Tommy lifted the ledger from the center console where it had ridden between us on the twenty-minute drive to the motel. It had been the longest twenty minutes of my life, spent imagining Judd’s hands on Spencer’s skin, the terror in her eyes. I forced the images away for the hundredth time and refocused on the motel door in front of us.
“So what’s your plan?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t have one,” I said as I popped open the door and stepped out of the car.
“Fantastic,” Tommy said and did the same.
I circled around the back of the car, doing my best to avoid the room’s front window. The thick curtains were pulled shut, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t watching. The more surprised Judd was to see us, the better chance we’d have at getting out of this alive.
“He has a gun,” I said over my shoulder, my back pressed against the brick wall outside Judd’s door.
“You didn’t think to mention that before now?” Tommy said in a harsh whisper.
“Would you be doing anything different?” I shot back.
“Knock,” Tommy said.
I wrapped my knuckles against the door, then covered the peephole with my thumb.
After a moment, a voice came from inside. “Who’s there?”
Tommy and I both flattened ourselves against the building in case he looked through the window when he couldn’t get a view through the peephole. “Management,” I said, disguising my voice. “Problem with your card.”
The chain on the door rattled, and the knob turned. “I didn’t use no—”
I threw my weight into the door, and it banged open, sending Judd stumbling back. Tommy followed me inside and closed the door quickly. I scanned the room. A terrified Spencer was huddled at the top of the far bed, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms clinging to the headboard. She wasn’t tied up, as far as I could tell, and her jeans and t-shirt were still intact. Thank God for small favors.
Judd regained his balance quickly and aimed his gun at my chest. “Nice of you to finally show up,” he said, in a tone too friendly for our current circumstances.
“You know, Prince, I’m getting awfully tired of you pointing that gun in my face.”
“It’s true?”
Every head swiveled to look at Spencer. She still crouched against the headboard, but now the fear in her face was replaced by angry disbelief.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Tommy asked.
“It’s true?” she asked again, ignoring her dad to keep her eyes locked on me. “You know this guy?”
I exhaled a deep sigh. Tommy might have decided not to tell her the truth about me, but Judd had apparently not been so considerate. “I know him,” I said.
Spencer flew from the bed and charged toward me. She thrashed at my face and chest with her fists, and a small part of me wished Judd had tied her up. I took several steps back, trapped between her and the wall, and lifted an arm to shield my face. But I wasn’t going to stop her. I deserved everything she did to me and more.
“You bastard. You lying bastard!”
“All right, darlin’.” Judd laughed. “As much as I’d love to see you beat the shit out of him, the men have business to discuss.” He grabbed her by the arm mid-swing and tossed her like a rag doll onto the closest bed. Tommy took a step toward him, his face creased with rage, but Judd turned the pistol in his direction and brought him up short. “Uh-uh. I wouldn’t do that, friend.”
“You touch her again, Judd, and you’re going to need more than that peashooter to keep me from killing you,” Tommy growled.
Spencer didn’t move from the bed, but Judd’s manhandling hadn’t slowed her tongue any. “So it’s true. You’re working with him?” she asked, her eyes still boring into me like knifepoints.
“No,” I said but thought better of it. “Yes. Kind of. We’re both here for the same reason. But this…” I swept an arm around the room. “This wasn’t part of my plan.”
“What was your plan then? To get me into bed to get closer to my dad?”
I winced and looked at Tommy. He was still watching Judd and his gun, and I hoped that was enough distraction from what his daughter had just announced. I turned back to her. “I came for a book. That one.” I pointed to the book in Tommy’s hand. Judd’s eyes followed and locked greedily onto the ledger. “That’s it. I just wanted the book back.”
“A book,” she said, practically spitting the word back at me. “You did all this for a stupid book?”
“It’s not… I can’t really explain it, but it’s important to someone in my clan and they want it back.”
“Your clan!” I could tell by her expression I wasn’t helping my cause.
Judd laughed again. “I tried to explain it to her too, but I don’t think she’s as smart as you said, Buffer.”
The muscle in my jaw twitched as I bit down on my response. There were only so many battles I could fight at once. “I’m not a transfer student from Loyola. I’m not even really enrolled at Balanova. I’m from a Traveler clan in Louisiana, and I came up here to settle a score. That’s the whole story.”
“What does this have to do with my dad?”
Okay, maybe not the whole story. I looked at Tommy again, and this time he looked back. It was bad enough that Spencer had to find out everything about me; I wasn’t about to dump all of Tommy’s history on her too.
Once again, though, Judd decided to do the honors. “You mean you never told your little girl all about the trouble you caused, Saint Thomas? I’m surprised at you. You know what the Good Book says about liars.”
“Shut your mouth, Judd, or I’ll shut it for you,” I warned.
He moved the gun to me again. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Dad?”
I heard Tommy’s long sigh but couldn’t take my eyes off Judd’s gun to turn and look at him.
“Go ahead and tell her, Tommy,” Judd coaxed. I wanted to tear his lips from his face rather than look at his smile a second longer, but the gun in his hand kept me where I was. “I, for one, would be very interested to hear you try to explain this.”
“Before you were born, I was a member of the same Traveler clan. I was a conman, and I was good at it.” Tommy paused, and when he started again, you could tell how hard it was for him to spit out the rest of his story. “Twenty or so years ago, I was running a scam with another Traveler named Jim—his dad.” Tommy indicated me with his head. “I had a bad feeling about it from the start. Something was off about the mark. I tried to talk Jim out of it, but it was a bigger score than either of us had seen and he wanted it. Turns out I was right. When the mark realized what had happened, he went ballistic, came after us with a shotgun. Jim was killed, and I knew I had to get out. I couldn’t keep living the way I was.”
It felt like all the oxygen had left my body. Tommy hadn’t killed my da. He’d gotten himself killed for the sake of a big score. Just like Jimmy Boy had said. Now I was staring down the barrel of a gun because of my own goddamn ambition.
I finally tore my eyes away from the pistol to look at Spencer. The devastation on her face was much harder to take than the anger that had been there a moment before.
“Spencer,” I said, taking a step toward the bed despite the gun trained on me.
“Stay the hell away from me,” she said, scrambling back like a scared crab. “You’re a monster!”
The word hit me like a baseball bat to the face. I hung my head, deserving every word, but surprisingly, Tommy spoke up. “Spencer, he may have lied to you, but in the end, he chose you. I offered him this.” He held up the battered book that had caused all of our trouble. “But he chose you. He’s no monster.”
“This is just great.” She laughed bitterly. “You’ve been completely opposed to any guy I’ve liked since the fourth grade, and this is the one you finally decide to defend?”