Page 49 of College Town

Just the thought of seeing her – sitting in the squishy, ergonomic chair across from her desk, breathing in her essential oils, and watching her wipe down the leaves of her snake plant with the little cloth she keeps in her top drawer – eases some of the tension across his shoulders. He takes his first deep breath of the day, and rests his elbow along the window ledge. Starts to take in his surroundings. Notes the balloons tied to a sign in front of the hair salon. Sees a cute little dog in a pink sweater hike his leg on a mailbox.

Sees a low-slung black Mercedes follow him through three turns.

During the first turn, the sun winks off its hood, a bright flash in his side mirror that he blinks against. Then it happens again. And again.

Lawson slows, and takes a good look in his rearview mirror. The car’s windshield is deeply-tinted; all he can make out of the driver is a pair of pale, masculine hands on the wheel, gold rings on the middle and third finger of the right. In the passenger seat, someone moves, a bulky, faceless shadow.

Lawson’s not a paranoid person.

But he did spend the morning being driven around and half-threatened by a probable mobster.

He speeds up, rolling through a stop sign, and the Benz accelerates to keep pace; runs the stop sign, too.

“Shit.” His heart leaps, his stomach, too, and the numbness fades in the face of fresh, clammy-handed panic. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Lawson knows two things: he’s being followed, and he absolutely can’t lead these goons to Dana’s. Or, worse yet, to his home.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and slaps the wheel, foot jittering on the pedal. “Fuck me, what do I–” He cuts hard to the right, leaping up into a McDonald’s parking lot without signaling, and the Mercedes follows.

“Fuck me. Oh, fuck me, they’re still there. Okay. They’re definitely gonna kill you. And you’re talking to yourself. Swell, Law. What now?”

He skirts around the drive-through line and gets back out on the road, still pursued.

For the second time that day, he wishes he wrote organized crime thrillers, and that he had some sort of researched Jack Reacher moves to pull. But it’s just him, and his ten-year-old car, and his laptop in its bag on the passenger seat, his Coffee Town visor dangling off the mirror.

He could drive to the police station…but not only would the Mercedes high-tail it out of there, its occupants would then know he’d gone to the cops. He might not write organized crime thrillers, but he’s read a few, and watchedThe Godfathermore than once: nothing good happens to guys who go running to the cops.

But he’s alone, and, okay, fine, he’s scared, and he’s…

Like a revelation, like the clouds parting amidst a symphony of angels, he remembers the business card he slipped into his wallet a few nights ago.

TOM CATTANEO

PRESIDENT

CATTANEO INC.,

The bold typeface mocks him. Jeers at him. Just as stupid and weak as you always were, huh? Fucking loser.

The thought of reaching out to Tommy for help sours his stomach…but the Benz takes the next lefthand turn with him, and he doesn’t know what else to do.

“Shit. Fuck,” he whispers. He’s driving past a long strip mall of shops, restaurants, liquor stores, and more than one yoga studio. He slows and turns into the parking lot, slowing to a crawl along its outer edge as he fumbles his wallet out of his back pocket.

He drops it. “Fuck! Jesus…fuck me, this is…fucking…”

He ducks long enough to snatch it up, car eking along at half-a-mile-an-hour, the Mercedes crawling in his wake. He breaks out in a cold sweat. If he stops, he thinks, even for a second, someone’s going to get out of that car and walk up to stick a gun in his face.

Teeth chattering with nerves, belly cramping, he flops the wallet open on the center console one-handed, and thumbs out the card. He turns it over, and it takes him three tries to stab the cellphone number into his phone and then press Call, then Speaker.

The line rings, and he wants to hang up, fingers fluttering over the screen.

It rings again, and he wishes he had any other option. That he couldn’t taste bile and smell his own panicked sweat.

It rings again, and his gaze pings between the car behind him and the foot traffic ahead of him. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he chants, pulse a timpani drum in his ears.

The call picks up. “This is Tom,” a cool, firm, professional voice says from the other end, and it startles Lawson more than it should to realize it’s Tommy.HisTommy, all grown up and sounding like an adult, like someone in charge of something, rather than the spitfire kid he used to be.

He has to tap the brakes to avoid clipping a car backing out of a space, and the Mercedes snugs up close to his bumper. The shape in the passenger seat moves around, flash of hands and white shirt cuffs through the windshield.

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