Colleen shushed her. “We didn’t steal anything. We just used their internet.”
“But still—”
Tristan needed to direct them back to the subject. “Colleen, these people are threatening to kill me if I don’t get them the stock shares, and then they’re going to go after my friends.”
The puzzle pieces of his life, which he’d thought were clicking together, scattered, and a yawning black void gaped. The gray emptiness of imminent death had been bad enough, but Colleen’s words and the thought thatshe didn’t care about him in the goddamn leastwere a boiling darkness taking over his mind.
He asked her, “Are you telling me that wanting a bunch of faceless people on the internet to make moneyis more important to you thanliterally getting me out of a situation where people are going to kill me?That maximizingtheirprofit is more important to you thanmy life?”
Colleen blinked. “Well, not when you say it like that.”
“Colleen, they’re going to kill my guys,my friends who I love like brothers.Hell, they’remoreto me than brothers. My brothers left when I was a teenager, and I can’t even find them. Micah, Logan, and Blazehave been therewhen I needed them. They’re the only family I have in the world, andI have tostand between them and what Bell would force them to door murder them.I have to doanything necessaryto protect those guysbecause that’s who I am.”
She was blinking fast and frowning. A tear dripped out of her eye and stained her cheek. “But it doesn’t seem right to buy the stocks forso littlefrom peoplewho need the moneywhen the stock is worthso much.Try to remember back to when you lived in a dilapidated Iowa farmhouse. What would several hundred thousand ormillionsof dollars have meant to your parents and that farm? The minnows on the forum havenothing.Their parents havenothing,and they aren’t going to inherit any money, either. They’re scraping by, and they’ll probablyneverbe able to retire or go anywhere and see the world, or even be okay with taking a sick day because they needevery damn dollarthey earn. They are living on asliverof a margin. They DM me, crying because they had to take half the money out of their trading accounts and it’s going to set them backyears,and it’s because their kid needs medicine, or their dog got hit by a car and needs a vet, or their rent went up or something.It’s not rightto take this chance away from them.”
Panic consumed Tristan.“But that’s what I have to do.Ihaveto get this stock, and ithasto be worth less than forty cents per share when I transfer it.I don’t knowwhy Mary Varvara Bell wants that GameShack stockandwants it at such a low price. Maybe it’s because she figured out that they were hoarding all those CurieCoins, and that’s what she actually wants.I don’t know.”
Colleen had set her laptop aside and was clasping both her hands together on her knees. “Why don’t we just ask her?”
“You don’t ask mafia kingpins why they want something. You just give it to them.”
“Is she mafia then?” Colleen asked.
Tristan ran his hands through his hair again and held his head in his hands. “If it extorts you like a mafia kingpin, and if it tries to kidnap hostages like a mafia kingpin, and if it threatens to kill you like a mafia kingpin, it’s probably a mafia kingpin.”
“Maybe we can figure out some way to give her the part of GameShack that she wants, and yet not screw over all of the little investors from Sherwood Forest,” Colleen mused.
“Or we can justgiveher the GameShack stock, andget me out of trouble with the mafia,”Tristan said.
“There has to be a way,” Colleen fretted. “Look, how about this: We’ll try to figure out a way not to screw the small investors and get you out of troubleforone hour.If at the end of the hour, there’s no way to do it, then you start buying the GameShack stock from the minnows for thirty-six cents per share, and I will never say a word about it to anybody, ever.No matter what.”
She would just look at Tristan like he was a scammer for the rest of his life, and he’d see himself that way in her eyes.
“Okay,okay,”he said. “Maybe there’s a way to figure this out. We all have business experience here. We’ve all negotiated before. Surely we can figure out a win-win scenario for all of us.” Tristan was rambling as much to himself as at Colleen and Anjali. He needed the goddamned win.
Anjali was sitting back with her arms crossed. “I think you’re both right, so I don’t know what to do.”
Tristan refrained from saying,Any time you talk about ‘both sides,’ you’re probably wrong about at least one of them,mainly because he suspected that he was the asshole in this situation. “Okay, so I’ll call Mary Varvara Bell and see if I can figure out what she wants out of the GameShack stock.”
Colleen nodded, but she was still staring at the floor. “Right. We’ll let you talk privately then.” She started to walk out of the cabin. “Come on, Anjali.”
Anjali grabbed her arm.“Wait a minute.You said that if we can’t come up with a better plan within one hour, that you will just drop your objections and let him proceed with his plan to buy the shares. What if he doesn’t even call her? If he just sits in this room for an hour andsays,‘Nope, it is not going to work,’ and then the hour is over. And so then,poof,it is all gone for the minnows. If weleave,we won’tknowif he eventried.”
Colleen glanced up at Tristan, her expression tight, but she looked away. “Yeah, I know. Come on.”
She was giving him a way out.
But if he took it, he’d be a swindler in her eyes forever.
Colleen followed Anjali out of Tristan’s computer office, and she paused in the doorway. “No matter what happens, I’ll be on the upper deck, and I’ll still be here tomorrow morning, too. Whatever the outcome, you’ll find me on the upper deck just like I said I would be, waiting for you.”
She closed the door.
The gut-punch nearly doubled Tristan over.
The empty farmhouse always followed him. His whole life, ever since he’d been fifteen, whenever he opened a door, he expected to find emptiness behind it.
And now,this.
