Two hundred thousand dollars.
And now he wants me to come and save him.
“How long have you been out here for?” I ask him.
“A month. Maybe two. I’m not sure exactly. The days have all blurred into one.” He sighs. “I came back to Maine because it’s quieter out here. I thought that by moving to a different state, I’d be able to hide from everything.”
“You thought? What does that mean? They found you?” I peer anxiously over my shoulder and pray that I’m not a sacrifice for Sally and her husband, who are probably waiting for me in that busted closet right now. I know my father more than I wish I did. If sending me away was the only way he could clear the debt, he’d probably let them take me in a heartbeat.
“They haven’t found me yet. But they have found you.”
My heart falters. I shuffle to the window and chance a look out of it. Of course my father’s room doesn’t back onto the parking lot. All I see out here is trash and rubble—the motel must’ve knocked something down after the rat infestation. I consider salvaging an escape while I still have the chance, but I also need to know how the fuck these people found me.
And that’s when it hits me.
“They don’t by any chance drive a beaten-up Chevy do they?”
“Yes. How many times have you seen it?”
“Enough times for me to recognize it. They have all that money and still choose to whip around in that old thing?”
“It’s untraceable and the registration is fake,” my father says. He sits on the bed and nets his hands. “This is why I couldn’t risk telling you the information over the phone. Sally’s partner is a hacker and she’s the partner in crime. Somehow, they’ve accessed all of my encrypted data and found out where I live. I never told Sally where I lived before Boston—I never thought it was relevant enough. But the two of them know everything, except one little thing.” He holds his breath, creating suspense that we really don’t have time for. “He thinks you’re still living with me.”
“Jokes on them. My house burned to the ground a month ago.”
“Yes. So I heard.” He doesn’t look impressed. But we’ve both done things in this life that we’re not proud of. He has no right to bash me for being irresponsible when he fell balls deep into the gambling addiction I thought he’d moved on from.
“Either way, they still think that we’re involved in each other’s lives. Sally and her partner hired someone in the family to come out here and trace me, but I don’t have the money.”
“I don’t have it either. My house burned down.”
“Surely they gave you an insurance payout?”
Typical. Our family home burns to ash and the first thing that comes to mind for my father is how much money we made out of the disaster.
“Details on that will come later,” I huff. “But no. No insurance payout.”
“The guy they hired broke into our property a day before the fire.”
I freeze on the spot, recounting the time James Taylor told me someone had broken in. I thought it was bullshit. He was sure of it. There were “signs,” whatever that meant.
“What?” I blurt out, my head spinning with confusion. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve been in town keeping an eye on him, just in case I need to move.”
I scoff. “And you didn’t think to pop in and say hi to the daughter you abandoned for nine years?”
“It was too risky with them watching and everything. They assumed we were still in contact, and that following you around would lead them to me. I couldn’t feed into that assumption.
“Right.” I need strong caffeine. And a year to wrap my head around the bombs my father’s just dropped. “So, you left me nine years ago for a woman who pretended to love you, but was actually a scammer, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Her partner is a street hacker who’s now hired someone to track you down.” I frown, unsure how all of this can be resolved. “You definitely can’t pay the two hundred thousand bucks?” I don’t know why I’m asking him this. It’s pretty self-explanatory that he can’t. He’s living in ruin. It doesn’t get any worse than this.
“What about the police?”
“I’ve already had a few issues with them over the years.”
