24. Riley

twenty-four

Riley

I didn’t let my gaze linger on the motel when we pulled up to the storage place. Cam drew my attention. There was a level of hope in him that had been missing the past few days. He was back to being my beautiful boy, kicking out the kickstand and holding my hand as I climbed from behind him. No furrowed brow, no lines on his forehead. We both believed there were answers here.

Had to be, because we didn’t have anything else.

The lobby of the office was cool and smelled of Pine-Sol and cardboard from the wall of flat boxes for purchase. It reminded me of the first day of school and put me instantly at ease.

I smiled at the bored looking young woman at the counter as we approached. She seemed to ignore me completely, letting her gaze linger on Cam. I had already noticed that the leather vest made most people in Dry Valley take notice. But we were just outside of town now, closer to the city, and she wasn’t the least bit put off. Quite the opposite.

Ignoring her ogling, I laid the keycard on the counter. “Hi, good afternoon. Could you tell me if this keycard is for a unit here?” Cam had said the place was a chain all over Nevada.

She glanced down at the card, typed the numbers on it into her computer on the counter, then narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you have photo identification?”

“I do.” I slid her my ID.

She didn’t bother looking at it, just shrugged. “It’s company policy to not give out customer information except to the renter themselves.”

“Good thing I don’t need any of his information.” I took a deep breath. “My father, Rick Bowman, rented this unit. He passed away last month. I’m tying up all the loose ends and need to know if it’s here. I can walk up and down every aisle if you want me to, but I was hoping you could make this easier.”

“Do you have the ?”

No, and we didn’t have another week or more to wait on it to come in the mail.

“Not yet.”

“Come back when you do. I can’t help you until then.”

I stood gaping at her as she turned back to the tablet she’d been reading on. The skin on my chest and around my neck grew hot. Not because she was following the rules, but because she’d written my request off and acted is if I was no longer there.

Cam, phone in hand, leaned over the counter.

“Hey there, sweetheart.” He made a show of looking for a name tag. “Your name is…?”

“Kelsy.” She smiled at him, blushing a little.

“That’s a very pretty name.”

She practically preened, and I rolled my eyes.

I’d seen him do this before and didn’t need to watch him do it now. Mostly because I wanted it to work and didn’t want my annoyance to show. So, I walked out front and glanced back at the two-story climate-controlled facility and the rows of red-doored storage units behind it.

I wasn’t jealous. Cam had zero interest in the girl. She was years younger than me, even. But that she was so quick to be lulled into whatever flirtations some hot guy tossed her way pissed me off. She should be smarter than that.

Had I been?

A few seconds later, the door dinged as Cam walked out and waved the key card at me. “Upstairs, second floor of the climate-controlled units. Keycard will open the main door, too.”

“Are you serious? She gave it up that easy?”

He chuckled. “Yup. Like magic.” He waved his fingers around in front of me and danced a few steps away to avoid my halfhearted punch at his middle.

“Don’t gloat, it makes you less sexy.”

He snorted, tapped the card on the pad, and pulled the door wide to hold it for me. Inside and up the stairs, everything smelled of sterile cleaner and packaging materials—just like the front office. Above us, the lights were bright and the only sound was the humming of the air conditioners.

I counted as we walked, stopping at unit three-three-two, and waited as he tried the card.

I don’t know what I’d expected, but a mostly empty unit hadn’t been it. For a minute, I thought there was nothing there, until Cam flicked on the light, and I saw the large safe with a digital number pad in the back.

“Whoa.”

“Gun safe.” Cam’s steps echoed on the polished concrete as he walked up to it. “What do you think the combination would be?”

“No idea. I didn’t see anything in the book when I found the key, either. But you should try some numbers that might mean something to him. You knew him, I didn’t.”

Cam knelt in front of the safe and tried a few combinations. Each one was followed by a rapid succession of beeps that told us those numbers were wrong. “What’s your birthdate?”

I told him. He keyed it in but got the same beeping. Then he keyed in something else, and the door popped open. He held it, hesitating.

“My birthday?”

“And mine, together.”

His quiet words were a gut punch. Archer had loved us both. I was learning, slowly, that Cam might have been right. Archer’s love for me was why he’d stayed away, to protect me.

I was beginning to understand from what.

“Pull the door down.”

I did, with a rattling clang as he flicked on his phone’s flashlight.

“You ready?”

“Yes.” Why was I shaking?

The door swung open with a little whoosh. Inside, it was packed with stacks of cash. Each shelf lined with neatly bundled bills. Cam took one and handed it to me. “Each stack is ten thousand.”

