No Gentle Giant by Nicole Snow
Black Gold (Felicity)
A Few Hours Ago
Seriously.
I’d like to know just once who and what I pissed off in a past life.
A witch? A djinn? A particularly cantankerous old herbalist, maybe?
I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure somebody cursed my soul for the next thousand years, and even now they’re punishing me for a past crime from beyond the grave.
That’s the only reason I could possibly be walking out of Mitch’s garage with a little black book in my hand filled with Dad’s handwriting.
Before everything went digital, most men kept little black books of women’s phone numbers. One-night stands, regular hookups, whatever.
I wish that was as far as Dad’s dirty little secrets went.
What’s actually there in the crabbed handwriting that goes on for pages and pages?
Trouble, guaranteed, and not the sexy scorned lover kind.
I only flicked through it for less than a minute and I already know it. Even if I’m not quite sure just what sort of trouble’s lurking there yet.
It sits on the seat of my old station wagon like a menacing hitchhiker, watching me expectantly as I make the drive back to The Nest, trying not to shudder.
I left my part-timers to close up the shop, but I still need to roast a fresh batch of beans and do some accounting catchup. I always prefer the after-hours quiet when no one’s around. Then I can relax with the beans, the numbers, and a little music.
But I won’t be able to settle in until I look at this thing head-on and see what it is.
With a deep breath, I park and settle the book in my lap, steeling myself.
I catch the corner of the book and flip it open, forcing my eyes down to the pages.
I’m really not expecting to see...flight logs?
That’s what it looks like.
I wasn’t all that deep into Dad’s business. I just knew he flew a charter plane, and sometimes he told me to hide in the back of the house when he flew for certain people who pulled up outside our house with trunks full of wrapped cargo.
No buzzing until they’re gone, Little Bee,he’d say.
But I was already too old to be oblivious, to think it was just a fun little game.
I remember seeing things in passing here and there, enough to make these harsh black lines familiar. It’s definitely Dad’s handwriting, a bunch of notations that look like dates and travel data.
Flight paths, passengers, cargos in code words I can’t decipher, departure and arrival times.
It’s so bizarre that he hid this under the seat of the truck.
Especially since his plane disappeared the same day he was found dead in the same truck of an apparent drug overdose.
I really don’t know if things were worse before or after he died.
The heroin, the shady deals for cash, the creepy people around the house...all of that was pretty bad. But after he died, suddenly there were even scarier people sniffing around, and all the rumors about him, about Mom, about me started spreading like wildfire.
Not that I haven’t made it worse with a few desperate mistakes of my own.
Everett Peters, my one-time investor, seemed so charming on the surface.
And the fact that he was oh-so-willing to invest in The Nest and Heart’s Edge for basically a song and a smile? Ugh.
I should’ve realized something was up.
Long before my cousin and I were tied up in the burning basement of a theater while her then-husband-to-be came rushing to the rescue with all the big boys of Heart’s Edge for backup. I’ve been sworn to secrecy about that scary business ever since.
What else is new?
I’ve been keeping people’s secrets my entire life.
Right now, though, I’m entirely done with my father’s.
I close the book with a sharp snap and chuck it into the glove compartment.
I don’t even want to look at it again, even if it might give me answers about the way he died.
Do I really need to know? Do I need to pour salt in wounds that took ages to scab over?
I can still hear him in my head, his jagged voice, dripping with desperation like the sweat on his brow.
I swear, Little Bee, I’m clean.
You’ll see, just give me some time and I’ll take care of you and your mom and—
God.
“It’s not worth knowing shit,” I whisper to myself.
It’s not worth carrying more damning secrets, more curses.
I have beans to roast. Books to balance. Thirsts to quench to tomorrow.
And then I think I’d love to actually curl up with my dog and get some sleep.
So I let myself into my sanctuary, breathing in a scent that’s always felt like my true home. My place is full of too many old memories of my family, but The Nest...
