Jonathan held her gaze. “I think you do. How much do you owe on the truck?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Jonathan shrugged. “In a different circumstance, I’d agree, but let’s be honest here. It’s a cold morning, and you were worried enough about having your truck repossessed that you stayed up all night with a shotgun. All things considered, I’d argue that privacy is not your first priority. Come on, tell me. How much do you owe?”
She snorted a derisive laugh. “What, are you going to buy it?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said.
Her face went blank. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m going to buy your truck.”
“It’s not for sale.”
Jonathan just stood, giving her time to hear the ridiculousness of her own words.
“If I let you buy it, what am I supposed to do? I’ll be stranded out here.”
Jonathan cocked his head. “What was your plan when you thought I was the repo man?”
“I didn’t have one. That’s why I was going to try and talk him out of it.”
“With a shotgun? Who did you plan to have take care of Jilly while you were in prison?”
She threw an uncomfortable glance at her daughter, but said nothing.
Jonathan took the opportunity to further drive his point home. “Wouldn’t it be better to greet the repo man with a wad of cash than a twelve gauge?”
The woman clearly didn’t know what to do. “So, what, you expect me just to take a check from you? Even if it was good, without the truck-”
“I said cash,” Jonathan interrupted. “You know, folding money.”
Her shoulders sagged in disbelief. “You just happen to have twenty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars on you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Then why not just buy a car of your own?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said. He was being deliberately obtuse now.
“I mean-”
“I know what you mean. Thing is, there are no dealerships out here.”
The woman scowled as a thought crossed her mind. “Where are you from? How did you get here?”
This was why it was better to work at night-why it was always a bad idea to engage in chitchat.
Jilly sneezed and hugged herself tightly. “Mommy, I’m cold.”
“Me, too, honey.”
“Let’s go inside, then,” Jonathan suggested.
The woman coughed out another laugh. “Excuse me?”
“It’s warm inside,” he said.
“You really expect me to invite a strange man into my house?”
Jonathan polished his smile. “There’s a lot going on right now that I didn’t expect, but it’s happening anyway. What are your choices?” He counted the options on his fingers. “One, you can shoot me, but for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that you’re not going to do that. Two, you can just take my money and let me drive off in your truck, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening, either. Three, you can go inside and just leave me out here, in which case I’ll just take the truck. Four, we can all continue to stand out here together and freeze, but that’s just plain stupid. That leaves the most logical choice, which would have us all go in together. You have the shotgun, after all.”
Again, she stared as she tried to wade through it all. In the east, the sun had fully bloomed.
“Look,” Jonathan said. “I know we met awkwardly, but I really am one of the good guys. Either take my money for the truck and let me drive off, or let’s all go inside. It makes no sense for Jilly to be shivering like that.”
“So, I’m just supposed to trust you. The stranger who was about to steal my car.”
“I’ll introduce myself, then. I’m Leon Harris.” He considered reaching out to offer his hand, but worried that it might come off as aggressive. “Look. I’m going to step away from the truck now, and when I do, you’re going to see a holstered pistol on my thigh. Don’t freak out.”
She didn’t freak out, exactly, but the business end of the shotgun lined up closer to his chest. She’d still miss if she fired, but Jonathan didn’t think she knew that.
“Put it on the floor,” she commanded.
He pushed the truck’s door closed. “I can’t do that,” he said. “First of all, it’s an expensive weapon, and second, it’s modified to have really sensitive parts. It’s not a weapon that other people should handle.”
Her eyes remained locked on the weapon.
“Ma’am, I know that this is stressful and confusing, and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of it that I can’t explain. What I want you to understand-and the reason why I didn’t just continue to hide my weapon from you-is that if doing you harm were on my agenda, I’d be doing it, and with all respect, there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”
“I could shoot you.”
“And I could shoot you.” He said this in the most reasonable tone. “Or, we could shoot each other, but if it came to that, I one-hundred-percent guarantee that I would still be standing here unharmed when the smoke cleared. My point, though, is the very opposite of any of that. I have no intention of harming you or your daughter.”
She lowered the muzzle to the ground. “Susan Shockley,” she said. “Call me Sam. Or call me idiot, because that’s what I probably am for doing this.” She turned and put her hand on Jilly’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you warm.”
Jonathan wasn’t quite sure what they’d decided to do here.
“Come on, Mr. Harris,” Sam said. “Do you like coffee?”
They sat in the kitchen at a rectangular table that might have been hand-hewn from local hardwoods. At the far end, closest to the window that provided a sweeping view of the fields at the rear of the house, a place was set with nice china, complete with crystal stemware. Sam did not sit there, and she did not offer the place to Jonathan. She must have sensed his trustworthiness, because she’d returned the shotgun to its rack over the fireplace in the adjacent family room, where Jilly sat on an overstuffed chair, wrapped in her blanket and watching cartoons.
While his hostess moved through the ritual of brewing the coffee, Jonathan set his ruck on the floor and opened the top flap. On missions like this, it always paid to have cash on hand, the more the better. He counted out thirty thousand dollars in banded stacks of Franklins and set the money on the table.
Sam saw it as she was about to pour coffee into mugs, and she froze. “You were serious?” she said.
“A deal’s a deal,” Jonathan said. “My word is my bond. I can do platitudes and cliches all day.”
Steam rose lazily from the mugs. “Sugar’s on the table,” Sam said, pointing with her forehead to the bowl in front of him. “I’ve got milk if you need it.”
“No thanks,” Jonathan said. Ordinarily, he did drink his coffee with cream, but he didn’t want her waiting on him. For today, black would do just fine.
Sam took the seat across from Jonathan, and as she settled in, he pushed the stack of bills over to her. She made no effort to touch them. “What are you really about, Mr. Harris? Is that even your real name?”
“It’s real enough,” he hedged. “And what I’m really about is a very important matter that I can’t discuss.”
“Where did you come from?”
Jonathan sighed. “Tell you what,” he said. “Rather than you asking a lot of questions that I can’t answer, let’s just stop at me being on the side of the angels.”
“Did you rob a bank or something? That’s a lot of money. It’s a whole lot of cash.”
“I don’t use credit cards for my work,” Jonathan said, again with the smile. “And most of what I need to buy costs a lot of money.”
Sam looked at the stack of bills more closely. She picked up one of the packets and riffled it, perhaps checking to see if it was real. “This looks like thirty thousand dollars.”
“That is thirty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t owe that much on the truck.”
Jonathan twitched a shoulder. “Keep the change. For the inconvenience.”
Sam scowled deeply. “That’s almost six thousand dollars in change. I can’t do that.”
