Shady Cross by James Hankins Read Free Book Online

among even older trailers in the park. He thought about his trailer and smiled. He’d never done that before—thought about his trailer and smiled—but this time he could smile because he knew he’d soon be leaving the piece of shit tin can behind for good. Since he’d settled his debt with Frank Nickerson, he could return to the trailer for the last time, pack what little of his crap he wanted to take with him, if anything, and leave Shady Cross forever.
    Two hundred fifty thousand bucks. In the first moments of the ride, the cabbie made a couple of halfhearted attempts at polite conversation. Stokes gave him nothing in return, and the guy got the message soon enough. He drove in silence and kept his eyes on the road. Still, Stokes put the backpack on the floor between his feet, far below the cabbie’s sight line in the rearview mirror, and pulled out bundles of money, one after another. And there were a lot of them. Stokes knew that each bundle wrapped in a currency strap totaled a hundred bills of whatever denomination it contained. A lot of the bundles in the bag were hundreds, making each of those bundles worth ten thousand bucks. There were also bundles of fifties and twenties. Add them all together, he had $248,000. He began stuffing the money back into the bag, afraid the smell of it would waft through the little holes drilled into the Plexiglas divider separating him from the cabbie and make the man suspicious. Cabbies had been known to keep guns under their seats to protect themselves. Guns like that could also be used to rob a rich, stupid passenger.
    Stokes fastened the flap on the backpack, the money safely stowed inside, and sat back. He smiled. He was thirty-six years old, and for just about every one of those thirty-six years he’d gotten the short end of the stick. But his life had abruptly spun on its heels and was finally heading someplace bright and sunny. Unconsciously, he squeezed the bag with his knees, perhaps to reassure himself that it was really there, it was really real . When he did, he felt a soft crinkle. The money wouldn’t have crinkled. It was packed too tightly to crinkle. So what had crinkled?
    He pulled the backpack onto his lap, checked the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and looked more closely at the bag. He knew the main compartment held nothing but the money, but there were also two outer pockets. He’d already been in one of them and found nothing but the dead guy’s cell phone, which he’d thrown away. He frowned. He zipped open the other pocket and reached inside. Pulled out an envelope, crumpled into a ball.
    He should have just put it right back in the bag. Better yet, torn it in half and chucked it out the window. Instead, he lifted the flap of the envelope and pulled out a sheet of wrinkled white paper. A typed letter. He took a breath and read.
We have your daughter. We haven’t hurt her but we will if you don’t do exactly what we say. Tomorrow you’re going to withdraw the $350,000 you stashed in your daughter’s account, and tomorrow night you’re going to give it to us. Every penny. It doesn’t belong to you, it doesn’t belong to her, and you’re going to give it back. We’ll tell you later exactly how and exactly when. Keep this cell phone with you at all times. We’ll call you now and then to make sure you’re behaving yourself and not doing anything stupid. We’ll even let you talk to your daughter from time to time. If you fail to answer one of our calls, the girl loses a finger. We know you have the $350K so don’t try to say you don’t. It will only get your daughter hurt. If you say one time that you can’t get the money, she loses an eye. You say it again, she loses the other one. You don’t want to know what happens if you say it a third time. At some point we’ll tell you exactly where to drop the money tomorrow night. When we have it, we’ll tell you where to pick up the girl. If you don’t show, your daughter is dead. If