My Darling Husband(29)

“Okay, then. What about my IRA?” I slide out of the truck and race up the alleyway with my phone and keys. I don’t expect to find anybody inside. This place is mostly for me, more living room and test kitchen than office space, an escape I picked up for a steal soon after Beatrix was born, because I couldn’t get a lick of work done at home. I fumble with the keys in the lock, but it’s cranky and refuses to cooperate.

“What about it?” Ed says.

“What’s it worth and how fast can you cash it out?” The dead bolt gives, and I trample inside, tapping in the code for the alarm. I don’t bother with the lights, or even closing the door behind me. I’m not going to be here for long.

“Besides the fact that you’d have to pay a penalty fee plus taxes on the entire amount, did you hear what I just said about the stock market? Don’t touch your IRA, Cam. You’d take a huge hit.”

“I need to know what it’s worth.”

“God, I don’t know. Half a million if you’re lucky.”

The number sticks to my stomach like an ulcer. I haven’t logged in to the account since the last time the stock market took a nosedive. Too painful, especially since my strategy was to wait it out. I’m young, not quite forty. I figured I wouldn’t have to touch it for a while.

But a half million? Shit. It should be at least double that.

“Do it,” I say, my shoes squeaking on the polished concrete floor. “But there’s one caveat. I need the money today.”

I’m moving fast through the dim space, past the factory-style windows high on the exposed brick walls, hung with the twinkle lights I inherited from the caterer I bought the place from. Jade didn’t do much other than throw some vintage rugs over the polished concrete floor, add some couches and chairs—“conversation corners,” she calls them. And in the middle of the room, a glass chandelier over a giant oak table she designed herself, littered with cookbooks and papers. I can’t walk by the thing without thinking back to the night we broke it in; Baxter was born ten months later.

On the other end of the phone, Ed chokes on a laugh, a loud phlegmy bark. “You can’t... That’s... Look, I want to work with you, I really do, but that’s impossible. Your IRA isn’t liquid. We’re going to have to sell off the stocks first, and there are transfer times—”

“I need the money, Ed. Like yesterday.” I settle my cell on a shelf in the storage room, giving him time for the realization to sink.

A long, painful silence.

I plug the code into the safe, and the lock slides open with a metallic thwunk.

“Is this about the fire?” Ed says finally. “Because if it is, I can maybe help get the ball rolling with the insurance company. You’re with Hartford, right?”

“This isn’t about the fire.” I turn around, scanning the shelves for a box, a bag. Something small and inconspicuous. I spot a shoebox on the top shelf filled with old receipts and dump them onto the floor.

“Then what?”

What would happen if I told him the truth? Would he tell his boss, call the cops? I’m pretty sure bankers have an ethical obligation to report suspected crimes, so better to keep Ed in the dark.

“I don’t have time to explain. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

“And you’re going to have to give me some kind of indication of what’s going on before I can agree to do this. I can’t help you without an answer.”

Normally I could volley like this for days. Winning Ed over with words, cooking up steaks and uncorking a bottle of my best red, plying him gently to my side, but every second I spend arguing is another second I don’t have the money. The clock is ticking. My heart feels like it’s about to explode. I don’t have time for this shit.

I grab my phone from the shelf and hold it an inch from my face. “What’s going on is that I need you to give me my money. Give me my damn money, Ed. It’s mine. Give it to me!”

There’s a long patch of empty air, and I force myself to pause. To take a deep breath and blow it out. Get my temper under control just enough to sound remorseful as I start again. “Come on, Ed. You know me. You know I wouldn’t ask unless this was life or death. The truth is I’m desperate, man.”

The silence stretches again while in my head, I’m doing the math. The rest of the line of credit, the few piles of cash in the safe, cash advances on my three credit cards. If I’m lucky, $100K, which means without that IRA, I’m screwed. Jade and the kids are screwed. I don’t have anywhere near enough.

I slide the money into the shoebox, along with what I really came for: my gun, a tidy black Smith & Wesson. The three magazines, eight 9mm rounds apiece, I drop into my jacket pocket. That’s twenty-four bullets I can sink into the asshole in the mask. I grab the box and head for the door.

Ed blows out a breath heavy enough to rattle the line. “Fine. But you’ll have to give me a minute to run things by my boss. Maybe we can work something out where we extend the line of credit if you sign over your IRA. Just to bridge the time it takes to sell the stocks.”

“Thanks, Ed. I really, really appreciate it. I owe you one.”

“Don’t thank me just yet. Alissa still needs to sign off on this plan, and even then, I don’t see how any of this takes place today. It’s going to be tomorrow morning at the earliest before I have that kind of cash.”