Luke Read online

  And she’s smart. The whole group of them are. They're smart and charming and…criminals.

  There’s Iver, dressed in a suit even though we’re out in the middle of nowhere, talking about places I’ve only seen on TV – Monte Carlo and Santorini and Crete. He should be a pretentious dick, the kind of guy with too much money that you just want to punch, except that in the next breath, he’s showing me how to scam people in card games.

  There’s Emir, who I think might be the nerdiest nerd I’ve ever met. He hardly looks up at me when I walk in, and basically spends the rest of the night hunched over computers – four of them lined up on a table, wires crisscrossing and zigzagging everywhere in a tangle – working on God knows what. Probably an algorithm involving world domination.

  And there’s Oscar. Oscar is old school, the grandfather of the group. He’s classy and British or European or something with an accent, and he’s quiet. He looks completely unassuming, a doddering old man, but then he says something and you realize that not only has he heard everything going on, but that he’s sharp as a tack.

  They make normal conversation, talking about old times, old heists, stuff I’d be interested in if it weren’t for the fact that I’m sitting here instead of at Autumn’s place. I get annoyed that we’re not talking about what we’re actually here for, the con or whatever the hell it is we’re going to do that’s going to solve everything. But then Elias is on the television, and I’m momentarily distracted. He doesn't flip me off at the awards show, although River does punch some jerk in the face who tries to talk in the middle of her acceptance speech, and I immediately like her.

  I think about what Autumn and Olivia are doing right now. They’ve eaten dinner, I’m sure. I wonder what Autumn cooked -- probably some atrocity. Olivia has had a bath by now. Autumn sits beside her on the bathroom floor, her knees tucked up to her chest, looking at a magazine while Olivia plays in the tub with her bath toys, draws on the walls with crayons made of soap. When Olivia is done playing, Autumn bathes her and then reads to her.

  I finally got to read a story to Olivia the other night.

  I palm my cell phone, wanting to look at it again, silently cursing my stupidity for being so wrapped around the axle about a girl.

  Except I know it in my gut. She’s not just any girl. She’s the girl.

  It hits me, right there, that realization crashing against me full force like a ton of bricks.

  “We’re going to grift the town,” Iver says.

  “It’s so dramatic when he says it that way,” Tempest says, rolling her eyes. “You’re always so over-the-top with these things.”

  “You need a little more flourish in your life, darling,” he says.

  “I have just enough flourish, thank you.”

  “Look, maybe we just let it go,” I say, shrugging.

  “Fuck, are you kidding?” Silas asks.

  “No, I’m not joking. I’m aggravated,” I say, the edge returning to my voice with a vengeance. I don’t want to screw around here with them. Don’t they get that? “It’s not like one of us can’t just go kick the hell out of Sherriff Easton, get his confession on tape or something. Shit, I can go wail on him myself.”

  “That doesn’t solve the issue with the town,” Iver says.

  “We’ve looked into the mining company, the one buying people off their property,” Oscar says. “These people are no good. They're the worst kind of business. They have a history of destroying towns, blowing into a place like West Bend and bribing law enforcement, stealing people’s homes out from under them. Then they strip everything from the land, make a windfall, and pull up out of a place, the town totally destroyed, residents left in the lurch."

  “So what?” I ask, feeling suddenly defensive and non-compliant. “This isn’t my fight. I’m not Robin Hood, taking from the rich and helping the poor.”

  “One of those assholes – the mayor or sheriff – killed our fucking mother and you don’t even give a shit, Luke?” Silas’ voice gets louder, and he stands close to me, looking like he wants to push me but he doesn’t.

  “You’re going to what, avenge her death, Silas?” I ask. “Make those bastards pay? Why? She didn’t do jack shit for us.”

  “You don’t want to be involved, fine,” Silas says. “Why’d you even come up here, anyway?”

  “I’m just saying, there are other options than running some complicated con scheme here,” I say. “What does that even do? Send them to prison? So does a murder confession.”

  “But a murder confession doesn’t help anyone else,” Oscar says. “Like Letty Weston, Tempest’s grandmother.”

  “Your grandmother lives in West Bend,” I say flatly.

  Tempest nods. “She’s in a retirement home, but still has her property, said no to the mining company’s offers on the place,” she says. “But the company has a real bad habit of making sure that people who say no end up saying yes.”

  Autumn has said no to the mining company, I remember, pulling up that conversation from somewhere in the back of my mind.

  “Listen to the plan," Oscar says. "Then decide if it has merit."

  So I sit and listen to the plan, and the background they have on everyone. Besides the shit about the shady mining company, Emir dug up stuff about the sheriff and the mayor, dirt that’s enough to convince us that they’re rotten to the core, corrupt and poisonous to West Bend and its residents.

  Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking of Autumn and Olivia and how the hell to keep them as far away from this as possible.

  Oscar lays out a map, plots of land marked with red marker. “The mining company is going after the europium on the properties, we know that,” he says. “That’s what your father had found, what he told the geology teacher at the high school about. That teacher is long gone now, paid off by the mining company to disappear or –“

  “Or, made to disappear,” Silas says.

  “Yes,” Oscar agrees. “He’s gone and no one else knows about the europium.”

  “Well, no one except the people in this room,” Tempest says. “And the mayor and the sheriff.”

  “So the mining company has been picking off people one by one,” Iver says, sipping from his champagne glass.

  “Not literally, though,” I say. “It’s not just coming in here and murdering –“

  Oscar holds up his hand. “Literally, no,” he says. “It’s buying parcels of land, mostly, which is legal. Technically. Duping residents about the value of their property isn't the worst thing a company can do.”

  “But we do think they’ve done worse,” Tempest says. “Intimidation, outright threats – there have been rumors floating around. It's not official representatives from the mining company, but they’re obviously behind it.”

  “So, what are the properties marked on the map?” I ask, stepping forward for a closer look.

  Oscar trails his finger over the paper. “These are properties we’ve marked, places we’ve been able to find out that the company is interested in,” he says. “They’re casting a wide net.”

  “How do you know they’re interested in these places?” I ask, squinting to orient myself on the map.

  “Don’t ask,” Emir says.

  “It’s best not to know,” Oscar says. “Emir’s technical prowess doesn’t always operate within the bounds of the law.”

  Iver chuckles. “Doesn’t ever, he means.”

  “None of what you do is legal,” I point out.

  “True,” Oscar says. “But what Emir does is quite illegal.”

  “Seems like there’s not much of a distinction,” I say. Then I see it. Autumn’s orchard, outlined in red marker. “What’s this?”

  Oscar leans over, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. “One of the properties the company is quite interested in,” he says. “It's one that we can consider using to our advantage.”

  “Using to your advantage how?” I ask. Thoughts are rushing through my head, one right after the other. Autumn mentioned