Free SHATTERED by Alice Sharpe

say, but within a day or so, a stranger showed up at my mom’s house. He said he was there to enforce Poulter’s claim for a percentage and he had no intention of walking away empty-handed.”
    “Who was it?”
    “He gave the name Bellows. That’s all. He’s a scary-looking guy with a couple of silver teeth. He had another guy with him.”
    “I don’t understand. Why would Poulter loan your mother that much money in the first place? Did she have collateral?”
    “Dad gave her one of the coffee cans when they split, on the condition she would completely relinquish any interest in this ranch. She burned up most of that money, but some was tied up in a CD. As I understand it, this time she took a loan on what she optimistically considered a ‘sure thing’ using the CD money as collateral, telling Poulter she had a whole lot more than she really did. When the money was gone and the sure thing fizzled out, she was left holding the bag. After Bellows showed up, Mom got creative and asked Dad to bail her out. I guess he agreed and then changed his mind. He told her this time she’d have to face the consequences of her actions.”
    “‘This time’?”
    “This has been an ongoing pattern for her as long as I can remember. She’s spent her life moving between self-made disasters. I tried to distance myself from her by moving east, but she always seems to find a way to reel me back in. I haven’t actually seen her in months.”
    Nate considered his next question carefully. “You’re sure your dad still has these coins?”
    “Pretty sure. He agreed to give Mom the money when she asked him, and he knew it was up to almost a quarter of a million dollars, so he must have had it.”
    Nate whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Your mother couldn’t mortgage her house or—”
    Sarah interrupted him with a laugh devoid of mirth. “What house? She lost that years ago. Her net worth is less than zero, way less, and she tapped me dry the last time she got in bad trouble. It wasn’t a lot, but it was all I had. I’d been working for years, saving money to go back to college. It took every penny to get her solvent.”
    Did Sarah understand how she was enabling her mother? “That many coins are going to be very heavy,” he said. “You won’t be able to walk them out of here.”
    “I know.”
    “What really happened to your ID?”
    Sarah rubbed her eyes. “Bellows snatched my purse. He didn’t want me going too far. That’s why I couldn’t rent a car and had to take Mom’s.”
    “How long before this guy acts on his threats?”
    “Tomorrow at three o’clock. Then he says he’ll cut his losses.”
    “And you believe that means he’ll harm her?”
    “He broke two of her fingers to convince her to call me for help. I don’t know if he’ll kill her outright, but I’d bet the ranch he’ll take out his frustration in a brutal way, and I don’t know how much more she can stand.”
    “But why call you? They didn’t think you had that kind of money, did they?”
    “Mom must have told him she had to travel to get the money and he didn’t trust her. So he roughed her up until she agreed to ask someone else to go on her behalf. That turned out to be me. This dude met me at the airport, showed me a picture of my mother all beaten and bloody, demanded my purse and gave me the keys to her car along with directions to be back tomorrow by three o’clock. For all intents and purposes, I’m now her hostage. If she bolts and goes to the cops, they come after me.”
    Nate shook his head. As devious as Sarah had proved herself to be, he believed her. The past few hours had taken a lot out of both of them and he doubted she was up to inventing all of this. “If these people are expecting you to produce that much money, why would they try to kill you? Why not just wait until you brought it back?”
    “I don’t know. The only thing I can figure is that he made Mom tell him where I was