“It’s Anna Ebri. My old boss.”
“That bitch.”
Tiffany nods. “That bitch.”
“So she set this up?”
“She was always pushing us to get these kinds of things set up. To get people to take out loans they didn’t need. Especially if they might not pay it back. Anything to get the bank’s hooks into people. I thought it was unethical — and I’m happy to say that I was not good at selling people on these kinds of loans — but now I’m starting to suspect there’s something more to it.”
“What do we do now?”
She smiles. “We do our homework.”
“Fuck. Are you sure there’s nothing else we can do?”
“What do you mean?”
“We know Anna’s behind this, why don’t we go pay her a visit?”
Her smile turns into a frown. “Do you remember how I told you I would help you, but only if you kept the criminality to a minimum?”
“I said nothing about doing anything illegal.”
“You might not have said it, but you have that look.”
I smirk, raise an eyebrow. “A look? I get a ‘look’ when I’m about to do something illegal?”
“It reminds me of this kid who tried out for the track team. His name was Eddie Donaldson. He was a Freshman, and he tried out for pole vault, but didn’t pay attention to any of the coach’s instructions. Because he was a teenage boy, and like all teenage boys, he thought he knew everything. Eddie had that same look on his face right before he yelled ‘Hey, check this out’ and then took off running full-bore to do his jump. Poor Eddie reached his zenith, and then promptly caught himself on the pole. It was a terrible accident.”
“What do you mean when you say he ‘caught himself on the pole’?”
Tiffany gives me a level look. “I mean, even if he could’ve gone to Homecoming, he wouldn’t have been able to have any fun with his date afterward.”
Sympathetic pain stabs me right between the legs. “Fucking hell. Poor Eddie.”
She shakes her head; Tiffany is colder than I’ve given her credit for. “He deserved it. He didn’t pay attention to any of the risks, and he ignored the advice of the experienced people who tried to tell him otherwise.”
“Basically, you’re saying that if I go and have a chat with Anna or scope out her house, I might as well jump dick-first into a giant pole?”
She nods. “Yes. They’d both accomplish the same thing.”
This woman can be ice cold; it’s terrifying and hot at the same time.
“Fine. I’ll stay away from Anna,” I say. “But what’s our course of action here?”
“Homework. This is just the start, Blaze. We can’t solve this with guns and bare-knuckle fights; we solve this with our brains. Trust me, I handled trickier problems than this when I interned with Goldman Sachs, we’ll find a way out for your mom.”
I nod. Turn my focus back to the piles of papers, and start digging. Tiffany keeps her head down on the work, shuffling through paper after paper, muttering, quietly swearing, and stopping every so often to jot down notes on the back of some kid’s term paper.
Paper flutters to the floor.
And this time, Tiffany’s swearing is less than silent.
“This is bad.”
I look up at her. She’s staring at her sheet of notes and shaking her head.
“We knew that from the start. What’s changed?”
“I mean, there’s a lot of essential paperwork that should be here — stuff that, because your mom is kind of lax about throwing things out, would definitely be here — but it isn’t. And I’ve looked through everything in all the piles around the desk. It looks like whoever put this loan together deliberately made it so convoluted so as to be hard for the client to pay it back. This looks predatory.”
Papers crinkle as I clench my hands into a fist. “They’re targeting her?”
Despite everything I’ve promised to Tiffany, I’m already envisioning getting on my bike and paying Anna a visit.
Tiffany extends a hand, palm out, in a calming gesture.
“It could be. Or maybe there’s more going on that we don’t know about. The only way to figure this out for sure would be to get ahold of all the paperwork.”
I’m about to open my mouth when the doorbell chimes through the house. Cautiously, I rise from my seated position on the floor and step to the window of my mom’s office that overlooks the front yard. Peering down, I see three thick-necked sons of bitches that look exactly like the kind of assholes I’d shoot for even talking to my mother.
“Who the fuck are these people?” I growl. My hand’s already winding behind my back, reaching for my gun.
Before I can wrap my hands around the grip, Tiffany rises from her seat and hobbles to my side. Soft fingers touch my wrist, bringing my vengeful hand to a stop.
“I know them,” she whispers.
“I didn’t figure you to be the type to hang around street muscle. Who are they?”
“Well, I know two of them. They both work at the bank. As security guards.”
I squint, scoping out first their ride — an unassuming white van — and then sizing up man standing at the front of the pack of thugs. He’s got slicked-back hair, he’s heavyset — thick arms, thick neck, and a barrel gut — and he’s got two wicked scars on his face. There’s a tattoo on his forearm: the splayed-eagle insignia of the US Army. Resting against the hip of each of these men, hidden by their shirts but visible to anyone with even half an eye for it, are some heavy-duty pistols. The kind bank security guards definitely shouldn’t be carrying.
The Army goon gives up on ringing the doorbell and hammers
