Every hidden thing, p.15
Every Hidden Thing, page 15
Parker looked around the table. “So what do we do?”
The room got quiet. Parker searched for options—but if this all came down to a ton of money needed to pay off Grams’s loan—what could they do? “What about the police? If someone has hired muscle to scare renters away, we’ll need the police, right?”
Steadman snorted. “Rankin still thinks this is kids chasing some kicks—and he still believes you’re part of this, Parker. He so much as said he wasn’t going to investigate any more break-ins at Bayview or Bayport as long as you still had the keys.”
“Gee, thanks, Officer Rankin.” Parker couldn’t help the sarcasm. He turned to Steadman. “You want my keys, Boss?”
“No.” Steadman’s voice was firm. “I know this isn’t you.”
Which was a relief. “But if you need the police to help with the investigation, maybe—”
“You ought to fall on your sword?” Steadman shook his head. “Not going to happen. Besides, we can’t wait around for the police to get it in gear. I think we leave the police out of this.”
“Which comes back to the question,” Ella said. “What do we do now?”
“If some Boston group is trying to take what’s ours—we fight back,” Steadman said. “This means war.”
“Great,” Ella said. “I’ll just go up to my room and load my bazooka.”
Everyone laughed—including Steadman. But the room got serious again—quick. There was something about Steadman’s eyes. A determination there. Confidence. “We’re not going to let them win. We’re going to fight.”
“I know this isn’t really our fight, but we’re in, too,” Dad said. “We don’t want anyone else to own Mercy’s place here. But before we can beat an enemy, we need to know everything we can about them.”
“And,” Ella said, “how are we going to do that?”
“We look for a weakness,” Steadman said. “A blind spot. We already know their objective, and we do all we can to block them.”
“And we’ll pray God shows us the way,” Dad said.
“I don’t know beans about God,” Steadman said. “But I do know a thing or two about guerilla warfare. Smaller forces—outmanned and outgunned—have historically held back incredibly more powerful forces. But we need to stick together. Work as a unit—or they’ll pick us off one by one. I say we form some kind of Rockport Resistance movement.”
Ella nodded. “I like it.”
“If there are spirits involved,” Grams said, “no amount of resistance on our part is going to make a lick of difference—unless God Almighty fights for us.”
Steadman held up one hand. “I’m not going to sit back waiting for miracles. But I have a friend—we served together. I’d trust him with my life. He does investigative work now. I’m going to have him get some intel on this Boston Investors Group.”
“I’ll check some sources too,” Mom said. “Maybe someone at the paper has some info on them.”
“And I’ll also have a little chat with my banker friend, Scorza,” Steadman said. “See if we can’t get him to cut you some slack.”
To Parker, the thought of Steadman putting a little friendly pressure on Bryce Scorza’s dad sounded really promising.
“We stick together on this,” Steadman said. “We can’t let an outside group get a toehold in Rockport. Agreed?”
Nobody was arguing with him there.
“And Mrs. Houston, please,” Steadman said. “Don’t go to a realtor about this. And do not sign anything. No papers. No agreement to sell. Nothing.”
Grams looked directly at El. “I won’t sign a thing—unless I’m absolutely sure there is no other way.”
“Okay, let’s get back together in a few days,” Steadman said. “By then we should know a lot more about this Boston Investors Group.”
Ella sucked in her breath. “Boston Investors Group!”
Parker raised his eyebrows and looked at her—along with everyone else.
“It’s an acronym. BIG.”
Steadman whistled. “I should have caught that.”
Parker had a feeling BIG was bigger than any of them might guess. If this group hired muscle to intimidate owners into selling—what might they do if one pushed back?
CHAPTER 29
THE IDEA CAME TO PARKER as he lay in his bed long after the house got quiet. The muffled rumble of waves storming the Headlands sometimes helped him drift off to sleep. Other times it helped him sort out his thoughts. And tonight the ideas were falling into place.
Mr. Steadman and Mom could do the checking into BIG. But Parker wasn’t going to sit around and wait. If this was war, then maybe Parker needed to set his own combat strategy.
