Page 25 of Stolen for Keeps
We went back and forth until the number landed just high enough to make it worth my time. I signed whatever he shoved across the counter. It didn’t matter. By the time anyone double-checked the paperwork or noticed the holes, I’d be long gone, cash in hand.
I tucked it deep into my pocket and stepped onto the street, exhaling.
Boise was done. Now I just had to do it a few more times. Cheyenne next. Different cities, different shops. Smaller loads. Easier questions. And once I had enough, I’d make sure the money ended up exactly where it was supposed to.
After two long days,two cities, and more nerves than I cared to count, I was finally back in Montana. My head spun from too much bad coffee and back-to-back pawn shop negotiations, but I’d survived.
My eyes flicked between street signs and the scribbled address on the notepad beside me.
I hadn’t gotten Cleo’s exact address from Katy, just a handful of clues and little breadcrumbs dropped in passing. A neighborhood name. A street near a school. A description of a yellow house with blue shutters.
It had taken a little digging, a few late-night flipsthrough an old telephone directory, cross-referencing names and numbers, and my gut instinct. But in the end, I’d found her.
A small house on a quiet street in Butte, its porch lined with weathered steps and a few potted plants. The curtains were drawn, but a slice of light edged through the gaps, hinting at movement inside.
I pulled up across the road, killing the engine.
Inside my bag, I counted out the bills and folded them into an envelope until it was thick enough to make a difference.
I grabbed a blank card, scribbling out a simple message:
This is for Cleo. No strings. No name. Just someone who heard her story from a friend.
I sealed the envelope, stepped outside, and strode up the walkway, past a forgotten tricycle and past flower beds once carefully tended but now creeping wild, because who had time to prune roses when their kid was fighting to stay alive?
I slid the envelope under the welcome mat. No knocking. No waiting. Just slipping back into the neighborhood before anyone saw me.
I watched the house getting smaller in my side mirror.
A life saved. Maybe. A little girl who would have a future.
It wasn’t everything. It wasn’t justice.
But it was something.
I had just enough cash left to keep myself afloat for a few weeks.
And after that?
No clue.
For now, I needed a reset. And without even thinking, my heart turned toward Buffaloberry Hill.
I’d read plenty of travel journals over the years, accounts from people who drifted, untethered, from one town to the next. And nearly all of them believed the same thing: thatevery soul has coordinates it’s drawn to. Something instinctual. Ancient. Not learned, but felt.
Something we’re born with.
Once I was back in the town, a sense of peace settled over me. Maybe it was the relief of having finished the job, or maybe because those travelers were right. I was still twenty-two, with a four-year crash course on life behind locked doors, but I’d been around. Enough to know that peace was a rare thing.
I pulled into the motel lot, killed the engine, and stretched out the stiffness in my shoulders. I didn’t even make it to my door before I spotted her.
Sheryn.
Her hip cocked, one brow lifted. I’d told her I had to go to Bozeman to sort out my banking.
“Oh good, you’re alive,” she called. “You look like you just got into a fistfight with an ATM, and the ATM won.”
I groaned. “Thanks, bestie. Love the support.”
