Filed To Story: The Saltwater Curse Book PDF Free
My brows spear into my hairline when he holds a hand up to my face without looking at me.
You know what? I might kill him too.
Wayan prattles off a string of words in Bahasa, throwing his hands up in annoyance before pointing angrily at the tourists in front of the car as if they’re the ones on the other end of the phone. He says his goodbye in the form of an aggressive tap before chucking his phone on top of the four others sitting in the center console.
Oh, good. It looks like we’re both in a splendid mood.
“Let’s make this quick, ya?” he mutters, scowling. “I have things to do.”
“So do I,” I snap. “I don’t appreciate being told you’re late at the time you’re meant to be here.”
He glowers at me, and I return the glare tenfold. I flinch when he reaches behind me, and I quickly right myself to pretend it never happened. He unceremoniously drops a box onto my lap.
“Careful,” I hiss. Gripping the container, I send a scathing sneer his way.
His shrug sends a bolt of irritation through me. I grit my teeth and focus on checking the wafers. If he broke any of them with that little stunt, I’m ripping his head off.
Attempting to ignore the low throbbing in my arm and my blurring vision, I unlatch the box to check it.
What kind of sick joke is this? “Where the fuck is it?” I’m not in the mood for any of this bullshit—or any bullshit, for that matter.
He doesn’t look at me. He just takes a deep drag of his cigarette. “Pirates,” is all he offers as an explanation.
My stomach sinks. “Tell me everything,” I demand.
Wayan shrugs, rolling down the window to flick the ash out onto the sidewalk. “Got there, and it was already empty.”
I stare at his side profile. “And?”
“The courier said it was pirates. That’s all I know.”
It’s fine.
It’s fine.
Fuck.
It’s not fine. We need those wafers to make the next batch.
“And the parts I ordered for the machine?”
Wayan nods at the empty container. “Gone.”
I gawk at him, dipping into my energy reserves to stop myself from blowing up at him. “And you couldn’t have called me about this so I didn’t come out all this way for nothing?”
An hour and half, I waited, and for what? The time I could’ve spent dealing with my security breach could’ve been the difference between life and death.
I feel like I’m about to lose my mind. I want to smack him upside the head, or maybe just hit someone in general.
Tears spring to my eyes. I’m so exhausted. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, tired of seeing Tommy hidden behind every corner.
I can’t deal with this right now. I want to go home, back to the garage I was raised in, back into Dad’s arms whenever he’d do his weekly reminders of how proud he was of me.
I grit my teeth.
Pull yourself together.
This is the shit I’ve been dealt, so deal with it.
I’ve been in far worse situations. This is nothing. We have enough for the current batch, which means I have time to figure out an alternative. If I can’t find a supplier in Indonesia, then Malaysia. We’ll look at rescaling, or focus on just printing in the meantime while we try to find a solution. Maybe we’ll expand the factory to make the wafers too. Or maybe the pirates will wipe us off the map.
Or it could be a Nat and Deedee problem if Tommy or whoever was at my place last night kills me.
Who knows.
The possibilities are endless.
I scrub my face, fighting back the tears.
Tomorrow. I can’t think when I’m running on fumes. I need to sleep, even for a couple hours. Everything else can wait until I can regroup and talk to the girls about what we should do.
Taking a deep breath, I fix my stare on the beach at the end of the street.
Survive the night, and tomorrow, I can go. “Fix it.” The words fall without infliction.
Wayan scoffs. “What do you expect me to?—“
“I don’t give a shit what you have to do, you fix. It.
You have one job.
One. I don’t care if you’re busy. I don’t give a shit if your kid has her first fucking school play. You get paid to do a job, so do it.”
I’m out of the car, slamming the door behind me without waiting for his response.
Nausea churns in my stomach. I sounded like Tommy. He had the means to back up his threat, but there’s nothing I can do to Wayan. No one will back me up.
My thumb taps an erratic rhythm against my thigh as I will the memories to fade. I try to blink away my blurring vision. My eyes dart from person to person, swinging my attention behind me then to the side into each store. Every person begins looking like they have his moldy green eyes, his dirty blond hair.
Tommy’s laughing at me. I’m nothing, just like he said. No one wants me. No one’s there for me. It’s just me. I’m nothing.
Oxygen burns a path down my lungs as the sound of motors and chatter grows louder, the smell of garbage and fumes stronger, and the moonlight bears down on me like a tangible weight. Each flickering light is the spark of a bullet, every movement a threat.
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