His mouth twitches. “I’m glad I never met you then. Because I never would have gotten to know you now. I never would have heard your stupid jokes or seen your scars or watched you fight. I still saw your you-know-what, though. In those pictures. You’ve gotta start wearing underwear.”
I blush and laugh so hard I can barely stand. I’ve got no fewer than twenty-five bruises, so many scrapes we ran out of bandages, and a melting bag of corn for my aches and pains. The girl from the crotch shot photos is nowhere to be found. “I’m wearing them now, promise.”
“You know your promises aren’t worth shit.”
I wipe my eyes and straighten. “It’s good you waited,” I say, gesturing to the mangled skin on my knees. “You would have missed out on a lot.”
Chris sips his beer. “You can say something nice about me now.”
“I’ve vowed to stop lying.”
That earns me a smile, which is somehow even nicer than all his compliments.
We return to the living room, where the news has given way to a game show. Chris eases onto the couch, wincing but working valiantly to keep his beer from spilling. He’d tended to my wounds but determinedly ignored his own.
“What happened in the casino?” I ask. “After I left?”
He yawns. “Well, as you know, Johan and Davor and ten of their friends came to do some gambling. They’d put a tracker in my truck, but your building security scrambles the signal, so they couldn’t track me beyond the block. As soon as I drove above ground, it was a different story. That’s how they found us ahead of schedule.”
“That was supposed to happen?”
“Not quite like that. The idea was that you and I would be hiding out of sight while Angela got them talking. I wanted you to know the threat was real. That whatever plans you have for that money, this is never going to end if those guys don’t get paid.”
“And if I don’t have twenty million dollars lying around?”
He arches an eyebrow. “You’ll wish you did.”
“I’ll call the prison tomorrow to set up a phone call with my dad. Visitation’s only on Saturdays. I guess you know that.”
He nods.
“Are you close? With my dad?”
“No. He thinks I ruined his life.”
“You did.”
“Well. Sort of.”
“So he wasn’t embezzling before Alex needed the money? He just wanted to help?”
Chris exhales. “Not exactly. More like he was stealing a little bit here and there, just when it was easy. Things no one would think to look for. But when your brother got into trouble, he needed to pick it up a bit. Problem is, he wasn’t very good at it, so once he got in, he just kept getting deeper and leaving bigger tracks.”
“Why didn’t he tell somebody? After Alex died, why wouldn’t he...” I blink away tears. It’s too late to cry, and the salt will burn my wounds.
“Because it’s safer in prison. Johan and Davor have to work to get somebody in there, and they haven’t had an easy time of it. They’re low-end guys, and the guys your father’s in with are white collar. It’s hard to find a guy who’s willing to break some bones in white collar prison, you know? That place isn’t half as bad as the place they’d wind up.”
“He could have told me.”
“He knew you were doing all right.”
“All right? I contemplated suicide five nights a week!”
“I meant that you were doing well enough to hide from Johan and Davor, even though you didn’t know they were looking for you.”
“How would he know that? Because I wasn’t missing any fingers?”
“Because I couldn’t find you.”
“He asked you to look for me?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“You know why I can’t go home?”
“Because your roommates will kill you.”
“Yeah. You know why that is?”
“Because you lie about everything.”
“Because my cover was that I was part of their game. In order to buy Alex time, I told them we had the money, that I knew where it was. But we ran out of time, Alex died, my cover was blown, and I disappeared.”
“Then why would you come back?”
He sighs. “Because of your father. A friend of mine who’s at the Bureau told me they got word Johan and Davor had a few guys working their way through the system, and one or two were going to arrive at Wakeman. If they got to your father, we’d never get the money.”