Page 25 of Iggy

“He invested. Heavily. Before Neela, the prez split all profits with the men. That’s why they stayed. That’s why they were loyal. He advised them on how to invest in the stock market, building wealth beyond their imagination.”

“You’re kidding,” frowned Iggy.

“Nope. At one time that clubhouse looked like a resort when you walked in. The bar was beautiful, fully stocked, nice tables and chairs, the food was decent, all of it.”

“You said at one time,” said Iggy. “It’s not like that any longer?”

“Not even close. When Neela suddenly took over due to the untimely death of the president, her husband decades older than her, she refused to ‘waste’ money on upkeep. Many of the older guys decided to leave with the money they’d earned.

“New members were brought in but they weren’t educated in investing like the others had been. They also weren’t paid the way the others had been. The men earned shit. Literally. They were given room and board and charged for it. The food cooked for them was shit food.”

“So, where is all this money going?” asked Ham.

“In Neela’s pocket. She continues to invest the way her father and husband taught her. The members continue to be broke and now we think she’s working with the Swamp Rats on something big,” said the agent.

“Like what?” asked Iggy. “And how does that connect to her trying to get Olive?”

“Neela has guaranteed the Swamp Rats a payout of over twenty-million on a sketchy investment. She’s using Olive as collateral. They hold onto her. If the investment is good, she’s set free. If it’s bad. They sell her.” Iggy looked at the screen, then at the men around the table.

“Over my dead body.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Neela knew the sound before she knew what it meant.

It was the wet little click of the market feed refreshing on her laptop, the tiny mechanical hiccup that came every few seconds from the brokerage dashboard, each update scraping another layer of skin off her nerves.

Red numbers shivered across the screen. Not red like warning lights. Red like blood under fluorescent bulbs. Red like brake lights piling up on a highway at midnight. Red like the taillight of the bike that had gone down behind her years ago and never come back upright.

She sat alone in the back office of the clubhouse with the door locked and the blinds half-shut, one boot planted against the bottom drawer of the desk, one knee bouncing so hard the ashtray beside her keyboard ticked against the wood.

Outside, the club was awake in the warm ugliness of late afternoon: bikes coughing in the yard, laughter slamming through the walls, somebody yelling for a socket wrench, somebody else cursing at the ice machine. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. Men and women who trusted her were moving around ten feet away from the worst thing she had ever done.

Another refresh. Another drop.

Neela’s mouth went dry. She leaned closer until the numbers blurred into blocks and streaks, then snapped backward as if the screen had thrown heat. The position was supposed to rebound before lunch. That was what Halpern had said, his voice smooth as oil, the kind of voice that put expensive shoes on cheap lies.

Temporary weakness, he had called it. Rotation out of risk. Momentum flush. Healthy correction. Words with padded walls. Words men used when they wanted a woman to keep smiling while the floor disappeared.

She grabbed her phone and stabbed his number so hard her thumbnail bent. It rang twice.

“Pick up,” she whispered. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

His assistant answered with a brightness that made Neela want to bite through glass.

“Halpern Chase Capital, this is Mina.”

“Get him.”

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“You can tell him the woman with seven million dollars bleeding out on his platform is calling. You can tell him if he makes me listen to hold music, I’m driving over there.”

A pause. A faint click. Mina’s voice lost its sugar.

“One moment.” The hold music came anyway.

Neela shut her eyes. For five seconds she let herself imagine throwing the phone through the blinds, through the wall, through everyone who had ever told her she had a gift for finding angles.