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“Who?” Clark asked, and Cleo tried to read his face. He didn’t look angry, just shocked.
“You know how this works,” Nick bit back quickly. “I’m not giving you anything until you start talking. Why would someone think dropping my name and your name might get them something?”
“I have no idea. I don’t even know your name.”
“And you’re not going to right now. This here is my lawyer. She’s the best in the biz, but she can’t help me unless she knows what we’re dealing with. Just tell me what industry you are in.”
“I work right there,” Clark said, his nostrils flaring. “I stuff shit in boxes all day and pass them down the line to someone who stuffs more shit in the box.”
“So maybe this isn’t recent. There is some serious international shit happening. It had to be when you left the country. Even if you’re living by the book now, you must have done something pretty bad in your past if they’re going to pull it out now for leverage.”
“I don’t know.” Clark shook his head and then lowered his voice as a few people got out of their cars nearby. “I can’t talk about this here. I can’t lose this job.”
Cleo leaned in and, as a favor to him, kept her voice low as well, trying to imply they were on the same team. “We won’t take much of your time if you can give me something to work with. Is it drugs? Trafficking? What have you been mixed up with?”
“None of that,” he asserted, his eyes growing wider with every accusation. “I don’t have a record.”
Cleo snickered. “I do this for a living, sir. I know how many criminals don’t have records because of lawyers just like me. I’m a shark, and my acquittal rate speaks for itself. You’ve moved all over the country. East Coast. West Coast. The Plains. A man like that has got to be hiding from something. I’ve even got you up in Canada at some point. Did you cross the border with something you shouldn’t have?”
“Canada?” Clark asked, looking back and forth between Cleo and the curious coworkers in the parking lot. “I have family up there. I’ve visited a few times, but that was decades ago. I did take some bologna across once without claiming it, and I had to pay a fine.”
Nick gritted his teeth. “Stop screwing around.”
“I’m not. Honestly, I can’t imagine what someone might say about me to get themselves out of jail. I’ve never been in any trouble. The only reason I moved around a lot was because my parents used to ship me to different family members when I was younger.”
“Because you were trouble?” Cleo asked, trying to lead him to the answer.
“Back then, I guess by their standards, I was. I was dating a few girls. I stole some money from the snack stand at the school football game. It was all petty stuff. My entire family was very religious and strict. That time I went to Canada, I was eighteen, and my parents found a pack of cigarettes in my car. That was enough to send them over the edge. I was furious they’d ship me away from home just for that.”
Cleo tapped the table impatiently. “And you didn’t get mixed up in anything in Canada? That’s the only place you’ve been out of the country. It has to be that.”
“Are you kidding?” Clark spat out. “I was in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any trouble to get into. I worked at my great aunt’s church and rode around town counting the days until I could go back home. I was miserable. I hated every second of it. Well, almost every second of it.”
“Who can account for that?” Cleo asked, pressing her palm to the table. “You have yourself in a very precarious position. I wouldn’t hold anything back.”
“My great aunt is dead,” Clark said. “There’s a priest up there. I don’t know if he’s dead or not. And a woman.”
“What woman?” Cleo pressed, trying not to sound too desperate for the information.
“Her name was Mariena. She was older than me and was working at the church too. She could vouch for me being there if you could find her.”
“You dated her?” Cleo asked, her lips pursed so she wouldn’t blurt out any more questions and over talk the issue.
“She was married.”
Nick groaned. “Those are two separate things. Maybe this is what everyone is so interested in. You do something to the jealous husband?”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” Clark said, raising and then very suddenly lowering his voice. “I was eighteen. She and I got snowed in during a blizzard.”
“And you saw your chance to—”
“It was actually really something,” Clark said, finally asserting himself. “She had a couple of kids at home and a husband who wouldn’t even bother to come to get her at the church before the snow got bad. We were really stuck. Everyone was snowed in for a while. But we made do with what we had, and we talked for ages. She was hurting. Unhappy. Lonely. I thought maybe I could make her feel better. And you know what, for the whole time we were stuck there, I did. We laughed and sang songs and messed around with the stuff all over the church like little kids run amok.”
Cleo could read it all over his face. The way Clark was reminiscing, he was telling the truth. That time in his life had changed him. It meant something to him.
“And then somebody cleared the snow out, and that was it?” Nick asked, narrowing his eyes skeptically.
“No,” Clark reported sadly. “When we knew it was almost over and someone would come to the church, she started talking sort of crazy.”
