“I know how much money I got.”
“Just do it!”
Silas fumbled the phone, nearly dropping it, and thumbed his banking app with grease-stained fingers. The screen refreshed.
Available balance: $12,847.03
Deposit pending: $100,000.00
His mouth went dry. He’d never had that much money in the bank in his life. “How the hell?—”
“How the money got there is not your concern. Your only concern is how you will spend it.” Zeus’s voice dropped another degree. “You have two hours. If Zhou is not at the address we provided by nine-thirty, the next deposit will go into someone else’s account. And you will be removed from the equation. Permanently.”
The line went dead.
Silas looked at his phone, then at the balance shining on the screen. One hundred grand. More than he earned in two years kissing old man Clark’s boots. Not enough for a ranch, but enough for a decent house. Enough to disappear.
His mind raced back to the phone call, replaying every word.
Sure, he’d talked big, but the moment Zeus spoke, the cab shrank around him. The man hadn’t raised his voice. Not once. He didn’t fucking need to. The threat sat in the spaces between the words.
What had happened to Rios? Had this Zeus character done something to him? A hundred grand was good, but Rios had promised him an even million if he could show proof the girl, Kip, was dead.
Whoever Zeus was, Silas needed to find out if the deal was still the same. If not, they could hire someone else to clean up the mess they had made. And it had to be a mess because they were paying him a million bucks to fix it.
Then Silas remembered the exact moment his balls had tried to crawl back inside his body. “Removed from the equation.” Not killed. Removed. Like a weed in a garden.
Silas had stared at the pending deposit and felt the hook slide clean through his ribs. How had they accessed his account? He’d checked it the day before, and the money sure as hell hadn’t been there then. He didn’t even want to know how they’d done it.
He blinked the thought away, knuckles now white on the wheel. The call had scared him more than he wanted to admit. Snow packed against the wipers until they groaned. The highway was empty, just blowing white and the occasional reflectors flashing past.
One hundred thousand dollars. And all he had to do was deliver one of Rios’s errand boys. If anything was worth putting off a drink, that was it.
Silas laughed again, a short, ugly sound that echoed through the cab. They were sending him to deal with the errand boy, which meant he wasn’t one.
Damn straight.
He wasn’t anybody’s errand boy. Not anymore. Not ever again. Still, there were questions he needed answered. He had to make sure he wasn’t being set up to take the fall for whatever this Zeus guy had going.
Time to plan.
He would go to the jail and pick up Zhou. After that, the plans Zeus had laid out would change. He would drive Zhou out of Wilder, but not to some private airstrip out at the Kooskia Reserve.
No, he had better plans for Zhou. Zhou was heading to the old line shack up on the western side of the Three Eagles, the one nobody used since the roof collapsed halfway two winters ago. The other half was still intact, and it had a fireplace so the man could stay warm. It was isolated, with no cell service, and hewouldn’t have a vehicle. The man would be snowed in until April.
That’s where Silas would find his answers. The prospect of a bigger payday… well, that kind of money could overcome a lot of reservations.
Zhou knew where Rios kept the real money. Silas would lay money on it. The guy knew the routes, the drop points, and the names of the men who paid for protection. And Zhou would talk. Silas would make sure of that. He might even use him to take care of the Harper girl
His lip curled at the thought of her name. Redheaded little city bitch who had waltzed in and turned Trace Daniels soft. Because of her, Jack Clark had passed Silas over for foreman, giving the job to that Texan instead. Because of her, Silas had been stuck cleaning stalls and eating crow every morning.
Kip was the reason he was driving this piece-of-shit truck in the dead of winter with nothing but a duffel bag and a grudge.
He pictured her face when he showed up at the Broken Bridle. What her fear would look like when she realized Hank couldn’t stop what was coming. Best of all, the moment the life left those green eyes. Maybe he would do her himself after all.
After she was gone, Zhou would have an “accident.” It was tragic how easily someone can slip off an icy road into a ravine. His body wouldn’t be found until the spring thaw—maybe never.
One hundred grand was nice, but Rios had promised a million. Dead or alive hadn’t actually been specified, and Silas figured dead was cleaner.
