looking and then you came back and fucked everything up.”

Crank raises a finger. “One question. That doesn’t explain why you decided that instead of taking a few pictures and tucking the bag back where you found it, you decided stealing a million dollars was a good idea. Whoever dropped that cash off is expecting your uncle to pass it on, and when he doesn’t, they aren’t going to be happy.”

I look down at my hands.

“Paige? Did you steal the million and then get cold feet and not know how to turn it in?”

“Not exactly. I… Ugh. When I took out the bag, I brought it into the office to go through it and see if there was anything inthere that could help me. But while I was doing that, I heard the delivery bay door open again and then people started shouting.”

Savage starts nodding like everything has fallen into place. “So you ran.”

“So I ran.” I look back and forth between them. “What do you say? Will you help?”

9

PAIGE

I won't claimthe bikers don't still scare me a little, but now it feels more like having three big scary guard dogs on my side. And maybe, just maybe, they actually care about what happens to me? It could just be the aftereffects of dreaming about them, but I don’t think so. I think in spite of who they are and what they’re capable of, they have a strict moral code. It’s just a lot more brutal than most people’s.

“You sure you wanna go back?” Savage stayed behind when Crank and Poe went out to bring back breakfast. Apparently Crank only fed himself this morning when he went for coffee.

I’m sitting cross-legged on one of the beds in the other room, flipping through channels on the TV. I turn it off and throw the remote onto the bed. “No, but I feel like I need to. I should at least try, right? I know a laundry business isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a big deal to me. I hate that he’s ruining something my mother worked really hard to build. She started with nothing, you know? Taking in neighbors’ clothes when I was a baby. Uncle Walter didn’t even getinvolved until she’d already invested in the move to commercial customers.”

“What’s your feel on him? Nice guy someone’s putting pressure on, or asshole out to make a buck?”

I pull my knees close to my chest and sigh. “He was fun when I was little. He was always doing cool stuff and telling stories and jokes. I don’t think he stayed in the same place for more than a year when I was a kid. But when I think back, he always had a plan that was going to make him rich, and then we never heard about it again. He didn’t start working with Mom until he met his wife and she made him settle down. I don’t want to think the worst, but if someone offered him a way to make more money and do less work, he’d probably take it and not worry about the details.”

Savage nods. “Fucking family.”

I find myself smiling sympathetically. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

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