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Back when Olivia Travers was eighteen and so newly graduated from high school that her dreams were still intact, she’d uttered the words, “I’m glad I’ll never have to see Carson Clark’s smug face again.”
Turns out, she’d spoken too soon.
Because seven years later, her younger brother, Matt, was asking her to do just that. He’d texted her several times during the afternoon telling her to call. Sometimes he forgot that teachers, even art teachers, couldn’t just drop everything to make phone calls. High school students didn’t do well without supervision, and if she so much as turned her back on a few of them, they’d be flicking paint at each other. The little darlings. Bless their overly hormonal hearts.
She planned to call Matt on her way home, but he texted her ten minutes before school ended.I need to talk to you. It’s an emergency.
Fine. She’d call him. Granted, sometimes Matt’s emergencies were less urgent than others. This one could be anything fromI need you to stop by the store on your way home to buy DoritostoMom was in a car crash.
Olivia told her students to put their paintings on the drying rack and clean up their areas. Then she retreated to her desk to call her brother.
He picked up after the first ring. “Hey, Olivia.” He sounded like he was driving somewhere.
“What’s the emergency?” she asked.
“I need you to do a big favor for me.”
So, this was the Doritos variety of emergency. “You know I’m still at work, right? School doesn’t end until three.”
“Sorry. It’s important. I’m heading to Bozeman. Gonna live there for a while.”
“Why?” Except for the year Matt had spent at Montana State University doing more partying than studying, her brother had lived in Lark Springs his whole life.
“I have a friend who can get me work there, and I gotta get out of town so Carson Clark doesn’t kill me. That’s the favor—I need you to talk to him for me.”
“What?” Olivia dropped her voice. “Why would Carson kill you?” Matt had been working as a project manager for Carson for the last month and a half, renovating a cabin an hour out of town. As far as she knew, Matt’s only complaint about his boss was that he expected him to start work at the crack of dawn.
“I’m going to pay him back. Tell him that.”
Olivia rubbed her temples. “Why do you owe him money?” Her brother had never been responsible with money, but he’d never owed anyone so much that he skipped town.
There was a long pause on the phone.
Only half of her class was actually cleaning up their tables. The other kids were sitting around talking. With little more than a week of school left, students thought the rules stopped applying. “How much do you owe?” And why hadn’t he asked her to lend it to him before skipping town? He’d hit her up for money plenty of times before.
“Twenty-one thousand.”
She gasped under the weight of that number. “How could you possibly owe him that much?” She only had five thousand in her bank account. Not near enough to cover the amount.
Another pause. “I made a bad decision. I realize that. Carson gave me sixty thousand to pay for the flooring, but I only had to pay half down, and I thought I could invest the rest and make some money before the bill came due.”
Olivia’s stomach sank. Her brother had done some stupid things in his life, but they’d mostly been harmless. Even that time he’d got drunk and showed up at his ex-girlfriend’s wedding reception had only ended up costing him a restraining order and the price of an ice sculpture. “What sort of investment?” Maybe there was some way to salvage the money.
“One of the drywall guys retired because he’d given money to this buddy who was a day trader. He told me he had a sure thing that could earn ten thousand.”
“And instead lost twenty-one?”
“Yeah. I’m so mad at him. The dude actually charged me a fee to lose most of my money.”
Not Matt’s money. Carson’s. The noise of students talking was getting so loud that it was hard for her to hear. She held the phone away from her mouth to address the class. “Hey guys, settle down and clean your areas!”
The kids mostly ignored her about cleaning, but the volume in the room decreased.
Matt was speaking again, “I left nine thousand in cash in an envelope in your old bedroom. Take it to Carson. Tell him I’m sorry, and I’ll pay him the rest as soon as I earn it.”
“Matt, you’ve got to come back and work out some sort of arrangement with him. Tell him you’ll work for free until you’ve paid off the debt. Otherwise, he could charge you with embezzlement.”