The pounding surf sort of sounded like a battle, didn’t it? Wave upon wave of attack. What if this really was some kind of twisted big business strategy of this investing group? What if they really were mounting some kind of campaign to intimidate rental owners? Could it be that the burglaries weren’t random at all? Were they all about eroding the incomes from people like Grams and Mr. Steadman so they’d sell cheap? And was Mr. Scorza tied into this scheme somehow?
Steadman clearly had deeper pockets than Grams did. Thankfully it seemed like he could ride this storm out—at least for now. But Grams was in over her head. She was drowning—and El was going down with her.
That couldn’t happen.
Parker had been worried about losing his job. His boat slip. Not that those things didn’t matter, but his issues were no comparison to what El was going to lose if something didn’t change—and fast.
The note from his grandpa sat on the small table beside his bed with the dive knife on top. He unsheathed the knife and reread the verse. “God, I’d really appreciate if You’d reveal some hidden things right about now.” And honestly, without some kind of miracle, exactly how could Parker ever help El and Grams?
He raised his bedroom window. Felt the sea breeze on his face. Heard the relentless attack on the Headlands shoreline.
“God,” he whispered. “Show me what I can do. Help me to help them. Strengthen me for the fight.” He stopped, and wondered at his own prayer. Strengthen me for the fight? Where did that come from?
But there would be a fight. Somehow, he knew that was coming.
What they really needed to do was solve the mystery of the break-ins. If the burglar was caught—and word spread that it wasn’t a ghost and that the threat was gone—wouldn’t that change everything? If it happened quick enough, maybe Grams could start booking rentals again—and she could get her loan extended or something. Maybe BIG would move on to another town.
The key would be catching the burglar somehow. Finding his connection to the investors group. Maybe they could do some kind of surveillance on the rental homes. Not all of them, but focus on Grams’s place—and Steadman’s rentals. Those seemed to be the houses they were after—or the ones they’d made offers on, anyway. If they could catch the guy or get video evidence, that might be all they’d need. If it could be traced back to BIG, the investors would disappear faster than a sandcastle in high tide. Catch whoever was doing the break-ins. That’s what he needed to do.
He made some quick mental notes. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that they needed to act on this—and fast.
Maybe he’d send Jelly a quick text now, just to get her take on it. And he’d definitely run it by El tomorrow. Maybe take her out for a ride in the Boy’s Bomb and outline his plan. She’d go for it. The only doubt he really had? Himself. How was he supposed to organize a stakeout—and catch Shadow-man?
“God, strengthen me for the fight.”
CHAPTER 30
Thursday, June 9
“THIS IS NOT HOW I PICTURED THINGS PLAYING OUT,” Harley said. He stared out the back window of the Rockport Dive Company with Scorza at his side. On Tuesday night, they’d roughed up Steadman’s rental home—and for what? Gatorade still hadn’t been hauled off to jail. When the cop stopped at his house barely thirty minutes after the break-in, Harley and Scorza had been doing an end zone victory dance in the shadows. But it didn’t last long. Why didn’t the guy even haul Gatorade in for questioning?
Harley had a great view of Rockport Harbor—and a lousy view of Gatorade driving his wimpy little skiff around the south side of the yacht club and into deeper water. Ella sat in the bow seat, facing Gatorade at the wheel. She dangled one hand over the side like she hoped to catch some spray. From this distance she was no bigger than a spectator sitting on the top row of the bleachers—but it was still obvious she was happy. For a moment Harley imagined it was him driving the skiff. Would Ella ever look that happy just hanging out with him?
Scorza followed his gaze and pointed the football at Gatorade’s boat. “What . . . you didn’t figure Gatorade would be taking your sweet little Ella for a ride?”
Harley hauled off and slugged Scorza in the arm—but not the passing arm. “She’s not my sweet little Ella.”
“Got that right, loser. Black Beauty is riding with Gatorade.”
“She’s not a horse, either.”
“Okay . . . how about I just call her Beauty then. Or Black.”
