Chapter 9 - The Debt Collectors
I didn't drop the flashlight.
I slid the Glock 19 off the false bottom of the tool chest, racked the slide with one smooth, violent pull, and brought the barrel up before the two men had even cleared the threshold of the container.
"Step back," I said.
The two men stopped.
The one on the left was tall, easily six-foot-four, wearing a stained Carhartt jacket, mud-caked logger boots, and a black knit cap pulled low over a face that looked like it had been reconstructed with scar tissue and bad dentistry. The one on the right was shorter, stockier, wearing an expensive leather bomber jacket and holding an unlit cigar between two thick, hairy fingers.
"Easy now, Mrs. Hollister," the short one said, holding his palms out at waist level. "Nobody’s here to hurt you. If we wanted you dead, you wouldn't have made it past the railroad crossing."
"Who are you?" I demanded, keeping the front sight aligned on the center of the Carhartt jacket.
"My name is Vance," the short man said.
My finger tightened on the trigger. "Evelyn's husband?"
"Brother," he corrected, spitting a piece of tobacco onto the steel floor. "Marcus Vance. And unlike my sister, I don't believe in thirty-year investment horizons, lithium exploration leases, or complicated chemical cocktails that leave paper trails all the way to the state capital."
"What do you want?"
"I want my four hundred thousand dollars," Marcus said, taking half a step forward.
The barrel of the Glock didn't waver. "Take another step and you won't live to spend it."
Marcus stopped, chuckling softly—a dry, rattling sound that sounded like gravel sliding down a chute. "You're a feisty one, Claire. Daniel always said you were soft. He said you were a schoolteacher who cried when the neighbors cut down an old oak tree."
"Daniel is in a secure prison ward with a shattered knee and a federal murder indictment," I said. "And your sister is currently hiding in the Virgin Islands like a sewer rat."
"Evelyn isn't in the Virgin Islands," Marcus said flatly.
The air in the container seemed to freeze solid.
"What?"
"My sister is a smart girl, but she has one fatal flaw," Marcus said, pulling a lighter from his pocket and flicking it open, the yellow flame illuminating the cold cruelty in his small, dark eyes. "She thinks she’s smarter than the people who bankrolled her. She thought she could take the advance capital from our associates in Philadelphia, botch the execution on Old Mill Road, run to the islands, and leave me holding the bag for two point eight million in syndicate debt."
He lit the cigar, puffed twice until the tip glowed cherry-red, and snapped the lighter shut.
"She didn't leave the country, Claire," Marcus said through a cloud of blue smoke. "She made it as far as Morgantown before our people pulled her out of that charter flight. She’s currently sitting in a basement about twenty minutes from here, waiting for me to bring her the digital keys to the offshore accounts."
He pointed a blunt finger at the black leather binder sitting on the floor beside my boot.
"Those keys are in that binder," Marcus said. "Along with the encrypted passwords to the escrow accounts holding the bridge loan funds."
"And if I give it to you?"
"If you give it to me," Marcus said, "I take my money, I take my sister, and we disappear across the border into Canada. The lithium lease stays in the trust. Daniel takes the fall for the whole damn thing. You keep your boy, you keep your three hundred acres, and you never see a Vance in the state of West Virginia again."
"And Evelyn?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "What happens to her?"
Marcus’s face settled into an expression that was terrifying in its absolute lack of emotion.
"Family is family, Mrs. Hollister," he said softly. "Until it costs more than the assets it produces. In our line of work, bad investments get written off."
I looked down at the black binder.
Inside was the proof. The names of the judges, the bank managers, the corrupt toxicologists, and the corporate shell accounts that had terrorized this valley for seven years. If I handed it to Marcus, it would vanish into an incinerator in Montreal, and the men who had signed the checks for my son’s execution would simply hire a new broker with a cleaner smile.
"No," I said.
May you like
Marcus blinked, genuine surprise flickering across his heavy features. "Excuse me?"
"You're not writing off the investment, Marcus," I said, my thumb easing the hammer back on the Glock. "You're going to pay for it."
