She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “And yet we put up with all your crap and we smile and nod because if we don’t pay the bills then we’reruined. So don’t you sit there and lecture me about doing whatever it takes to keep your relationship together. I’m just doing what it takes to keep mine.”
For a moment, Ben almost felt sorry for her.
If he’d had to rob a bank to save Sam, he’d do it in a heartbeat.
This was a little different, though. This was taking other people’s lives into her own hands and ruining them. Not only that, but obviously getting off on the power.
Maybe the first time, they’d desperately needed the money. Maybe it had even happened by accident, with someone trying to cheat on their partner at the retreat.
Intentionally trapping people who were already in vulnerable positions into paying up or having their lives ruined, though…
The people Annie and Robert were targeting could afford it, but at least some of them hadn’t done anything wrong and shouldn’t have had to. Using people’s marriages, ones they were trying to save, as a bargaining chip, was cruel.
Ben was starting to see why Sherlock Holmes hated blackmailers so much. It was a cowardly, awful thing to do to someone.
“People likeyouaren’t going to miss a few thousand dollars here and there, but people like us? We’re drowning, and it’s all your fault. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna take my money and go.”
She grabbed the bag and stood, visibly flustered.
Ben turned to the table opposite him, determined now to nail both of them to the wall. “Did you get all that?”
Eliot nodded, still focusing on his phone. “In full HD. The mic on this phone is surprisingly good.”
“You got it all horizontal, right?” Ben double-checked. He could feel his hands shaking, the rush of having caught a bad guy still as strong as ever.
Sam chose that moment to come around the corner, putting himself between Annie and the exit.
“You can run if you want. That’s a bag full of waste paper,” he said. “Cut it up myself.”
Annie looked between the three of them, suddenly going pale. “You’re a cop,” she said.
“Wow, rude,” Sam said from behind her. “Does he look like a cop to you?”
Ben actually thought that hedidkind of look like a grizzled movie detective, the kind of man who’d seen one too many murders he couldn’t prevent and was tracking down a serial killer with obsessive intensity.
Not like an actual cop, though.
“We’re journalists,” Eliot said. “But we will be handing this over to the police.”
Annie looked between them again, then turned, pushed past Sam, and walked away, still carrying the duffel bag.
Sam turned to go after her.
“Leave her,” Ben said. “We’ve done the part we need to do.”
“And your project is saved?” Sam asked.
“If this doesn’t save us, nothing will,” Eliot said, shutting off his phone and tucking it back in his pocket. “So I think we can safely say that it is. You were very calm,” he added, turning to Ben.
“You would have been the same in my place,” Ben said. He was sure Eliot would. He had the makings of a great journalist, and Ben was glad he’d get a chance to be one, now.
A weight he’d forgotten he was carrying lifted off Ben’s shoulders.
They’d done it. They’d saved Ballsy, they’d caught the bad guy, and…
Most importantly, he had Sam. All of this was worth it for that alone.
The other stuff was good too, though.