Then he whistled. “There was always this rumor, especially when I was young, that Archer and Preacher had done some twisted shit out in the desert before they started the club. Made bank doing it. I always thought it was bullshit, because why live like this when they had that kind of cash?”

“Because control of the town was more important.”

“I guess so.” He pulled out a few stacks, shoved them in his vest pocket, and shut the door.

I took a deep breath of stale, storage unit air. But it didn’t make me feel any better. “Now we know what Preacher has been looking for.”

We locked everything back up, and Cam handed me the keycard as we walked back out to the bike. Cam had been silent the whole time. I was…shocked and a little scared. I wasn’t sure how deep that gun safe was, but there was easily more than a million dollars in there.

“Keep that card on you. Always.” Cam stopped at the bike and stared across the street at the motel.

Early in the evening, it was already busy. Too expensive for the addicts, a mix of weary travelers from the interstate and what I could only imagine were well dressed prostitutes moved in and out.

A dark SUV I recognized pulled into the parking lot, one I’d seen that night at The Black Cat. A woman, even more familiar, stepped from inside. The escort was showing up more and more.

When Cam fired up the bike, she jumped, startled, and looked back at us, her hand up in a half wave.

She’d known Archer. Maybe she’d been with him the night he died.

***

Cam was quiet when we got back. I didn’t push. He’d talk when he was ready—when he’d processed everything. All the dots were connecting and a clear image was forming for both of us.

Preacher had killed my father for the money. Now, he was set on intimidating me into telling him where it was.

“Is this the proof you need?”

Leaning against the sink in a kitchen that was beginning to feel like my own, he stared out the window into the backyard. Much like he’d watched the motel before we drove home.

“No.”

“But it’s obvious he’s been after the money the whole time, trying to scare me into telling him about it—or giving it to him, even. The break in, his weird interrogation, always wanting me alone.”

“Doesn’t matter. We can’t tell anyone about the money.”

“Why not? I thought part of being a Desert King meant keeping nothing from them.”

“ Riley . Think about it. That type of money makes a lot of enemies. Archer was killed for it.”

He was right and believed that with my entire soul. “So, what now?”

“I don’t know. Leave? Start a new life, nothing stopping us now. We can go wherever, be whoever we want to be.”

I stood beside him and rested the side of my head against his shoulder. “I’ll go wherever you go.” We’d talked earlier about what this place had come to mean to me.

“Change your mind about staying here?”

“No.” I snuggled in when he wrapped his arm around me. “It’s not this house, or Dry Valley. My home…is you.” Because life without him scared me more than I’d like to admit. My future wasn’t uncertain as it had been when Mom was sick. It was a deeper fear than that. I don’t know if I could live without Cam.

“When my mom was dying, it was one bad thing after another. I finally just wanted it to be over, even if it meant she was gone and I was alone. I didn’t want her in pain. I didn’t want either of us to suffer. I just wanted it to stop. Then it did, and I was alone, with nothing. And it was scarier than the unknown had been.”

He turned so that he could hug me against his chest. Pressing my face there, I grounded myself in the scent of him, in the feel of his steady heartbeat against my cheek, and the strength of the arms that held me tight.

Cam didn’t say anything, just let me talk. I don’t know who needed that more, me or him.

“Then I met you. Everything changed. I can imagine a future now, a life. But it has to be with you…” I lost the rest of my words in a tremble of emotion.

“Anywhere you go, I go,” he finished for me.

I nodded against him.

When I felt steady again, I pulled away. “Why was Archer at that motel? Did it have anything to do with the money?” Pretty sure I already had my answer.

“I doubt it.” He flinched a little, poured a glass of water from the tap, drank half of it, and contemplated the remnants. All as if he wanted to avoid this conversation. That he was uncomfortable amused me.

“Was he meeting the hooker we saw at the gas station?” I tried not to smile.

Cam set the glass down and cast a sideways glance at me. “Probably.”

“So that’s why Merc said the Soletsky’s were worried about their girls.”

Cam’s face rolled through several expressions: annoyance, shock, amusement, and finally pride. It was the last one that made my heart jump a happy beat.

“That night when I was with Merc on the porch, you were listening.”

I ducked my head, feigned contrition. “I was scared and curious.”

“Worried I’d tell him I just banged the hot virgin?”

“No—yes, maybe.”

With a laugh, he tugged me close and kissed me. “I’d never have done that. All you are, all of this? It’s just mine.”

“There you go, getting all possessive again.”

“You’re the one with my name etched into your skin” He gently stroked his knuckles down my tender side.

“There’s some shit I need to do before tomorrow,” he whispered against my hair after we’d stood there, holding each other for a while.

“Okay.”