Page 41 of Tamed Enemy
I turn on my phone’s video recorder, switching the camera so it captures my face. “To whom it may concern,” I deadpan. “I assume full responsibility for any bodily harm occurring as a direct or indirect result of my ignoring the advice and recommendations of Anthony Jacobson and Sawgrass Corporation, up to and including death.”
I hand my phone to him. “Here,” I say. “Send it to yourself. I won’t be needing it inside.”
The sun bakes the back of my neck as I head up the walkway alone. I climb the three steps to the porch. I open the screen door and knock three times, the quick salute of someone used to being welcomed.
Nothing.
I press the doorbell, remembering the time the button stuck, and Mrs. A called the fire department because she was afraid a wire would overheat inside the walls.
Nothing.
Letting the screen door close, I step to the very edge of the porch. I shield my eyes from the sun and peer through the window, trying to see past the olive green curtains to the familiar living room.
I can’t see a thing.
Sighing, I backtrack down the steps. It only takes a moment to locate the fake rock under the hedge, the stone with a storage compartment that Mr. A insisted no one would ever dream of finding. The key inside feels cool in my fingers as I return to the front door. It slides into the lock as if it was oiled yesterday. It turns without a hitch.
The door catches on its chain.
“Mrs. A!” I call. “Mr. A!”
Linda Anderson steps into my narrow frame of view. “Go away, Cole,” she says.
“I need to talk to you.”
She starts to close the door, but I shove my foot into the gap.
“There’s nothing we need to say,” she says.
“Please, Mrs. A,” I beg.
She leans on the door, but she isn’t willing to use enough force to bruise my foot.
Taking that as a good sign, I say, “I want to explain.”
“Explain what?” she asks, her voice quivering. “Explain that you’ve lied to Evan and me for thirteen years?”
“The indictment was sealed. It was never supposed to become public.” Immediately after I say the words, I know that was the wrong place to start.
“Cole Plutus Wolf, you know Evan and I never gave a damn about that indictment.”
In all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard Mrs. A swear. The trembling of her lower lip shreds something deep inside me.
“This isn’t about the indictment,” she says. “This is about your lying every single time you visited our home. Abillionaire, Cole? With a B? How hard did you laugh at Evan and me, doing our best to get by on our school district salaries?”
I try to stay calm, but panic makes my palms clammy. “I never laughed at you.” I have to convince her. I have to make her understand. I say the words Kate taught me to say. “I love you.”
She bursts into tears. “Y— You have an awfully peculiar way of showing it.”
“Mrs. A… Please… I knew you wouldn’t approve of what I did when I first got started—hacking, breaking into places I shouldn’t have gone.”
She sobs even harder.
“And when I turned things around, when I got legitimate clients, I couldn’t explain why they would ever trust me when I was just a kid.”
She makes a sound like I’ve plunged a knife into her kidney.
“It all happened so fast, the stories I told you.”