It’s mine.
Maybe it used to be my parents’, but I’ve renovated it and made it my own with little touches of curling arboreal ironwork. Unvarnished wood tones for a welcoming homey feel, the long bar where people can gather for a sense of community.
Plus the hanging exposed bulbs creating dim, intimate enclosures of light in carefully spaced seats that let people feel like they’re in their own worlds—while still always being well-positioned to hear the live music. I’ve started attracting more artists, after a few others heard about Peace’s frequent evening serenades.
Stepping inside the well-placed pools of light and shadow in the café brings me instant peace. It’s like my lungs were collapsed, but now they reinflate, reborn in the mingled scents of strong roasts soothed by bold citrus and creamy sweetness.
I made that fragrance.
It’s me.
There’s a certain pride to it, no question.
Especially after too many people have accused me of sleeping with anyone who’ll throw a few bucks my way to stay afloat. I know what it actually took to keep this place going, to make it beautiful, to make it my world to share.
None of that matters.
Thisdoes, this place, this coffee-infused oasis tucked away from ugly tongues and thorny lies.
I can’t stop smiling as I start a fresh batch of beans roasting.
It’s a slow process if I want to do it right without burning the beans, so that gives me plenty of time to settle in with my laptop.
I park it at the bar rather than my office, just to let the atmosphere work its wonders on my mood.
It’s already working, really.
I’m playing a little Ed Sheeran, tapping my fingers on the edge of the laptop and whispering under my breath, bobbing my head in rhythm. I’m actually having fun reviewing revenue reports and keeping one ear alert for the timer on the roasting machine.
When something breaks my concentration, though, it’s not the timer.
It’s the bells jingling over the front door.
Crap.
I must’ve forgotten to lock back up when I let myself in.
Most people know the café closes at nine, but sometimes in the warm months we get tourists driving through, hoping for an all-night diner. Considering it’s past ten o’clock, I’m guessing that’s what I have on my plate.
“Sorry,” I call over my shoulder as I spin my seat, tapping my laptop to mute the music. “We’re closed and—”
The words shrivel in my throat as I see who’s waiting for me.
Three hulking men who look like they’re already so hopped up on their own testosterone they don’t need a single drop of coffee to send them to Jupiter.
They’re flanking a very petite woman who, nonetheless, carries ten times more menace in her small frame than a single one of those human lions.
Paisley Lockwood.
She’s a little blond pixie from Satan’s grad school, every tiny ounce of her packed with delicate muscle. Her heart-shaped face is framed by a boyish, tousled cut that makes her eyes look like flecks of green ice set against a flower bed.
Her smile, a cruel gash.
Her lips so pretty pink.
But it’s those bared teeth that gives away who she is, always ready to sink into the nearest jugular. They look sharp—vicious and predatory—like something belonging to a rodent who’s got the world’s best dentist on payroll.
About as sharp as the blade of the pearl-handled switchblade in her hand, flipping and twirling between her fingers with expert ease until the initials KL on the ornately engraved hilt blur, and the point winks in silver flashes.
She’s stylish as ever in white leather capris, straw wedge sandals, a pink patterned shirt, and a perky little neck scarf that’d be to die for—if only she didn’t ooze murder from every steaming pore.
Catch her on the street, and you’d think she was just a cutesy tourist taking a break from her chic city life to explore the wonders of an infamous small town hidden in Montana.
Catch her right now, though, and you wouldn’t hesitate to believe she’d take that switchblade across someone’s throat in a second.
Namely, across mine.
“Hello, Fe-lic-i-tee,” she says, taking a deafening step forward.
Gag.
I hate how my name sounds in that lisping baby-girl voice she uses. How she always sucks on it like a piece of candy, turning my name warped and bitter, just as tart as the fear rising in the back of my throat.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she whispers.
Never long enough, I want to say—but my tongue stays as petrified as the rest of me.
I can’t move.
