I Set the Sheets on Fire, Then the Clubhouse novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What He Signed

Cade's POV

I stepped out of the burned doorway with my shirt half buttoned and Becky's flashlight in my fist.

Four trucks had me in a half circle, and Dario stood in the headlights with a single sheet of paper.

"Sixty thousand dollars," he said. "The Tulsa client's advance. It was in the garage safe Friday afternoon and gone on Saturday."

"I never touched your safe," I said.

"You had the combination as road captain. You were in that garage at midnight Friday, the night you turned in your patch. Six men saw your bike."

I had been in the garage.

Boone had called me to church there, and I'd gone because he asked.

Dario had known that when he planned this.

Two of his patches stepped out of the dark and took Becky's arms from behind, gently.

"Let her go," I said.

"She's fine," said Dario. "She's only going to wait with us. Walk with me, Cade."

"Don't," Becky said. "Cade, it's a lie."

"I know."

I went with him to the far truck.

He laid the paper on the hood and clicked a pen.

It was a confession, three lines long, in his handwriting.

I, Cade Ostrow, took sixty thousand dollars from the club safe.

"Here's how it goes," Dario said quietly. "You sign, and you're gone from the county by midnight. I drop the debt claim on your girl. She goes back to the farm and cooks with the wives."

"And if I don't?"

"Eleven men swear she set that fire with people still on the second floor. It's not hard, Cade. They've already learned what saying nothing is worth. Saying something is worth the same."

I looked back at the shell.

Becky stood between the two patches with the light on her face and her mouth set.

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