Page 16 of Pay the Price

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Daze. What will you do?”

I drew in a breath. “Honestly? I have no idea. I need to deal with my dad and figure out what to do about the house and talk to my boss at Cantwell. Everything is just… a mess.”

I didn’t even know what to say to my dad (what did you say to someone after they had you kidnapped and held prisoner just fordispleasing them?), work on the house would be at a standstill until I moved back into it (I needed to finish it, needed to find a way to monetize it, especially now that I’d have to cut ties with my dad), and I’d probably lost my job at Cantwell Holdings because who didn’t get fired after not showing up for almost two whole weeks?

“And Ruth,” Cassie said. “You need to check in with Ruth. She came into the shop a couple days ago to see if Sarai or I had heard from you.”

“Right. Ruth too.” I was tired just thinking about it all.

Cassie’s gaze was sympathetic. “Maybe just give yourself a couple days? You need sleep and food after what you’ve been through. You can text Ruth to let her know you’re okay and then stay here while you figure things out.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Thanks.”

I was lucky to have a friend like Cassie, a place to regroup. I knew that. But it didn’t change the fact that my life was a shit storm.

And even now, I couldn’t stop thinking about the three men at the center it.

Chapter 11

Wolf

Sun filtered through the trees, the shadows casting abstract patterns on the ground as I made my way along the trail in front of my mom. I still expected to look up and see her back. For years she’d led our hikes through the woods, pointing out things that were safe to eat, deer tracks, and broken branches that hinted at something bigger, a mountain lion or bear.

It was new for her to fall back, let me take the lead, but it felt natural, the way geese flew in formation, the ones in front dropping to the rear to rest, letting the others lead until they dropped back too.

It felt symbolic, a rite of passage that might have happened years earlier if I hadn’t been in prison.

I’d jumped at my mom’s invitation to go hiking. I’d missed her when I’d been in jail. We had a lot of lost time to make up. Plus, Daisy had only been living at Cassie’s for two days and I was already going crazy without her.

I’d been meditating and playing guitar to keep sane, but none of it was helping. It was Daisy’s voice that drifted into the silenceof my meditating mind, her face I saw when I played the song that was beginning to haunt my dreams like Daisy herself.

My mom and I hiked mostly in silence. The trail was off the beaten path, unmarked on the maps given to tourists at the gate of the Blackwell National Preserve.

I reacquainted myself with the forest like it was an old friend, noticing the clues I’d been taught to notice, the clues my mother’s grandfather had taught to her. The wild huckleberries were in season — smaller than the ones you could buy — and a herd of deer had been through the trail in the last twenty-four hours.

Finally we broke through the path and spilled into a small clearing on the banks of the Blackwell River. It was wide here, about a half mile upstream from the reservoir where Daisy had been held prisoner.

I thought about the dead guards, the fact that they hadn’t been mentioned in the news, that there hadn’t been a whisper about the firefight or Daisy’s rescue.

It meant someone powerful was behind the men. Someone who had pull with the Blackwell Police Department. Someone who could keep things quiet.

Someone like Charles Hammond.

My mom and I positioned ourselves on a huge flat boulder near the water. It had been our favorite picnic spot since I was a kid, and she removed the sandwiches she’d packed, part of a well-worn routine that included bottles of water (her grandfather had drunk straight from the river, but that was before the world had become so polluted) and homemade monster cookies.

People from the city — people who didn’t know better — thought the forest was quiet. But my mom had taught me if the forest was quiet, something was wrong. In its most natural state,the forest was a symphony: the rush of the river, the scrabble of small animals, the chirp of birds and rustle of trees.

But only ifyouwere quiet enough to hear it.

I let myself sink into it, tried to feel the cold boulder under my ass, the sandwich in my hand, the presence of my mom next to me. Tried to be present when my worry over Daisy was clawing at my mind like a rabbit caught in a trap.

I was halfway through my sandwich when my mom spoke.

“What’s on your mind, son?”

I liked being with my mom because we didn’t have to talk all the time. A lot of our communication was unspoken, a product of all the years when it had just been the two of us, moving together through our lives like musicians riffing, finding our way, making it work.

“What makes you think something is on my mind?” I asked.

---