I can’t speak.
I just hope I can find it in me to run.
As long as they stay near the door, there’s a slim chance I can dart through the back hall and out the employee exit.
But Paisley’s already sauntering toward me, and my rabbiting heart becomes a sinking stone as the three goons with her fan out. They move casually, but take up careful strategic positions on either side of the bar.
My options? Not good.
Go left, go right, there’s a goon boxing me in. Try to jump over the bar, and there’s another one, already hovering close enough to the cash register to tell me exactly what he wants.
Run forward, there’s Paisley, a pint-sized Venus flytrap.
That pretty smile.
That glittering knife.
Nothing but sharp edges everywhere.
Yeah. I guess it’s not hard to follow my darting eyes, because Paisley lets out a cruel and syrupy giggle that’s straight-up sociopath despite its harsh brightness.
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to skip out on me already, Fe-lic-i-tee?” she sings. “I haven’t seen you in almost an entire year. Imagine that. Don’t you wanna get caught up? Have a little girl talk, daddy’s girl to daddy’s girl?”
“Not really,” I manage to choke out, even if the words feel like swallowing a heap of wet coffee grounds. “What do you want?”
Paisley sways to a halt in front of me.
Close enough to make me too aware of that blade.
I can almost feel its bite as it turns and turns and turns, and she’s within arm’s reach.
Be careful.
I know just how dangerous these people are.
Paisley’s father was the man my dad used to work for, deal for, fly for.
Possibly the man he died for, no matter what was listed on his death certificate.
I stare into her eerie, childlike smile for a few more hell-seconds—before it vanishes, going completely dead.
Now she looks like an empty, soulless, porcelain doll. Devoid of all expression.
A chill washes through me.
This is her true medusa face.
And her truth is terrifying.
That dead, cold regard holds me like a wriggling bunny as the knife stops flipping with a smack of the hilt against her palm. Her slim, delicate finger extends along the blade, holding it almost daintily.
With her other hand, she reaches into the breast pocket of her shirt and withdraws her phone.
She doesn’t even have to look at her screen, holding it up to face me as she slides her thumb quickly across the bottom of the touchscreen, swiping photo after photo after photo in a gallery.
She doesn’t say a word.
She doesn’t need to.
Not when those photos scream loud enough to flash-freeze my blood.
My mother.
Harper Randall.
I thought she’d be safer if I moved her to Coeur d’Alene. Happier. And she definitely looks happy, caught unsuspecting while she’s out shopping, picking over flowers in a store, laughing with a group of older women, feeding ducks, sweeping her front porch.
But safer?
No.
Not when those photos make it deadly clear that Paisley could make her into hamburger—or worse—at any moment she chooses.
Which means she’s definitely here for something I probably can’t deliver.
There’s a rock lodged in my throat.
I force back the lump of horror and lift my eyes from the phone to Paisley, glaring at her. I’m too proud to cower, though if it keeps my mom safe, you’d better believe I’ll get down on my knees and beg if that’s what this maniac wants.
Right now, I’m too angry to do anything but snap, “What are you trying to tell me? What do you want from me now?”
“Oh, Felicity.” That mocking voice is back, candy-bright and pitying, and she clucks her tongue, lowering her phone—but not the knife. “Really, now, what do I always want? I’ve been playing this game with you for too long. I’ve been too lenient.”
As she says lenient, she runs the edge of her nail along the switchblade, peeling off a curl of her nail-tip as thin as a hair with absolute precision.
Like I need to see how sharp it is.
Trust me, I know.
“You’ve taken every penny I have,” I say weakly.
It’s not defiance. It’s the truth.
Did you think I was always in the red due to bad business practices and rotten luck?
Ha!
Unless you count breathing where Paisley “Paye”—as in “Pay Up”—Lockwood can see me as a bad business practice, I’m actually pretty savvy.
Too bad she’s an ongoing debt I just can’t seem to shake.
