She slapped him across his face.
That made her the second person to do that in twenty-four hours. Grade sat for a moment, his head turned to the side, as he licked blood from his reopened lip. Maybe he’d spent too much time with Clay.
“Was that the offer?” he asked.
Charity waved off the deputy when he started over, and rubbed her hand. “I want the laptop,” she said. “Get it back to me and I’ll give you enough money to put Sweeny in your rearview.”
“I prefer a concrete offer,” Grade said. “That’s the sort of wording that could mean a lot or just enough for one full tank of gas.”
“Ten grand.”
“I could move to Lexington,” Grade said. He stood up. They were probably about the same height, but in heels, Charity was taller than him. “I want two hundred grand.”
She laughed at him.
“You think a lot of yourself.”
“I do,” Grade admitted. “But that’s nothing to do with the amount. If you want me to do this, you need to make it worth my while. A hundred grand would be enough to get me back to California, give me a bit of a buffer. The rest is compensation for the fact I could never come back to Kentucky and the hit my reputation would take if it ever got out.”
Charity looked him up and down. “You’re a cold little bastard,” she said.
“Practical.”
“Deal,” she finally said. “Get me the laptop. You’ll have your ticket out of here. Don’t wait too long.”
She started to walk away.
“Why not offer this deal to Clay?” he asked. “Or Ezra?”
Charity turned around and looked at him. “Because you can be bought for two hundred grand,” she said. “All they’d call that would be a down payment on a loan I’d never pay off. They’d never go away. I already know how that works. You’ll take your money, though, and fuck off. And if you ever try to use what you know against me, I know where your family lives, and two hundred grand isn’t enough for a fresh start for all of you, is it.”
Grade stared at her for a second. Then he smiled thinly.
“You’re a good judge of character,” he said.
Charity looked sour for a moment. “Not always,” she said. “But I think you and I have an understanding.”
She gave him a brief nod and then headed back to the patrol car. It drove away and left Grade on the side of the road.
“See, I don’t think you understand me at all,” Grade said aloud as he watched the patrol car disappear. “But I think I’ve got a good handle on you.”
***
“How did she know who I am?” Grade asked, his phone held against his ear by his shoulder as he hunted under the van’s passenger side seat for a bottle of water he’d left there a couple of days before. The long walk back here from the viewpoint had sucked. His fingers bumped the warm plastic, and he pulled it out, giving it a shake to check if there was more than a mouthful left. He sat down on the edge of the door, twisted the top off, and took a drink. It had that old plastic taste that leeched out of the bottle. “That wasn’t the deal. There wasn’t supposed to be any contact between me andyourclient.”
Clay was quiet for a moment.
“A lot of people would think better of speaking to me like that,” he said.
“I know. I’ve met them,” Grade said. “The difference is you don’t want to fuck them.”
“I don’t want to fuck you either right now,” Clay said.
“Please,” Grade said dismissively. “The woman who hired thugs to kill us knows where I live and where my sister works. I can’t—Ican’t—put Dory in the middle of my shit again.”
He waited for Clay’s answer as he stared at the concrete road between his feet. The sun was hot on the back of his neck.
“Ezra told her we had someone who could clean up her mess,” Clay said after a moment. “Nothing else. But Charity has been in Fisher’s pocket a long time, she knows people, and people talk. Buchanan made a splash.”
