Author: James Hankins
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/james-hankins/page,18,260489-shady_cross.html
They considered that for a moment before Wiggins said, “If the stepmother is in on it—”
Martz finished for him, “That means the father must have been the one from whom they wanted the money.” They looked at each other, seeming pleased with their deduction. It wasn’t all that terrific a deduction, not too great a leap of logic to get there, but at least they were paying attention to the story, even enjoying it a little, which was kind of weird, but so long as they weren’t telling him to shut up or, worse, shooting him, Stokes didn’t care if they made something of a game of it.
“Right,” he said. “They wanted the money from the father. And he got it.”
“The money?” Martz asked. “He got it?”
Stokes nodded.
“And he didn’t call the authorities?” Wiggins asked.
“The kidnappers said they have people with the police and the FBI secretly working for them. The father ignored that, called them, and the kidnappers cut off one of the girl’s fingers.”
Wiggins’s eyes widened. “They really have someone inside the police department then?”
“Yeah,” Stokes said. “Maybe the FBI, too. So the father got the money and was planning to pay them later tonight.”
He paused.
“But?” Martz said.
Stokes sighed. “He had a car accident. I found him.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
“And you found the money,” Wiggins said.
“I found the money. And I’m planning to use it to ransom the girl.”
Martz frowned at him, the picture of skepticism. “And you never thought about keeping it?”
Stokes snorted. “Shit, yeah, I thought about it. Of course I did. I thought hard about it. But then I made the mistake of answering the guy’s cell phone when the kidnappers called. I talked to the girl.”
They said nothing for a moment. The men were scrutinizing him again. He was fed up with people doing that today.
“I have to say,” Martz said, “you seem the sort who would be more likely to keep the money in these circumstances.”
“Yeah, I probably am more that sort of guy.”
“But this is different somehow.”
“Guess so,” Stokes said.
Wiggins shook his head. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I know.”
“So why help the girl instead of keeping it?”
Stokes shrugged. “It’s complicated. But I have my reasons. I think.”
Martz nodded slowly. He seemed willing to accept that. “Your bag then,” he said. “If you’re telling the truth, the money’s in there.”
“It is. All but a hundred and three thousand dollars of it.”
“What happened to the hundred three thousand dollars?” Wiggins asked.
“I had to give it to someone. Well, a few people.”
Stokes expected them to ask who he gave it to, but they didn’t. They were thinking. They regarded him for a long moment. Then they looked at each other. They seemed to be communicating through pure thought. They swung their gaze his way again. They appeared to be sizing him up yet again, goddamn it, taking his measure.
Finally, Wiggins spoke. “And you came here, hoping to steal at least a hundred three thousand dollars to make up for the money you had to give away.”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“So you’re using your criminal powers for good now instead of evil,” Martz said.
“Guess so. For tonight anyway.”
“Ironic.”
“Guess so.”
“So you’re saying you’ve got almost two hundred fifty thousand dollars in that bag,” Wiggins said, “money you intend to simply give away, out of the goodness of your heart, to save a little girl you’ve never met.”
“That’s right.”
“You can understand if we’re a bit dubious,” Martz said.
Stokes didn’t know what dubious meant. “I’m telling you the truth.” He nodded toward the bag at his feet. “May I?”
They considered for a moment. “Slowly,” Martz said.
Stokes bent down and, moving very slowly, unfastened the flap on the backpack and opened it. The men looked at the bundles of money inside.
“You see,” Stokes said as he closed the bag again, “you send me to jail, that little girl probably dies. But,” he ventured, inspiration coming to him in a flash, “if you were to, say, loan me a hundred three thousand dollars, we might save her life together.”
They looked at him in silence.
Stokes trudged on. “This really isn’t so different from the money you’ve been giving away for years, money you give away to help people. Haven’t you guys donated a bunch of cash to the library, the hospital, schools, places like that?”
They nodded in unison.
“Well, this is no different. You’d be giving money to help get a little girl away from some very bad men. Men who have already hurt her, who might even kill her if we don’t help her.”
They looked at Stokes a moment longer, then at the bag of money, then at each other. They seemed to exchange a few more telepathic thoughts before apparently coming to a decision. They turned to Stokes again.
“You made a mistake coming here,” Martz said.
“I realize that.”
“No,” Wiggins cut in, “he means we don’t have any money in the house.”
“What?” Stokes frowned. “But I thought you guys didn’t like banks. You used to keep most of your cash hidden here.”
“That’s right. We used to.”
“But if you don’t have any money here,” Stokes said, “what’s in the floor safe?”
“Nothing. It’s empty,” Wiggins said.
“So you put all your money into banks now?”
Stokes sighed. He’d counted on them having a more deeply rooted distrust and fear of banks.
“You don’t understand,” Martz said. “We’re not putting money into banks, either. The fact is, we just don’t have any money anymore.”
“What? Wait a second, guys,” Stokes said. “What about all the money you give away?”
“We gave it all away,” Wiggins said.
