I shivered against the fear that was chilling my skin. Who was out to hurt him? What kind of person would hurt me in order to get to him? I didn’t want to know. “We’re clear,” I said, crossing my arms over my breasts.
He had finished dressing. He watched me for a long moment. I couldn’t see his face in the dark.
Don’t say goodbye, I thought. Don’t.
“Lock your door behind me,” he said.
He turned and left the room. I heard him pick up his jacket from the kitchen floor. Then I heard my front door open and close.
I waited for a long moment, hugging myself, staring at nothing.
I’ll find you.
Then I did as I was told. I got up, walked to my front door, and locked it so the night couldn’t get in.
Chapter 9
Devon - Two Years Later
My lawyer’s name was Ben Hanratty. That was his real name. It might be tempting to make a joke about a lawyer with the word “ratty” in his name, but no one ever made fun of Ben. He looked like an escapee from a biker gang—tatted, bearded, except he showered and wore suits. His hair was dirty blond, and his eyes were dangerously intelligent. His opponents usually underestimated him, and by the time they learned how smart he was, they were already bleeding. I’d known him since I moved to San Francisco ten years ago, when I was an eighteen-year-old with an attitude problem, and he was a twenty-five-year-old working in his father’s law office. He was the first person I called the second I got arrested two years ago.
“Listen, Wilder,” he said to me now. “Something’s happened.”
We were sitting in a prison visiting room—a private one, since this was only medium security and Ben had made a case for lawyer-client privacy this time. It still stunk like cigarettes and old piss, and it still made anyone sane want to kill themselves, but at least it was private.
The first thing I thought of was either Max, my best friend, or Cavan, my brother. I thought about Olivia—I always thought about Olivia—but it couldn’t be her, because no one knew about her. No one except me. “What is it?”
Ben blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling. “Fuck, I don’t know where to start.”
I resisted the urge to jump over the table and grab him by the shirt. “Is someone dead?”
“No, no. Sorry.” Ben blew out another breath, then looked at me again. “You okay in here, by the way?”
I blinked at him. “Are you kidding me? I’m in fucking prison.”
He nodded. “Not for long, though. Ten more days, by my count.”
“Then for ten more days, I am not okay.”
Two years. I’d been in here for two years, watching my life drain away—though it could have been worse. They’d gotten all of us from the van in the end—Danny, Jam, Westerberg, me. They nailed us on the robbery count, but they didn’t find the TV’s with the Oxy. Danny, it turned out, had done some quick thinking and told Gray where the TV’s were right before the cops picked him up. By the time the cops figured out drugs were involved, the TV’s were long gone from the ditch where we’d dumped them.
So, only robbery, no drug charges. Thirty months, out in twenty-four for good behavior and because Ben was a very good lawyer.
They hadn’t nailed Gray Jensen, the dick who’d hired me, or Craig Bastien, the drug lord who’d hired Gray. They’d nailed Chaz, my old boss at the body shop. Chaz had had nothing to do with the robbery, of course. Most likely the cops had sweated Gray about it, and Gray had given up his brother. And his brother, in turn, had given up the rest of us, including me. While Gray skated the whole thing.
It was tempting to rat out Gray, but that went against my nature. My nature being that I don’t tell cops anything. I don’t tell them my own name unless my lawyer advises me to. Besides, when I got out I was sure Gray would find me. And then we’d have a word. In private.
“So if no one’s dead, what’s happening?” I asked Ben.
He opened his briefcase and pulled out some papers. He put them on the table between us, but didn’t turn them around for me to read. Instead he tapped his fingers on the table.
“First, let me say that I’ve vetted all this,” he said. “I took some time after it first came to me and did my due diligence. There’s no fraud here, Devon. This is fucking real.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He nodded. “How much do you know about your father’s family?”
“Nothing,” I said. My father had left when I was two and my brother Cavan was four.
“Did you know you had a grandfather?”
I shrugged. “Since it’s a biological requirement, I suppose I did. But that’s it.”
“Well, you did. His name was Graham Wilder, and he kicked the bucket six weeks ago.” Ben tapped the papers beneath his fingers again. “He named you the beneficiary in his will.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “He knew about me?”
“He must have, because you’re named, and as I say, the will is legit. It’s all legit. You get everything, Dev.”
There had to be a catch. “Doesn’t my father have something to say about that?”
“No, because your father died five years ago.”
There was a beat of silence.
“We gonna have an Oprah moment?” Ben asked warily, looking ready to run from the room if I showed emotion.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know him. It doesn’t matter.” Fuck, I should find a way to tell Cavan. If only I knew where Cavan was. Mom was already dead, so at least I didn’t have to tell her.
We weren’t big on family, the Wilders. A little more like feral cats.
“Right,” my lawyer said. “Your father, Pete Wilder, died of prostate cancer. That’s a pile of shit, I can tell you, so if you had any resentment against him, just wipe it away. Whatever he did to you, he paid.”
“Noted,” I said.
“Okay. So Pete died, and Graham rewrote his will to leave everything to Pete’s son. That’s you.”
“Cavan is Pete’s son.”
“Cavan gets a piece of this only if he un-disappears and shows up within six months. Even then, his piece isn’t as big as yours.” He shifted in his seat. Ben was usually confident, blunt, and a little cocky; I’d never seen him this uncomfortable before. It made me uneasy.
“Fuck, what did I inherit?” I asked. “Drug money? A porn business? A bunch of third world orphans? Just get out with it, Ben.”
“I’m getting to that,” Ben said. “Your grandfather made his money in the movie business in the sixties. Some Hollywood stuff—he didn’t make movies, he invested in them. Then, when those movies made money, he turned around and invested that money. The point is that there is money of his that’s been sitting in the stock market since 1965, and over time it’s paid dividends and reinvested. And along with the other money Graham dropped in the market, which in decades he never cashed out and spent, the bottom line is that you, Dev, are getting a fuckton of money when you get out of here in ten days.”
I stared at him. When he’d first told me I was in my grandfather’s will, I’d imagined inheriting some old guy’s crappy apartment, with his worn-out sweaters and sandal-sock combos that I’d have to throw out. “How much is a fuckton, exactly?”