The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,2
into his car seat. After I shut the door, I turned back to Toby with my arms crossed, so he wouldn’t see me shivering. There was a reason Toby couldn’t do the run to Colorado himself. He looked exactly like what he was: a drug-dealing thug with a neck tattoo and a squirrelly eye. He also happened to be one of the scariest people I knew. Him and Asher. Any time I got tempted by those blocks of cash, that was all I had to think about. Two hundred grand would pay off all my debts—hell, the debts of everybody I knew—but it would also get me killed.
“Jesus,” Toby said. “I was gonna offer to make things easier for you with Asher. Smooth things over.”
I knew what he had in mind for payment for a favor like that, and I really wanted to be done paying for things with sex. I hoped I was never going to be that desperate again.
“Anyway, doesn’t matter now. Asher told me to tell you you’re cut off. You don’t call him. You don’t text him. He’ll call you after this shit quiets down.”
I probably should have got in the car and left, but I had bills to pay.
“My money?” I said.
Toby snorted, but he reached into his back pocket and took out an envelope. He held on to it for a couple seconds after I reached for it, but he finally let it go. I stuffed the money into my pocket and walked around to the driver’s side of my car. When I opened the door, Toby was still watching me.
“Tell Asher he owes me for those suitcases,” I said. “They weren’t cheap.”
CHAPTER 2
Zee
When we were in grade school, LaReigne and I walked to and from school every day, separated by about ten feet or so, because she was too cool to walk with a baby. One day—I was in third grade and LaReigne was in sixth—when we got to our block, there were half a dozen cop cars parked in front of our house. I remember crying, even before I knew what had happened. I don’t know when I learned to be afraid of the police, but I was. We all were. That day, LaReigne took my hand, and we walked down the street to our house together. Mom stood on the front porch, screaming and sobbing, with a cop on either side of her. Dad was locked in the back seat of a police car, with his head turned so he wouldn’t have to look at his wife or his daughters.
Now, driving past our apartment building and seeing a police car and a police van parked outside, I felt eight years old again. Afraid and angry, but not ignorant or innocent anymore. I didn’t dare stop. I had five ounces of weed in my backpack and a bunch of drops and edibles. Probably the smart thing to do was ditch the weed, but I couldn’t afford to. I needed the money, and it was the only thing that really worked for my pain that didn’t require a prescription.
I kept driving.
“You missed our turn,” Marcus said. Five years old and he was already a backseat driver.
“We’re not going home yet.” I pulled up to the light at Central, white-knuckling the steering wheel to keep myself focused. In my side-view mirror, I could still see the cop car parked in front of our apartment.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Grandma’s house.”
I should have gone somewhere else. Anywhere else. A motel. A park. A fucking church. Even going to Marcus’ other grandparents’ would have been a better terrible choice, if I was going to make a terrible choice. My mother’s house was on a cul-de-sac that dead-ended where they had widened Kellogg into a six-lane highway, so when I turned down the street, I was already stuck. There were three news vans, plus half a dozen other cars. Once again my family was newsworthy.
Reporters didn’t scare me the way cops did, so I pulled up at the end of the line of vehicles and parked. I got Marcus out of the car and led him across the neighbors’ yards, but as soon as we reached the weedy edge of Mom’s yard, the reporters saw us. Holding Marcus’ hand tighter, I walked faster, keeping my eyes focused on Mom’s front porch, which was piled up with old furniture and lawn tools.
“Are you a member of the Trego family?” said the first reporter that reached us.