Nausea surged in her throat. Swallowing with a grimace, she bowed her head and focused on breathing, one slow breath at a time.
Soon, the sickness passed. But the fear remained like a kernel in her gut.
Leon touched her shoulder. She pulled away from his hand.
“Don’t be cruel, my sweet,” he said. “You and I are going to get to know each other very well here. That’s right, we’re going to become the best of friends, you and I, and who knows, maybe something more, maybe a whole lot more, who knows what surprises the future has in store for us.”
Looking into his manic eyes, knowing the power this man held over them, she couldn’t take it any more.
She broke down, and cried.
22
After the agents left, Corey snapped into action. He swept up the broken vase; he gathered up the budgie’s frail corpse, perhaps to bury later in the backyard; he forwarded the house landline to his BlackBerry, in case a call somehow came through from his family; and, not wanting to miss a call from Leon, either, he attached the prepaid cell to his belt in a spare phone holster.
Then, under an oppressive gray sky, he drove back to work.
The visit from the FBI made him want to get away from home. Agent Falco clearly suspected that he was hiding something, and they would be checking into his story and checking into him. Loitering in the house, pacing the empty rooms full of so many painful reminders of Simone and Jada, waiting for something to happen, filled him with a paralyzing sense of powerlessness.
He had to do something. Something proactive, not reactive. The clock was ticking.
First things first. He needed to talk to someone about what was going on, someone he could trust, someone who could help him formulate a strategy. He felt incapable of logically thinking through the situation on his own-he was navigating such an emotional high wire he feared he might do something stupid, and with the lives of his family hanging in the balance, he couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
At work, he found Todd in his corner office, the door half open. Surrounded by posters of his favorite casinos, Todd was tapping away on the keyboard and bobbing his head to a Jimmy Buffet song playing on his iPod, the music blasting through a pair of external speakers.
Corey envied his friend’s good cheer. It seemed so damn unfair that while Todd was bopping along happily, he was going through his life’s worst nightmare.
Corey rapped on the door. Todd looked up.
“Hey, buddy,” Todd said. He lowered the music’s volume and spun away from his PC. “Sure could’ve used you on the conference call. You handle whatever you were doing?”
Corey closed the door, pulled a wing chair closer to Todd’s desk, and sat.
“Listen, Todd, I need your help in a major way.”
“Okay.” Todd tilted backward in his seat and crossed his hands behind his head. “I’m all ears. What’s up?”
“You remember our conversation from yesterday? About a certain hypothetical situation?”
Todd grinned, exposing capped teeth. “You’re telling me you really did kill someone?”
“Listen, I need you to be serious.”
“All right, I’m serious, sorry.” He pinched his upper lip, face growing solemn. “What happened?”
“First of all, this stays strictly between you and me.”
Todd raised his hand. “Scout’s honor, Corey. I won’t tell a soul.”
Corey paused, deliberating over his words. Then, in a faltering voice, he told Todd almost everything. He told him about running into Leon yesterday. He told him Leon had abducted his family that morning for ransom. He told him about his visit from the FBI.
The only thing he didn’t tell Todd was what he had never told anyone: the details of the act he and Leon had committed together, a memory that churned like a thundercloud in the depths of his soul. Instead, he painted the unsavory past he shared with Leon in general terms, admitted that they had done things together that could pose a grave problem if the facts were to become public, and that Leon was using their history as leverage to bend Corey to his will.
Throughout Corey’s recounting of events, Todd listened intently, blue eyes alternating between shock and anxiety. But when Corey reached the part about his encounter with the FBI, redness bloomed in his cheeks.
“Never, ever trust the freakin’ cops,” Todd said with disgust. “It’s like how it is on TV, you know? If you’d told this Agent Falco chick what was going on, they’d be manipulating you across their little chessboard.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Corey said. Now that he had confided in someone, he already felt better. Sharper, more clear-headed. “Lying to them was its own risk, but their involvement is riskier.”
“No shit, it’s riskier. They wouldn’t care about getting your family back safe, they’d care only about pinching this Leon guy-and if your family gets trapped in the crossfire, big deal. That’s what they do.”
“If there’s one thing I can tell you about Leon, it’s that he’s not afraid of a fight,” Corey said. “He used to tell me all the time when we were kids that the only way he’ll ever go down is in a hail of bullets, and he’ll take plenty of people with him.”
“Don’t screw around with him, then. Screw the Feds, though.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page. I had to talk to someone or else I’d go crazy.”
“No worries, I’m with you now.” Todd gnawed on the eraser of his pencil, glanced at the computer. “So I can find this guy’s photo and stuff online?”
“Type his name into Google and see for yourself.”
Todd swiveled to the keyboard, typed. His eyes grew large as he stared at the screen. “Whoa. Christ, he looks like a badass.”
Corey smiled grimly. “Leon’s the real deal, Todd. A bona fide crazy motherfucker.”
Todd was shaking his head. “It’s hard for me to picture you being best buds with this guy. You’re so. . so straightlaced and normal. Like Mr. All-American Guy. How’d you ever hook up with someone like him?”
“He moved in to the house across the street from us when I was maybe sixteen, seventeen. He was a couple of years older than me, slick and sharp, talked beaucoup trash about a whole lot of things I’d never heard of, seemed so wise to the ways of the world, you know? I guess he just sort of blew me away.”
“You looked up to him then, like a big brother?”
“I didn’t have anyone else. I had a few friends my age, but none especially close. No close cousins. No siblings. It was only me and my grandma. So yeah, I think I saw him like a big brother type, for a while anyway. But that was a long time ago-now I see him as he really is.”
“As a psycho,” Todd said.
“He has no morals, no fear. No inhibitions whatsoever. If he wants something, he just takes it, and he doesn’t care if he has to shoot someone to get it. That’s the kind of guy we’re dealing with here.”
Nodding absently, Todd chewed the pencil eraser, gaze far away.
“What’re you thinking?” Corey asked.
Todd’s eyes focused. “I hate to say it, Corey, but I think we have to pay him.”
“What?”
“We have to give him some money.”
Corey bounded out of the chair and paced across the office. “Did you hear what I said, Todd? I told you, I don’t have five hundred thousand dollars!”
“I know, I know.” Todd raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Work with me a minute, all right? I’m the sales guy of our management team, you’re the business know-how.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Christ, will you let me finish, Corey? What I’m saying is that we’ve got to sell this guy a deal.”
“Sell him a deal? How? He’s got all the leverage-he has my family.”
“I get that. But it’s not in his best interests to hurt them. This guy is a killer, sure, but he’s primarily a thief. He doesn’t want bloodshed unless someone forces his hand. Am I reading him correctly?”