Stokes didn’t understand. “All of it?”
“Well no, we didn’t give all of our money away. We spent some of it on living expenses, some on back taxes—”
“And we paid off a few creditors,” Martz added.
“Right,” Wiggins said. “The point is, our store stopped being profitable quite a while back.”
“This economy has not been kind,” Martz said.
Wiggins added, “We’ve been in the red for a long time now. We’ll be closing our doors very soon.”
Stokes shook his head. “But your donations—”
“Stopped two years ago. We’re nearly bankrupt.”
Now it was Stokes’s turn to be skeptical. “Hold on, you say you’re broke, but you somehow found enough money to spend, what was it, a month and a half in Italy?”
“We needed to get away. We hung a sign on the door of our store saying we were going to Italy. For the sake of appearances, of course.”
Martz looked sheepish. “Actually, we spent six weeks at Hugh’s brother’s house in New Jersey. We went there to get away for a while—from our business, from our creditors. We took with us photographs of many of our fine antiques. Some from our shop, though there aren’t many good pieces left there, and many from our house here.”
“My brother is a man of means,” Wiggins said. “And he has exquisite taste. He kindly offered to give us very fair prices for many of our pieces to help us manage our debt, to pay back more of our creditors. He’s buying from us some of the pieces you see in this very room, in fact.”
“You’re so poor you have to sell your furniture?” Stokes asked. Thi
s was a big waste of time. He sighed.
Wiggins nodded sadly. “We’ve already sold many of our favorite pieces to dealers in other cities.”
Stokes looked around, again noticing that the house seemed to be furnished more sparsely than he’d expected.
Martz said, “Eventually, we’ll have to sell the house, too.”
“But everyone in town thinks you’re still rich.”
“A charade we’ve managed, until now, to maintain. Our creditors know, naturally, but they also know we’re trying to pay. Most of them aren’t interested in slandering the good names of a couple of old, local businessmen like us.”
“If you’re broke, why the hell did you spend so much on a security system and a floor safe, especially if there’s less and less in here to protect?”
“Those were the last significant purchases we made, I’m afraid,” Martz said, “shortly after your friend stole sixty thousand dollars from us, but right before business took a sharp downturn.”
Stokes blew out a breath. “So you can’t give me the hundred thousand dollars?”
“No. As you put it, we’re broke.”
“Which is why,” Wiggins added, “I’m sorry to say, we’re going to have to keep that money you’ve got there.”
Stokes wasn’t sure he’d heard right. He looked at the two older men. Looked at their eyes. Then at their guns.
“You gotta be shitting me.”
TWENTY-ONE
11:51 P.M.
“WE DON’T WANT TO SHOOT you,” Wiggins said, “but we will if we have to.”
“And we’d get away with it,” Martz added. “You broke into our home, engaged in those shenanigans with our alarm system. I think a couple of old men like us, pillars in this community, wouldn’t have a problem convincing the authorities that we had no choice but to defend ourselves using, unfortunately, lethal force. Don’t you?”
Sadly, Stokes did. The guns looked kind of heavy in the guys’ hands. Their arms looked kind of skinny. Stokes was worried the strain of keeping them pointed at him might cause one of them to pull a trigger accidentally.
“Look, fellas,” Stokes said, “we can talk this thing out. For now, why don’t you give your arms a break? Let the guns hang in your hands, pointed at the floor.”
They eyed him with suspicion. But it also looked to Stokes like there was hope on their faces, like they really did want to relax their scrawny arms for a while.
“I’m twelve feet away, guys,” Stokes added. “I couldn’t get three steps toward you before you shot me dead if you wanted to.”
Wiggins and Martz looked at each other, then lowered their guns. Stokes thought about rushing them, but they looked a little jumpy and were liable to kill him even if they didn’t mean to. Plus, again, as war veterans with combat experience, they might still have decent reflexes.
“Now what’s this about keeping my money?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not really yours, is it?” Martz responded. “You stole it yourself, didn’t you? From a dead man?”
“Hell, fellas, it’s more mine than yours.”
“I’m not sure we agree,” Wiggins said. “But we don’t have to. The facts are these: You broke into our house intending to steal from us, so we don’t really feel a great deal of affection for you. And we have found ourselves in dire financial straits—”
Martz cut in. “In no small part due to our lengthy history of philanthropy over the years.”
“Right. And finally, you have a great deal of money in your bag there.”
“Money that we need very badly.”
“Money that, under the circumstances, you could never go to the police to complain about having been stolen from you.”
“So you see,” Martz said, “this truly could not have worked out better for us.”
Wiggins shook his head, indicating his agreement that things couldn’t have worked out better for them.
Stokes shook his head in disbelief. “You’re robbing me,” he said. He wasn’t asking, merely summing up the situation.
“Ironic, we know,” Wiggins said. “Now please step away from that bag.” He raised his gun. Martz did the same.
Stokes shook his head but didn’t move his feet. “I’m having a little trouble here, fellas. This isn’t the way guys like you are supposed to act.”
