Exposed (29 page)

Damn it! She
had
to get out, no matter the pain it’d bring. No matter the danger. The alternative, the fear of being caught …. No, that wasn’t an option.

But maybe … June turned away from the vault door toward the back wall. It’d be lined in steel, of course, but not nearly as thick as the vault door. And it led out into the back alley.

June pressed her back to the vault door, gathered her determination. Above, the floorboards creaked. Edith was coming back. The footsteps crossed above June and then started down the stairs.

And even worse, there was a voice outside the vault, a deep voice she recognized.

No.

It was Ivan. June pressed her ear to the vault door and couldn’t quite hear the words being exchanged, but she didn’t need words to understand. Ivan was questioning, Edith accusing. She snapped something, then June heard a mutter from Ivan. There was a muffled click—the front door being opened?—then silence. Edith called out, calling for June, no doubt.

June faced the back wall, closed her eyes, and sprinted for it.

Steel. 

Wood. 

Brick. 

Her body slammed through the vault, through the walls of the bank, through the building itself. Then sweet summer air hit her nose, and June fell hard to her knees. She did it. She actually did it.

June had to crawl up the brick wall to find her feet. Every bone and muscle in her body was aflame with agonizing pain. But she’d done it! 

Oh God. She’d done it.

June bent over double and nearly vomited.

What had she just done?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

June

Shame rolled through June, hot and intense as a July afternoon.

What had she just done? Why had she just done it? She’d stolen from Mary Stewart. More than that, she’d stolen from Clayton, from her employer, from the people of Independence Falls. She was a criminal.

June pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle fresh sobs, but her hand screamed in pain.

At the time, she’d been so sure. She hadn’t even thought of it as stealing, simply as doing what she needed to do. That need for money had been so powerful inside the bank, so undeniable. But now … now it was just dumb. 

June limped around the side of the building and peeked around the corner. Had it really been just a few hours ago that she’d been in practically this same spot with Ivan? Peeking out of an alley, afraid to face others. Shame and fear weighed June down so that her shoulders sagged. 

Oh, no.

Ivan was looking at someone standing in the bank entrance, and June was horrified to see Edith stalking out of the bank door toward him. June ducked her head back around the corner, but she couldn’t block out what Edith was saying.

“Stop creeping around,” Edith hissed. “You think we forgot what you did to that Carroll girl? I don’t know what you and your comrades are planning, but you’re not getting anything from me. And if I can help it, not from that silly Ms. Powell either.”

The voices coming from the sidewalk went quiet, and June dared to peer around the corner of the building again.

Ivan was walking down the sidewalk away from her. June’s body started for him, her mouth opened to call for him. But she curled back into herself and waited. She couldn’t face Ivan—true, honest Ivan—with what she’d just done. He deserved better than her, better than a common criminal.

June waited until her eyes dried, until she could walk without wanting to cry out in pain. She made her way through town as steadily as she could, her gait hampered by the pain ricocheting through her body. Though her hand ached, she clutched the purse like a lifeline. It seemed like every stare, every whisper was directed at that purse, at what was hiding inside. She jumped at every sound, afraid at catching anyone’s eye. 

Surely they all knew, they all saw that she was lower than them. That she deserved to be punished for her crime. June ducked her head and slowly inched home.

It was her mother’s voice that finally made June wrench her head up. She’d just limped through the front door. There was only one thought making sense in her confused, scattered mind—get in bed until this terrible pain passed.

“What are you wearing around your neck?” Annette strode up the three steps leading from the sunken living room, her heels clacking on the parquet floors of the entryway.

“I don’t …,” June picked at the scarf. She couldn’t quite remember choosing it to coordinate with this dress. She cast her thoughts for an excuse, but her mind was a fallow field, bearing no life. “I don’t know,” she finally managed.

“Well,” Annette huffed. “I don’t know why you’re waltzing about in that old thing, but it’s awful with your complexion.” Annette surveyed her daughter. “You’ve gone so pale, working at that silly little job. But we’ll see to that soon enough.” 

