Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,53
hell anyway; what was one more sin in the tally?
“You son of a whore, you think you can stop my fuckin’ payments? You think I won’t sell that video to the highest bidder? Who the fuck do you think you are? Everybody will know! Every fuckin’ body, are you listening to me?”
The snarling vitriol of the man’s tone came over the line clear as day, and I was stunned as I listened to his seething hatred.
“What will your fans think when they see you fuckin’ those guys when you were just a kid?”
My blood went cold, and I paused the playback, walking out the front door to give myself added distance from Nick and my mother. I put the phone back to my ear then, and what I heard knotted my stomach and chilled me to the bone.
“What’ll they say when they see your weak ass gettin’ beat?”
I almost threw up. I’d seen things as a policeman, horrific things done to children, to adults, things that sometimes still haunted my dreams at night.
“And the videos you want of your old man bustin’ up them horses for the insurance money? You think I’m sendin’ you that shit if you don’t pay me my money, you filthy fuckin’ whore?” His voice rose, sounding furious and unhinged. “You make me chase you down—if I have to talk to that fuckin’ cunt accountant one more fuckin’ time, I will end your life, Mr. Madison, and you ain’t never comin’ back from that shit.”
When it ended, I played it again, and again, and then a fourth time for clarity, to confirm that I was hearing what I already knew it was.
I had to pace a bit, walk off some of the anger so I could think and not just react. Even though the number was private, I was fairly certain that I knew who the voice belonged to.
I grabbed my own phone and started by texting Rosalie Simmons, and she confirmed that yes, just as I thought, Walker Evans had been at her all day about money that was supposed to be coming to him.
“He’s a vile man,” Rosalie texted. I was glad she didn’t know for certain how vile. I was glad she had no idea who he really was.
I called Owen then.
“Loc?” he sounded sleepy.
“I need help,” I croaked out, barely in control of my voice, knowing it was late there but not caring in the slightest.
“Yes,” he said, fully awake just that fast.
“Please find Walker Evans for me, right now. His name is in Nick’s file, and then I need you to get me on a plane to wherever he is.”
“Absolutely, just give me a minute.”
“Who’s not on a job right now?”
“Ella, Nash, Rais, and Cooper.”
“Okay,” I said, speaking around the lump in my throat. “I need Nash here, like right this second, and Ella, Rais, and Coop need to head wherever I’m going as soon as Nash gets here.”
“Got it.”
“Send whatever you think I’ll need, starting with a good jammer.”
He cleared his throat. “Done.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to swallow down my anger. “Okay.”
“I don’t know what this is about, Loc, but try and breathe, huh?”
I ignored him. “Also, I need you to hack Nick’s phone and get the number from his most recent calls. That’s Walker Evans’s number. From now on, anything, calls or texts, Skype, FaceTime, DMs, PMs, whatever, from that number get rerouted to my phone.”
“Routing it now,” he said, and all I could hear was continuous clicking in the background. He hadn’t stopped typing since he answered the phone.
“Thanks,” I barely got out.
After a beat of silence, he asked, “How bad?”
“Extortion bad. Death-threat worse,” I whispered, because my voice deserted me.
He cleared his throat. “Call me if you think of anything else,” he said before he hung up.
Walking back inside, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of ice water. Checking on Nick and my mother, I saw that they were down at the edge of the creek, sitting on some rocks with their feet in the water.
I watched them, sitting there together, and after a bit, she took his hand, lifted it to her lips, kissed his knuckles, and then lowered their now clasped hands to her lap.
A text came in from Owen to call him.
It was kind of great that he didn’t just call me, that he was smart enough not to want to alert Nick or my mother to the fact that he wanted to speak to me.
He picked up on the