Burn It Up(91)

Casey’s eyes were wide, his lips pursed. He looked scared, and she’d never seen such a thing before. Not like this. Scared with no ferocity behind it. Helpless.

“I still appreciate everything you’ve done,” she said. “I’m still grateful. But if I’d known then what I do now, I don’t think I could have accepted any of it. Not anymore.”

After a long, tense pause, he asked, “And so what does that mean for us?”

She shook her head, the gesture pure despair and uncertainty. “I don’t know.”

“I won’t do that last job. I promise you that.”

“But not for the right reasons. You’d turn it down now, but you . . . You were still going to do it.”

“I was thinking about it. And only to help you, like I said.”

She laughed softly, sadly. “That doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make you Robin Hood, Casey. That only makes you a criminal.”

He flinched as though she’d struck him.

“You’re still a good man, in a lot of ways.”

“But not good enough?”

She shook her head, her heart breaking to realize it was true. Here she was again, falling for a bad man.

“Could I ever be good enough?” His expression doubled all that hurt in her chest.

She sighed again, the sound venting every bit of confusion and frustration weighing on her. “You don’t regret it,” she said. “You don’t feel bad for what you’ve done.” It was James all over again, only hidden behind an easy smile, instead of a stern scowl. A con man, indeed.

“I do now,” he said softly.

“But—”

“I know, I get it. Not for the right reasons.”

“Why doesn’t that terrify you?” she demanded, barely recognizing her own voice. “Thinking about how easily you could have cost someone their life, and all for some money?” Abilene was no angel, but she’d only ever gambled with her own safety. She refused to fall back on victimhood now, but she’d never been the villain, she didn’t think. She may have used men, but not a one of them hadn’t been anything less than willing to take the implicit trade-off. Well, none except James. He’d fought her. Failed in the end, but fought, and none of the others had.

“I guess I never thought about it that deeply,” Casey said, seeming to tease the truth out as he spoke. “I suppose maybe I couldn’t have thought that hard about it, not without second-guessing myself. Losing my nerve.”

“You make it sound like a game.”

“I can only be honest with you, and say that yeah, that’s exactly what it felt like to me.”

“Are you . . . Are you proud of that stuff?”

A long and loaded breath seemed to inflate then collapse his posture. “I was. Not so much recently—not since I met you, and wished I could tell you I’d been something better than a con artist for the past decade. But yeah, in the moment, I was proud of it. Not because I was getting away with something, and not because of the money, even. But I was proud I’d never been caught. Proud that not a single one of those fires had ever been deemed arson. Proud, because I’d never been so good at something in my entire life. Better than anybody else I knew, anybody else on the planet, I hoped.”

He called it talent, perhaps, but it struck her as no better than blind luck.

Still, this wasn’t a debate they were having, but an airing of secrets. I’d always assumed it would have been mine that came between us. She’d assumed she could have forgiven this man anything short of violence. But in the end, it wasn’t even the recklessness of his crimes that disturbed her most. It was his lack of remorse.

He spoke. “You can’t see me anymore.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, I can’t.” Her voice hitched and she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Not like I have been, this past week.”

“I hope you can still work for me and Duncan, at least.”

For now, she had little choice. Fortuity wasn’t rolling in jobs, and Mercy needed a roof, and heat, and food in her belly. “I’ll keep working for you. I don’t know how I feel about it all yet, but I still need to support myself.”

He nodded. “Good.”

“Will you tell Duncan now, where all that money came from?”

“If he asked, I might. If you told me it’d go some way to fixing this—us—then I would, yes.”

“I can’t say it would. But he seems like he respects the law. You might owe him that much.”

Casey nodded. “Maybe.”

They fell silent for a long time, and in those minutes their breath lengthened, as did the shadows as the sun dipped closer to the hills.

“I got you something,” Casey said, shattering the stillness. “I didn’t buy it with dirty money, either—I bought it after I cashed my paycheck. Can I give it to you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You don’t ever have to open it, if you don’t want to.” He stood. He reached into his front pocket and took out a little wad of red tissue paper and set it in her palm. “You can open it now, or next week, or never. But I want you to have it, either way. It’s just a tiny thing.”

She tucked it in her own pocket.