She grabbed June’s elbow but apparently didn’t notice the way her daughter winced at the touch. She marched June through the house and into her bedroom. “And hair in a ponytail! I just hope Mrs. Briggs or Mrs. Fields didn’t see you. They won’t very well recommend you to the eligible young men of Independence Falls if you look like a school girl.”

Her mother started to say more, but June had already shut her door. She stumbled out of her heels, shrugged out of her suit jacket, and snagged her aching fingers on her stockings so a run laddered up the right leg. Money. Just more money she’d have to spend.

But June couldn’t think, could barely reason. Her mind was muddy and indistinct, her body on fire. She had the presence of mind to hide the stolen cash, gold, and jewels in an old rucksack and stuffed it behind her bookshelf. Then June succumbed to her most base instincts and collapsed onto her bed.

She tried to dream, to pretend none of the awful events of the afternoon were real. But they were real, and it didn’t matter that June shut her eyes. She couldn’t shut out the agony of what she’d done, of the irrevocable damage she’d wrought with just one stupid decision. 

June rolled onto her stomach, gritting her teeth against the waves of pain radiating through her body. She let herself sob until there was nothing else inside, until she was utterly wrung out. Then she pushed herself up to sit and slowly counted to one hundred. Her breathing calmed, her mind cleared, if only a little bit.

Clayton. She’d return the stolen goods to Clayton first thing in the morning and explain. It might not work, but it was better than holding onto the diamonds, cash, and gold.

June padded into the bathroom and methodically rubbed circles of Pond’s Cream into her face and neck. Perhaps with honesty and a bit of bravery, she’d be able to set things right.

The knock on her door startled June. She hadn’t been quite asleep, but not entirely awake either. Her eyes darted to the bookshelf where the rucksack was still hidden. 

“Yes?” Her voice almost didn’t waver.

It was her father who stuck his head around the door. His eyebrows were scrunched together and his mouth drawn down in a frown. His brown eyes were cloudy. “It’s the Murphy boy. He needs to see you.”

June crawled to her knees and leaned her forehead against the window where she could just see the driveway. Sure enough, Butch’s beat up, rusted truck sat idling in the drive. Worry whisked through June, wispy and faint. It couldn’t be.

Nausea rolled through June in hot waves. It
could
be. If his power was strong enough, it really could be.

“He needs to see you,” her father repeated.

No.

No.

No!

“Tell him to leave,” she said, falling back against her headboard. 

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this was all a horrible coincidence and she’d make things right with Clayton in the morning like she planned. Because if not, if this was Butch ….

Her father frowned. “No, that’s not—” His eyes bugged. “He needs to see you.”

June understood more than most what that felt like. To have no control over your own mind and to not even know it. She struggled to stand, her muscles burning and shaking. Her father took her arm—not gently—when she didn’t move fast enough. Her arms were bare in her thin nightgown, her legs and feet naked. But her father pulled her on before she could snatch her dressing gown off the chair.

Butch paced just inside the door, his boots leaving dirty marks on the parquet. He wheeled around to face June when she appeared at the end of the hallway, and a horrible little smile crawled across his face.

“Here she is,” Peter Powell said, pushing June toward Butch.

“Thank you, Peter,” Butch said softly, his eyes trained on June as he spoke.

June heard her father shuffle away and tried not to be angry at him for the betrayal.

“Give me the money.” Butch just stared, that awful smile—that knowing smile—twisting his mouth. “Don’t play dumb. That money belongs to me.”

The fear bloomed into dread and an awful realization about just what June had done. Or rather, what Butch had made her do. It was him planting those horrible ideas in her head. Hadn’t he so much as bragged about it right to her face that night at the mine? 

June leaned heavily against the wallpapered entryway and pressed two fingers to either side of her temples. That just made Butch snicker.

“I told you I could dig around in there, make you do things.”