“Every penny?” she echoes. “Interesting.”
Her eyes crawl over me in an overly familiar way that makes me shudder, taking in every inch of my body.
Then that blade flicks toward me so fast it’s nearly blinding.
Just a blur of light splitting the air.
Sucking in a breath, I flinch back, bracing for howling pain.
Cold metal dances against my throat.
The edge, almost nicking.
Something tickles my skin and, holding my breath, pulse jittering and terrified while my blood turns thin as water, I do it.
I open one eye.
That’s when I realize she’s caught the thin silver chain of my pendant on the tip of her blade, lifting it away until the slim azurite crystal—no taller than a dime and bound in place by a silver band—dangles from it.
I’d picked it up at a little craft shop I’d wandered into during my last trip to Spokane to hand-deliver bags of fresh coffee for the local branch of Sweeter Things, Clarissa Regis’ candy store.
Just a whim. It was pretty. Plus something about azurite clearing negative energies sold me.
But it’s not doing anything to banish Paisley like a bad dream as it swings hypnotically from the tip of the knife.
“How many pennies did this little pretty cost, hmm?” Her eyes go slitted like a cat’s and just as cunning; her mouth turned up at the corners. There’s an unpredictable light in her gaze. “And that shirt. Those nice leather boots. Seems like you’ve been cleaning up nice and tidy and kinda fancy, Felicity. You’ve been holding out on me.”
“No! I’m...I’m not holding out!” I gasp the words. It feels like if I talk too loudly, the mere twitch of my vocal cords will bring me too close to that blade I can feel roaming the peach fuzz hairs on my skin. “I’ve given you every cent of profit from this café, Paye. Every freaking cent, whenever you asked, and...and I’m doing everything I can to make more!”
“Drips and drabs. Not even a drop in the bucket, Fe-lic-i-teeee.” She lets the necklace go then, and it falls to hit the hollow of my throat.
Its delicate point makes me gasp when my animal brain is sure it’s the knife.
But the switchblade taps against Paisley’s pink lower lip while she looks at me as sulkily as a little girl getting called out by her big sister.
“You know exactly how much you owe,” she hisses. “You know what you owe me.”
“I don’t,” I repeat desperately.
Because really, that’s the problem.
I’ve never known. It’s not my debt.
It’s Dad’s.
And I’m suddenly afraid that hidden log book might have something to do with this, after all these years of Paisley shaking me down and taking every penny of profit I make as an installment payment on some nebulous sum.
I’ve always thought she refused to tell me the real amount Dad owed her so she could just keep milking it for the rest of my life, however short she might decide it will be.
It’d be oh-so-easy to claim I have more left on my debt if I never know the balance—and maybe she’s charging interest. She’d probably do it just to screw with me, when I know the bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings she shakes out of my pockets wouldn’t even buy her a new pair of her designer shoes.
Why does she bother?
But now I’m wondering...what if there’s always been more to it?
What if my father was in deeper than I ever realized?
And if he really did end up in staggering amounts of debt owed to the Lockwood syndicate, or if...if...
Oh my God.
Did my father steal from the Lockwoods?
Is that why she hasn’t killed me yet?
Is that why she enjoys this cat and mouse thing so much?
Because she thinks whatever he stole can be recovered somehow?
I don’t know how I didn’t figure that out before.
Sadly, I don’t get a chance to dwell on it.
Paisley sways back from me with a slow, cunning grin, her eyes glittering with sadistic anticipation, and I know what’s coming next.
“Such a shame,” she purrs.
I shake my head quickly.
“Don’t,” I say, and it’s so humiliating to beg. Then again, I think anyone would with their life and livelihood on the line, seeing a promise of pain and ruin in those shining green eyes. “Listen, Paye, I just got this place back together, and if you really want money from me, you can’t keep trashing my only source of income—”
Paisley snorts derisively, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a cruel sneer.
