Page 6 of Violent Skies

“Did you give them what they wanted?” I ask. The attempts of keeping calm are failing and my control is slipping.

“I don’t have anything, Riggs,” she laughs,defeated and sad. “I told them that, but they kept going on about not killing me, that—” she pauses and I wait. “They were just there to rough me up.”

“What?” I sink to the recliner next to the couch and stare at her. I need the space to be able to breathe. “What exactly did they say?” I lean forward.

Cress stares at me. It’s deafening and it’s like all I can hear in my head is the screeching of tires and breaking glass. I just need to keep telling myself that I’m doing it to protect her, she doesn’t need to know what really happened that night. At least one of us can keep him, for who he was before that.

She clears her throat, “We were told to leave her alive. And that in three weeks someone would be back to collect the money.”

“Told by who?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” she snaps after another pained breath.

The silence that stretches across the room is agonizing, her tongue brushes over the cut on her bottom lip as she thinks of what else to say but something pops into her head and she sits up. “A few months ago I started to notice a car parked outside the house, it wasn’t always there but more frequently than not in the last few weeks.”

“Do you recognize them from tonight?” I ask.

“I never saw their faces, when I got home from work they were always arguing or talking to each other. I just figured it was new neighbours," she sighs. “But I found something…”

She clears her throat as I wait for her to explain.

“There was a box of Koa’s stuff I just couldn’t throw away, it had the bag in it…” she teeters off and her voice grows shaky.

The bag from the accident—the one the cops collected and gave to Koa’s mother.

“Okay,” I say, curling my hands together as another storm cloud booms above us.

“It had this book in it, it was small and brown. It was full of his writing, but I just thought it was nonsense. You know Koa.” She huffs, tears pool in her eyes and she looks away from me to get control of them. “Knew,” she corrects herself. “The back half was full of numbers.”

I stand from the chair and wander away, up to my office. Part of the reason is to hide how painful it is not to tell her that I’m sad too. That I lost him too. But she thinks I killed him. Everyone does. I swipe the book off the table and bring it back to her, dropping it over the back of the couch.

“Did it look like that?” I point to the red inked numbers.

“Yeah,” she says, pulling the book into her lap.

“Koa owes money to someone,” I hiss through my teeth. That fucking bastard.

“No,” Cress shakes her head and sifts through the pages, “they were just common criminals, it’s a con or something.”

I argue, “I know what it looks like when he’s in debt to someone. That’s his. He started that book when we took this place over.”

“He’s dead, Riggs. What do they want from me?” She looks up at me with absolute fear painted on her expression.

“What they’re owed.” I cross my arms over my chest.

“I don’t understand,” Cress says. And she wouldn’t because Koa and I kept every single secret from her on purpose. To keep her safe. If he was here he’d figure out a way to fix this without involving her. Don’t you fucking dare, he’d say and spend the day in the office planning.

“Shit, Cress,” I exhale, “this garage doesn’t run on small jobs, or at least it didn’t always…”

“What?” She snaps.

“Koa, me… the boys and Birdie… we transported stuff.” I try to be vague but I can see by the way her expression shifts that I’m not going to get away with it.

“Stuff…” she questions, “what kind of stuff?”

“Stolen stuff.” I say, regretting the second it leaves my lips. “It paid for everything in here.”

“You’re lying,” Cress shifts, sliding off the couch but her body is still recovering from the beating and she stumbles slightly as she wraps her arms around her body. “You’d never do that. He’d never risk Bird,” she argues. “You can’t help yourself, making up bullshit to tarnish his name now that you’ve gotten rid of him. You could never leave anything alone, Riggs. You were always jealous of him.”