Page 78 of Hitch
I turn, but I gaze past Todd at the cornfield behind him. Regret fills my head with muddy water. The cornfield is just another place where I let her run away.
“What do you know about the process?” Todd asks. “Braden must’ve taught you a lot of it, right?”
I rub my forehead, then run the back of my shovel over the dirt, knowing Braden’s body is buried underneath it all. I’ll have to run the tractors over this spot to hide the evidence of us digging.
I always put business first. Above my father. Above Braden’s whining about us doing something illegal. Aboveeverything.
But I could never put it above her.
“Some of the mushroom batches are doing okay, but two of them? They’re turning black,” Todd says. “I can forget about them being lost, but I don’t want that to happen to the rest of the bags, you know? That’s a lot of money.”
Money. It’s what Reggie always wanted. It’s what I thought meant power.
But life always ends. What you do with your time is up to you. And hell, I’m glad I let Reggie go. I’d do it again if I had the chance.
“You want to head to the warehouse now?” Todd asks. “We can figure out how to equip the facility better. Make a plan of action for the morning.”
My throat is dry, but I swallow anyway. I get back in the ATV. It’s not like there’s a reason to fight against doing what needs to be done.
Todd sits beside me with his hand thrust behind us, keeping the shovels from rattling in the back. I keep my eyes on the road, but my mind’s a mess. I need confirmation that Reggie is okay before I do anything else. I need to know that she took that money, got her mom, andran.That she’s putting herself before everything she left behind. Before me.
I need to know she’s okay.
“If I’m housing it,” Todd says over the engine’s buzz, “we need to negotiate a bigger cut for me. It’s only fair. What were you paying Braden, anyway?”
I don’t care about the business right now. I care about Reggie.
“Have you heard from her?” I ask, changing the subject.
Todd wrinkles his forehead. “You’re still thinking about Reggie?”
My hands clasp the wheel tighter. It’s stupid, but I can’t stop my brain from what it’s doing, and damn it, I’m done fighting it.
“Call her,” I say. Though my tone is softer than I’d like, I keep going: “Check in on her. Make sure she’s okay.”
I sound pathetic and I know it, but I don’t care. Once I know she’s okay, the rest will fall into place.
I park the ATV and the engine shudders to silence. Todd doesn’t move.
“Can I be real with you?” he asks.
I stare at him, waiting for him to continue.
“Reggie was using you. That’s what strippers do,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “And trust me, they’re good at it. But if we don’t figure out what to do with her, she’s going to go to the cops, and then we’ll be fucked.” He squeezes my shoulder. “She’s a loose end, Duane.”
A loose end. A hole. A hitch in my plans.
Why doesn’t that bother me anymore?
We both get out of the ATV, then walk around the house to the front, where Todd’s SUV is parked. The house casts a shadow over us, blanketing us in the blue night.
“She won’t do anything,” I say, keeping my eyes on the distant glow of the city. “If she was going to, she would’ve done it already.”
“But we need insurance,” Todd says. “That’s part of the business. You said she has video footage, right? Even a digital camera.” Pain shatters his expression, like he desperately wants me to believe his words that she’s too good to be true. “I know you’ve got feelings for her, but we need to think about this logically. She’s going to fuck us over. We need to make a decision about what to do with her before it’s too late.”
I acknowledge him, but there’s a conniving thread in his words that makes me question him with new clarity. I’ve always known he was greedy, but this is more than that.
He might’ve overheard me and Reggie talking before she left. I can’t say for sure. But IknowI never told him about the digital camera, and he was the last one in Reggie’s car when I found it.