“Guys like us?” Martz asked.
“Relax, I don’t mean guys like you. I mean guys who everyone respects, guys who donate money all over the place, stuff like that. So what gives?”
“Well,” Wiggins began, “as we told you, we’re nearly bankrupt.”
“And we’ve been forced to sell many of our most treasured possessions,” Martz added, “which pains us more than you can imagine.”
Wiggins nodded. “And, well, we don’t want to do that any longer.”
Stokes blew out an exasperated breath. “But stealing? With an innocent kid’s life at stake?”
Martz sighed. “We’d rather not steal, but we’d much rather not lose our precious antiques. It took us nearly a lifetime to collect them. We chose nearly every item in this house with great care, after much searching for just the right piece. Nearly everything of value in this house, everything we own, comes with a story, a story special to Hugh and me.”
“That’s right,” Wiggins said. “Do you see that end table? It’s nineteenth-century Italian neoclassic. We picked it up during a wine-tasting trip to Napa Valley ten years ago. A wonderful vacation.”
“And that late Regency mahogany secretaire bookcase behind you?” Martz asked.
Stokes turned and saw a bookcase.
“It was crafted in 1829. Notice the cavetto cornice, the turned rondle decoration, the astral glazed doors—with the original glass, mind you, as well as the original brass beading and knobs. Even the lock and key are original. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
Stokes still saw a bookcase.
“It’s one of our favorite pieces. Not because it’s worth close to twelve thousand dollars, but because it was a fiftieth-birthday gift to me from Hugh.”
“Do you see now?” Wiggins asked Stokes. “Maybe a little? Far beyond the fact that the items here have considerable monetary value, everything here has special meaning to us.”
Stokes said, “Yeah, but—”
Martz interrupted. “Hugh and I have ingratiated ourselves to the members of this community through our charitable works and, with very few exceptions, we have been treated with nothing but respect. Still, we have always been outsiders. We’ve had only each other, really, for so many years. Only each other and this house.”
“And all the wonderful things in it,” Wiggins said. “And every item we’ve had to sell so far, and there have been quite a few, has been painful to part with.”
“So maybe you can understand,” Martz said, “why we need to do this. The money isn’t yours anyway. And with it, we can keep from selling the rest of our treasures, maybe even buy back some of what we’ve been forced to sell off.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Wiggins said, “we really are very sorry.”
“But we are also quite desperate,” Martz said, “and will do anything to keep our home together, and by that I mean the precious items in it.”
“And what about the little girl?” Stokes finally asked.
Martz frowned. “That’s regrettable, of course. We don’t want to see her hurt. But in the end, it isn’t our business, is it?”
“It really isn’t our problem,” Wiggins added.
“Besides,” Martz continued, “she won’t be hurt. Kidnapping is a serious crime, but murder is much more serious. When the kidnappers realize they won’t be getting their money, they’ll let the little girl go.”
“You really believe that?” Stokes asked.
Martz hesitated just long enough for Stokes to see that he didn’t belie
ve it, not for certain. “I do believe it,” Martz said. “We both do.” He looked at Wiggins, who nodded. Stokes could tell that Wiggins didn’t believe it, either.
“So here’s how this will work,” Martz said. “We’ll escort you to the kitchen door, the one through which you entered our house, and we’ll see you out. You will walk six feet in front of us. If you stop, we’ll shoot you in the back. If you run, we’ll do the same. If you turn around, we’ll shoot you in the chest. When we get to the door, you will step outside and walk ten feet into the backyard. We’ll have our guns trained on you the entire time. When you are outside, ten feet from the door, we’ll lock the door, activate the alarm, and assume we’ll never see you again, because in the morning the money will be in one of our bank accounts.”
“And as for breaking in here ever again,” Wiggins said, “I think you can see it would be a bad idea. Our security system truly is top notch, we’re armed, and we no longer keep large amounts of cash in the house.”
Stokes simply could not believe this was happening. After all he’d gone through so far today, that he could lose the money to people that he’d been trying to rob in the first place was unbelievable.
Martz motioned with his gun, indicating the direction he wanted Stokes to walk. Stokes didn’t move. Martz motioned with his gun again. “Let’s go now.”
Stokes had had enough. “No.”
Martz blinked at him. “What?”
“I said no. I’m not leaving. Not without the money anyway.”
“We have guns,” Wiggins reminded him.
“I know,” Stokes said, “and you know how to use them. I get it. But I’ve had a really long day. It started out at the police station, which is never any fun. Then I flipped my motorcycle over a guardrail, which wasn’t a lot of fun, either. But then I found all this money, and I could have skipped town with it, but I decided to do the right thing, get a little girl out of the hands of kidnappers, probably saving her life. And when this is all over, for all my effort, I’ll probably go to jail for the rest of my life. So I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you keep this money. Not when I could have just kept it myself in the first place. And not when a little kid could die for it. So fuck you, I’m not leaving without the money.”