Lie by the Pool by Susan Walter

Author:Susan Walter [Walter, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

* * *

LUKE

“Your wife is lovely,” Alex said when I walked into the garden center at Home Depot, a.k.a. “the showroom.” We always met outside, where it was noisy and my truck blended in with all the others. Now that I had graduated from hapless dimwit to full-fledged coconspirator, we couldn’t be too careful.

“I didn’t know you played the piano,” I said. There was no point pretending I didn’t know why he had gone to my home and introduced himself to my wife, but it didn’t hurt to be cordial.

“Oh, it’s been years since I’ve played; she was very forgiving.”

“Yes, that’s one of the qualities I admire most about her.” I hadn’t told Bree about the mess I’d gotten myself into. Yes, she was forgiving, but my having joined a criminal cabal of arms dealers and human traffickers might have been a bridge too far.

“How are you enjoying the house?” He loved to ask me about the house, as if it were a reasonable consolation prize for being duped into a life of crime. I liked having a house in Beverly Hills, but Bree and I would have been happy in a refrigerator box at the side of the freeway as long as we had each other.

“Still settling in.” I’d foolishly thought paying an inflated price for the property they’d bought for me would make us square. I had taken close to $3 million from them in the form of big profits on small jobs, and they had sold me a parcel of land for $3 million more than what they had paid for it. I thought that would be the end of it, but turns out it was just the beginning.

“I have some good news,” Alex said, and I braced myself because Alex and I had a very different definition of what news was good. “We’re giving you a raise.” Any normal person would have been thrilled to hear they were about to start making more money, but to me a raise meant I was about to get dragged deeper into the operation, and I wanted out.

“Alex, I appreciate the opportunity, but this is not the life I want,” I whispered, over the din of seventies soft rock playing through overhead speakers. “You can have the house; I’ll sell it back to you at whatever price you want.” At this point I didn’t care if I was in debt to them for the rest of my life—I just wanted my freedom back. But his response was chilling.

“That’s not how it works, Luke.”

And that’s when I fully understood what I’d become: I was not a poor schmuck who’d made a few shady deals; I was a long-term asset cultivated over many years, doomed to keep helping them as long as I was useful. Those first few jobs when I’d been overpaid, those were the appetizer. The continuous flow of money through my business, that was the meal—a never-ending buffet that they would feast on for life. They had led

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