June groaned and pushed Butch out the door. She followed him outside and pulled the door shut behind her, listening for the soft
click
of the latch. They stood on the concrete front porch under a halo of light that washed them to a sickly yellow. Like they were sick all over again from the fog that’d given them these powers in the first place.

June’s shoulders drooped. She couldn’t believe she’d been so weak-willed to fall for Butch’s mind plant. How pleased Butch must have been, to realize the ease with which he could control her, to make her do the things he wanted. June shivered in disgust at the violation, but even more at the disappointment. 

She was nothing—empty and blank behind the smile.

But she wasn’t a criminal. 

That thought took hold in June’s picked-over brain and stretched tendrils of strength through her body. She might have done something wrong, but she could set it right. She
would
set it right.

“I’m taking the money back in the morning.”

“No,” Butch said. “You’re not.”

He stood up tall, his feet spread wide and his arms tight at his sides. But June could stand tall too. And she did. Her chin only came up to Butch’s chest, but it gave her strength all the same. 

Muscles in Butch’s thick neck bunched, and his hands balled into fists, like he was going to strike her. Terror quivered through June at the thought, but she kept her chin held high and stared Butch down. And it strengthened her resolve even more to see Butch look away first. He cleared his throat and shifted heavily on his feet.

“No,” June said again, louder this time. “You’re done controlling me.”

Butch twitched, his mouth corrupted in a sneer. “Do you really think you can just hand over the money? The money that you’ve stolen out of the bank,” he said, louder now.

June hissed for him to hush and hated to see the way it made him smile.

“You’re really so dumb to think nothing would happen?”

June wouldn’t drop her chin, wouldn’t let him see the way she faltered inside. She gritted her teeth against the uncertainty poking, poking, poking through her mind. 

Maybe Butch was right. The uncertainty washed through her, sowed doubt. Maybe she should just give him the money. 

But …. No, that wasn’t her uncertainty. She could see it in Butch’s narrowed, determined eyes. It was
him
in there, in her brain, trying to plant ideas that weren’t hers. She could feel him in there, rooting around. 

June ground her teeth together, clenched her hands, anything to give her the strength to throw Butch out of her mind. There was a surge of pain behind her eyes, and then suddenly Butch was pacing the porch. His steps jerked, his features churned in agitation.

And June was free. Free of him. She nearly laughed in relief.

“You really think you can keep me out?” Butch planted his feet wide and jammed a thick finger against his forehead. “You have no idea how powerful I am.”

June just watched. The anger rolled off of him at the realization that he couldn’t control June so easily—not now that she was wise to it.

Butch spun on his mud-caked boots and stalked closer, close enough that June could make out flecks of spittle on his colorless lips. “Don’t you get it, you stupid little girl. You just go on smiling, a smile for anything that moves.” His sneer turned cruel. “A smile for anything with a cock.”

June narrowed her eyes at Butch. “Your impotence is showing,” she hissed. “I can fight back, and that terrifies you.”

Butch laughed, but it was strained and too high. She was right. June smiled for him—one of her placid smiles he apparently so abhorred. 

She could do this. She could fight back.

“Do you really need me to spell it out for you? You’re. A. Criminal.” Spit gathered at the corners of Butch’s mouth, and he had to swipe it away with the back of his dirty hand. “Unless you give me that money, you’re going to jail. Who would believe you, that I somehow brainwashed you? You really think Clayton will give up all the powerfuls to save one girl,” he hissed the last word. 

Then he was in her mind again, with the force of his fury behind the onslaught. 

June thought she was ready. She wasn’t. The full extent of Butch’s power turned on June, and she nearly cried out with the torment.

She clamped her eyes shut until pops of white were fireworks behind her lids. The pain … the pain was immense, unmoving. June dug her fingernails into her palm in a frenzied attempt to distract herself from the anguish. 

The money, you bitch. Give me the money.

“You’re not seeing a single cent of that money,” June gasped, eyes still shut tight. A fresh wave of white-hot pain tortured her mind, and June felt her body lurch back against the house for support. “I’ll go to jail before you win.”