This was why it was better to work at night-why it was always a bad idea to engage in chitchat.
Jilly sneezed and hugged herself tightly. “Mommy, I’m cold.”
“Me, too, honey.”
“Let’s go inside, then,” Jonathan suggested.
The woman coughed out another laugh. “Excuse me?”
“It’s warm inside,” he said.
“You really expect me to invite a strange man into my house?”
Jonathan polished his smile. “There’s a lot going on right now that I didn’t expect, but it’s happening anyway. What are your choices?” He counted the options on his fingers. “One, you can shoot me, but for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that you’re not going to do that. Two, you can just take my money and let me drive off in your truck, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening, either. Three, you can go inside and just leave me out here, in which case I’ll just take the truck. Four, we can all continue to stand out here together and freeze, but that’s just plain stupid. That leaves the most logical choice, which would have us all go in together. You have the shotgun, after all.”
Again, she stared as she tried to wade through it all. In the east, the sun had fully bloomed.
“Look,” Jonathan said. “I know we met awkwardly, but I really am one of the good guys. Either take my money for the truck and let me drive off, or let’s all go inside. It makes no sense for Jilly to be shivering like that.”
“So, I’m just supposed to trust you. The stranger who was about to steal my car.”
“I’ll introduce myself, then. I’m Leon Harris.” He considered reaching out to offer his hand, but worried that it might come off as aggressive. “Look. I’m going to step away from the truck now, and when I do, you’re going to see a holstered pistol on my thigh. Don’t freak out.”
She didn’t freak out, exactly, but the business end of the shotgun lined up closer to his chest. She’d still miss if she fired, but Jonathan didn’t think she knew that.
“Put it on the floor,” she commanded.
He pushed the truck’s door closed. “I can’t do that,” he said. “First of all, it’s an expensive weapon, and second, it’s modified to have really sensitive parts. It’s not a weapon that other people should handle.”
Her eyes remained locked on the weapon.
“Ma’am, I know that this is stressful and confusing, and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of it that I can’t explain. What I want you to understand-and the reason why I didn’t just continue to hide my weapon from you-is that if doing you harm were on my agenda, I’d be doing it, and with all respect, there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”
“I could shoot you.”
“And I could shoot you.” He said this in the most reasonable tone. “Or, we could shoot each other, but if it came to that, I one-hundred-percent guarantee that I would still be standing here unharmed when the smoke cleared. My point, though, is the very opposite of any of that. I have no intention of harming you or your daughter.”
She lowered the muzzle to the ground. “Susan Shockley,” she said. “Call me Sam. Or call me idiot, because that’s what I probably am for doing this.” She turned and put her hand on Jilly’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you warm.”
Jonathan wasn’t quite sure what they’d decided to do here.
“Come on, Mr. Harris,” Sam said. “Do you like coffee?”
They sat in the kitchen at a rectangular table that might have been hand-hewn from local hardwoods. At the far end, closest to the window that provided a sweeping view of the fields at the rear of the house, a place was set with nice china, complete with crystal stemware. Sam did not sit there, and she did not offer the place to Jonathan. She must have sensed his trustworthiness, because she’d returned the shotgun to its rack over the fireplace in the adjacent family room, where Jilly sat on an overstuffed chair, wrapped in her blanket and watching cartoons.
While his hostess moved through the ritual of brewing the coffee, Jonathan set his ruck on the floor and opened the top flap. On missions like this, it always paid to have cash on hand, the more the better. He counted out thirty thousand dollars in banded stacks of Franklins and set the money on the table.
Sam saw it as she was about to pour coffee into mugs, and she froze. “You were serious?” she said.
“A deal’s a deal,” Jonathan said. “My word is my bond. I can do platitudes and cliches all day.”
Steam rose lazily from the mugs. “Sugar’s on the table,” Sam said, pointing with her forehead to the bowl in front of him. “I’ve got milk if you need it.”
“No thanks,” Jonathan said. Ordinarily, he did drink his coffee with cream, but he didn’t want her waiting on him. For today, black would do just fine.
Sam took the seat across from Jonathan, and as she settled in, he pushed the stack of bills over to her. She made no effort to touch them. “What are you really about, Mr. Harris? Is that even your real name?”
“It’s real enough,” he hedged. “And what I’m really about is a very important matter that I can’t discuss.”
“Where did you come from?”
Jonathan sighed. “Tell you what,” he said. “Rather than you asking a lot of questions that I can’t answer, let’s just stop at me being on the side of the angels.”
“Did you rob a bank or something? That’s a lot of money. It’s a whole lot of cash.”
“I don’t use credit cards for my work,” Jonathan said, again with the smile. “And most of what I need to buy costs a lot of money.”
Sam looked at the stack of bills more closely. She picked up one of the packets and riffled it, perhaps checking to see if it was real. “This looks like thirty thousand dollars.”
“That is thirty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t owe that much on the truck.”
Jonathan twitched a shoulder. “Keep the change. For the inconvenience.”
Sam scowled deeply. “That’s almost six thousand dollars in change. I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. I want you to have it. Surely you can use it. If you’re upside down on the car, then you must be upside down on other debts as well. Apply the excess to those.”
Sam placed the packet on top of the stack and leaned heavily on her forearms. “This is crazy. Why are you doing this?”
The real answer-the true answer-was that he felt sorry for her. That preserved place setting at the end of the table was testament to the sad, brave story that was being lived every day in tens of thousands of households around the world. Spouses and children waiting for their husbands and fathers to return from war. It pained Jonathan that this particular warrior would return to poverty, perhaps with only a few short months before his next deployment. Jonathan could afford to pay off every debt owed by thousands of such families, and this particular one happened to be within reach.
But he’d share none of that with this young mother, lest his altruism come off as creepy. Instead, he explained, “I need to buy time. I need you to feel fairly compensated so that you don’t pick up a phone and call the police as soon as I leave.”
Sam considered that. He could see that her defenses were weakening. “This must mean that you’re intending to use the truck for a crime. I don’t want to be any part of that.”
“It doesn’t mean that at all. If someone comes and asks, tell them that you sold the vehicle to a stranger who offered you full price. If push comes to shove, you’ll have the record from the paid-off repo guy that he got his money. The paper trail will work for you.”
“Until you get caught and testify against me.”
Generally, it wasn’t this difficult to give a generous gift. “I never said that I was going to do anything illegal. You assumed that I was, and I gave you a good cover. Hypothetically, though, if lawbreaking were on my mind, the last thing I would do is throw you under the bus.”
Sam clearly had no idea what she should do.
“Think about it, Sam,” Jonathan said, closing the deal. “Is there really much choice to be made here?”
Turns out there wasn’t.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The faded sign, no doubt handmade with what appeared to be a child’s wood-burning kit, had been nailed to a tree, and likely would have been invisible if they’d arrived in the dark. The sign read NATHAN BEDFORD FOREST MOBILE HOME PARK. A cluster of rural-style mailboxes teetered underneath it.