“You think I care about your coffee jar tips, Little Miss Barista? You couldn’t earn what we’re after in ten lifetimes. But since you missed your last two payments and you’re being so stubborn and rude tonight...”
She flicks her fingers at her men, pretty manicured fingernails flashing in the light. Her goons smile like jackals.
“Shake it down, boys,” she croons in this exaggerated gang mol accent.
“No!”
I fling myself off the stool, race over, and—
And draw up short as that switchblade stabs toward me so fast I hardly see it move.
I’ve only got a split second to stagger to a halt with my heart beating right through my chest as it stops under my chin.
I’ve never seen her without that thing.
She holds it like a lover, caressing it with her thumb, and keeps me captured with her snake-like eyes.
Forced to hold still.
And listen, helplessly, as the wanton destruction begins.
I don’t know what it says about my life that all I can think is, at least it’s not as bad as last time.
They tip over some chairs.
They stab at bags of packed, vacuum-sealed grounds, ripping them open in explosions of brown grains and rich aromas.
They fling napkins and brochures in the air like confetti.
One of them rips open the confectionery case and stuffs little petit fours into his mouth until his teeth are all gummed up with cake and he’s grinning crumbs.
But there’s no broken glass, thank God.
No blood flying everywhere—especially mine.
Not when I know what they’re really after.
And when I hear the rattle and jingle of the cash register, I just close my eyes and wait for it to end.
They won’t get much. Not when it’s already been closed out for the night, bank bags in the safe and waiting to be dropped off tomorrow.
Only they won’t make it there, not when those gorilla goons barge into my office next, and I’m just stuck here with Paisley holding me at knife point.
She watches my face like she’s getting high off the salty smell of every bead of sweat pouring down my brow.
Holy Hannah.
From the noise in there, I’m pretty sure they’ve torn the safe clean out of the wall.
Once again, counting my small blessings.
Even if my office is a destroyed wreck of drywall, at least it’s not a customer-facing area that will scare people off from the catastrophe.
A few minutes later, one of the goons comes swaggering out, trailed by the others. He’s practically sulking, his face a comical mask of disappointment.
I’d laugh, if I wasn’t so horrified by the sight of him carrying my entire wall-safe, covered in sheetrock dust and dented in on all sides with the shapes of crowbars, the door twisted off its hinges and hanging on by a scrap.
He turns it upside down like a kid shaking a bag of Skittles for the very last piece. “Nothin’ else in here, Miss Lockwood.”
One of the others has the deposit bags that were inside the safe, and he’s unzipped them to flip around inside with his thick fingers before grimacing. “Maybe two large, if that. That ain’t even dinner.” He gives me a contemptuous look, then spits on the floor and tosses one of the empty bags at my feet. “Fuckin’ pathetic.”
Part of me bristles.
I’m trying my best, dammit.
But my sense of self-preservation keeps me stock-still, while Paisley sniffs, turning her head toward them and tossing her chin at the door.
“Get it in the car,” she says before turning those cutting green eyes back on me. “You’d better have a fire sale, Fe-lic-i-tee.” Have I mentioned how I hate the way she says my name more than a fire ant facial? “Because if you don’t have more for me by my next visit...”
Oh, no.
She tips the knife up until the point presses into the soft underside of my chin, smirking while I suck my breath in and hold it, that metal so cold yet quickly warming with my body heat.
“We’ll just have to go see Mommy Dearest then, won’t we?”
I don’t dare speak.
Not when the slightest movement might send that blade skating across my flesh.
Not when if I open my mouth, I’ll just start sobbing tears of pure, impotent rage.
So I wait, while Paisley holds my eyes like a promise.
Until she walks away, with one last hateful look.
Until the knife fades from my flesh.
Until the door jingles, too merry and bright, and in a sweep of headlights and the dull roar of an engine, they’re gone.
And I’m alone.
Collapsing to my knees with a sob and cursing the day I was ever born a Randall.