Scorza liked getting guys riled up. Finding a bruise and grinding his knuckle into it. But usually he was careful not to step over the line with Harley. Toe over, for sure, but never quite enough to draw a penalty flag. But he was getting close.
“You’ve got plenty of friends. You don’t need her.”
Plenty of friends? Harley wasn’t so sure about that. Kids knew his name, but they didn’t know him. If he wasn’t on the team, he’d be invisible.
“Anyway, she’s the real loser,” Scorza said. “She should be thanking her lucky stars you’d even want to be seen hanging around her. And if you ask me, you can do better.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Actually, my dad was just talking to me about the Houstons. Here’s exactly how my dad put it.” Scorza smiled. “He told me to picture my Nike football spikes.”
Alpha Menace Elites. The two-hundred-dollar spikes Harley would drool over, but never own.
“The Nikes are me. And you. Got it?”
Harley had no idea where this was going.
“And my dad said the Houstons are dollar-store flip-flops. Ella’s not even in the same universe as us.”
Harley grabbed two fistfuls of Scorza’s jersey and slammed him against Uncle Ray’s prized beer can collection. Empties went flying in all directions. “Your dad’s an idiot.”
Scorza acted totally unfazed. “I’ll bet your dad, the big motorcycle dude, was no different than mine.”
Harley pushed off and turned away to keep from popping him in his big fat mouth. “You don’t know a thing about my dad.”
It was moments like this that made him wonder. Was the guy truly his friend, or was it all about what Harley did for him on the field? Did Scorza love hanging around only because Harley caught nearly everything he threw at him in a game? The wobbly balls. The low passes. The ones that were just too far out in front of him—but somehow he caught them anyway?
Outside of football, they really had nothing in common. Scorza’s dad wore a suit and drove an Audi to his big man bank job. The only time Harley had seen his own dad wearing a suit was in the coffin. And the suit wasn’t even his.
Harley grabbed empty beer cans and restacked them on the shelves as fast as he could, careful to have the labels facing out. Scorza leaned against the doorjamb and watched. If Uncle Ray walked back in the shop at this moment and saw his booze-can bounty scattered the way it was, he’d lighten Harley’s pay for the night. Guaranteed.
“I don’t get your fascination with her anyway,” Scorza said. “What’s she got that every other girl at Rockport High doesn’t have?”
She was smart—like in a way where she wouldn’t take trash talk from anybody. Kind of a fighter that way. She was confident—but not in some proud way like so many girls who knew they were gorgeous. Ella was kind. Saw somebody hurting and said something nice to make their day a tiny bit better. Nobody gave Devin Catsakis a seat at their table. But Ella did. She made space in her life for somebody that none of the others would. Like that stupid Gatorade. And he loved the way she took care of her grandma. He’d seen them walking past the windows of the dive shop on their way to get strudel or something, arm in arm. Who did that kind of thing? Would the girls Scorza talked about even take the time to be with their grandma? “Lots of things.”
“Right. And you can’t name one.”
Harley had the urge to take the Old Milwaukee can in his hand and shove it down Scorza’s throat.
“Forget the Houston girl, man. She isn’t even in the same league as all the—”
“Shut up, okay? I don’t want to talk about this.”
Scorza snickered like he’d scored an extra point. “Why do you want her for a friend so bad anyway? I just can’t figure that out.”
If Scorza would take his face out of the mirror long enough to really see who Ella was, he wouldn’t be asking dumb questions like that.
“She some kind of charity case for you or something?”
Something inside Harley was rising up. Flexing. Between Harley and Ella? Harley was a lot more likely to be the charity case. He straightened the last of the beer cans.
“You want to be a big brother to her, is that it? If you think she’s an only child, you’re totally stupid.”
“Stop.”
Scorza grinned liked he’d found the bruise he was looking for. “She’s probably got twenty half-brothers or something. But you never see them around because they’re all in jail.”
