Page 114 of York

“Think the water is still on?” he asked, walking over toward the hose wound up on a wheel near the corner of the driveway.

“I’m counting on it.”

Spiro cranked the tap, and it sputtered to life.

As I moved the car, he picked up shells, washed the blood into the ground, then rinsed down the tarp and folded it while singing some random-ass song I hadn’t heard in a decade.

Once we were both satisfied, we shared a look and climbed back in the car.

On the way back to Shady Valley, Spiro had me stop in three separate towns—one to donate the tarp to an unhoused man, one to drop the wiped-down wallet into a mailbox, and one so he could drop the cell phones into a recycling box at an electronic store.

Huh.

Maybe Slash was right in sending him down here to us.

“Why Golden Glades?” I asked when we pulled into the lot in Miami where some old friend of Huck was going to strip and crush Runa’s car.

“What do you mean?”

“Why Golden Glades instead of Shady Valley?”

“Have you seen Shady Valley? Landlocked small town in the middle of nowhere. I want to be on a beach, peeling bikinis off a new girl every day. Not creating a rotation of the same small-town girls and shooting pool or drinking at the only bar in town.”

“I see your point,” I agreed. “Though Golden Glades isn’t exactly a big town either.”

“It’s close enough to one.”

“Fair. Ready to meet Huck?”

“He’s gonna love me,” Spiro boasted with a devilish smirk.

The thing was… I was pretty sure that was the case.

Runa - 3 months

“I love it,” I told Teddy as we toured one of the buildings he and his team had come up with that they thought might work for the site of a future women’s shelter.

“It needs a lot of work, I’ll admit,” Teddy said, turning in a circle. “But you’ll soon have the money. And I don’t think any of the other locations will be as protected as this one.”

He was right. It was at the end of a dead-end road with no access to the back of the building, thanks to a large lake. Sure, if someone was determined enough, they could come across the lake to access the building. But that was where a tall, unscalable fence came in. I wouldn’t want open-access to the water anyway, if kids were going to be around.

“And there is a lot of room out back for play equipment,” I agreed. “What was this place again?”

“Some sort of factory. It’s built well. The brick walls work in its favor, even if it’s going to take a lot to turn it into the little apartments you are aiming for.”

“If I’m going to do it, I want to do it right. There is such a need for these places. And for places to stay that feel like a home, not a shelter.”

“It’s an amazing project. And you will have more than enough money soon enough.”

Teddy had been invaluable navigating this whole process of figuring out how to handle the rare earth mineral rights, how I would even handle that much money, where I could invest, and how to save.

It was enough to make my head spin. Me, who never had more than a few thousand dollars at a time in my life.

But Teddy had a lifetime of experience with even more money than I would ever have. He was able to break down the complications into simple terms and ease my fears.

And he wasn’t pushy.

He was as rich as God, but he still worked hard at creating more wealth. Yet he understood that my path was different. Sure, I wanted money for Denali, and maybe even Denali’s kids. But I wanted to dedicate a large chunk of this found money to things to help women like the one I had been for so many years.