“Just shut your stinkin’ mouth.” There were times, just before the hike, where the guy lined up opposite him would start trash-talking. As hard as Harley tried not to let it get under his skin, sometimes it just did. Those were the moments he’d get this angry blood rush he’d feel all the way to his eyeballs. It was a super-charged thing—and whenever it happened he knew he was absolutely going to cream the defender lined up against him.
“Or maybe,” Scorza said, “you feel some kind of weird bond with her. She doesn’t have a dad—”
“Don’t go there. Not another word.” The rush was already flowing—and Scorza was deliberately inching his toe over that line of scrimmage. “Final warning.”
“Just saying . . . she doesn’t have a dad, and you don’t have a dad, so—”
HIKE.
Harley whirled and charged. His shoulder slammed into the big 8 on Scorza’s jersey. The force of his momentum lifted enough weight off Scorza’s feet that Harley drove him easily out of the back room and into a rack of Don’t Drink and Dive T-shirts. The entire display crashed to the floor—along with Scorza and Harley.
Scorza was on his back, scrambling to roll over, trying to get to his feet. Harley had him pinned good. He balled his fist and—
“HEY!” Uncle Ray rushed through the open door and was on him. Grabbed Harley’s T-shirt and yanked him backward. “Not in my store.”
The blood rush was gone as quick as it had come over him. He stood. Brushed off his jeans.
“Save it for football camp, fellas.”
Harley did not want Scorza to think his comments bothered him as much as they did. It was a little late for that. He offered a hand to Scorza—still on his back—and tangled in Rockport Dive Company gear. Scorza hesitated, then smiled and grabbed his hand with an arm-wrestling grip. Harley gave him a hard yank to his feet.
“Now get this place cleaned up,” Uncle Ray said. “Right now. And I’m going to inspect the merchandise after you do.” He glared at Harley. “Damages come out of your pay.” He fished his Marlboro pack out of his pocket and tapped a cigarette free. “Better look perfect in here when I come back in.” Uncle Ray stepped back out the front door and slammed it behind him.
Scorza worked alongside Harley without a word. But probably twenty seconds didn’t go by before he started laughing. The real kind, where you can’t find the kill switch. It was contagious that way, and soon Harley was doubled over, too. Burning off the excess adrenaline.
“Whatever got into you, I wish we could bottle it for the whole team.” Scorza wiped the laugh tears from his cheeks. “We’d have their first-stringers in the hospital by halftime.”
And that was that. There was no “Hey, sorry for the stinkin’ comments about Ella,” and Harley sure wasn’t going to apologize for taking him down either. But it was over. For now.
Satisfied with the T-shirt display, Harley made sure the booze-can collection looked perfect before walking to the back room window. Gatorade was nearly out at the entrance of the harbor now. Too far away for Harley to really see anything.
“Okay.” Scorza stepped up beside him. “So you want the girl to be your friend—or more than that—which probably won’t happen with Gatorade around. So we gotta keep Gatorade from the girl—which ain’t gonna happen all by its lonesome. What are we going to do about it?”
Harley shook his head. They’d already tried something. It hadn’t gotten them anywhere.
“No game plan, hotshot?”
Harley shrugged. But it seemed to him that if Gatorade got pulled in for questioning—or better yet, arrested—Steadman would fire him for sure this time. Gatorade would lose his boat slip—and there’d be no more rides with Ella. The game wouldn’t be over, for sure, but at least Harley would have possession of the ball.
“So let’s run the same pattern again.”
Harley eyed him. Scorza was serious.
“Listen,” he said. “How many times have we run a play, and we don’t get past the line of scrimmage or we lose yardage? What do we do?”
They’d execute the same play again—and soon. The other team never expected it, and they’d get a first down easily. Harley smiled. “OK, let’s run it again. And maybe we step it up a little. Throw in a couple surprises.” The gears were already turning—and meshing in his head. What if they hit both of Steadman’s rental homes—and planted a little evidence at Gatorade’s place?
Scorza backed across the room and absolutely drilled the ball to Harley—like he hoped it might lift him off his feet, too. “And this time, we’re going to get some yardage.”
