The Last Of Us Returns

3

Chapter 3

Damon looked at the wet keys on the counter, then up at Celeste.

"Jace keeps his keys in his left pocket," he said. "He was leaning over me pouring wine. They probably fell out, somebody kicked them, and a waiter tossed them in the tank so he wouldn't get blamed."

"That's a good answer," Celeste said. "You've had all weekend to come up with it."

"It's the truth."

"It isn't, and we both know it." She picked the keys back up and dropped them into her pocket. "You don't have to tell me today. I'll find out myself, and you know I will, because I always do."

"Then I guess you'll be busy for a while."

Jace shoved past his sister and grabbed the front of Damon's shirt. He smelled of old whiskey, and his eyes were bloodshot. "You think you're smart now? You think one lucky bet makes you somebody? Two days ago you were washing my car."

Damon looked down at the hand on his shirt. "Your sister's watching, Jace. Do you want her to see what happens next?"

Jace's grip tightened, and for a second it looked like he was going to swing, but Celeste said his name once, sharp and quiet, and he let go and stepped back, breathing hard.

"Dad wants the two hundred thousand back by Friday," Celeste told her brother without looking at him. "So go home, take a shower, and go close the Ward deal before somebody else does. If you mess that up too, I won't be the one cleaning up after you."

Damon kept his face still, but his heart kicked hard.

Ward Markets.

The teller cleared her throat. "Sir? The loan's been paid. Do you want a receipt?"

"Please," Damon said, and when he turned around again, Celeste was already walking out of the bank with her phone against her ear, and Jace was following behind her, glaring back at him the whole way.

Benji was waiting in the van outside, chewing his nails. "Well? Did it work? Am I free? Is my van mine?"

Damon dropped the receipt into his lap. Benji read it twice, then kissed it.

"I love you," he said. "I love you more than my own mother. Don't tell her that."

"Drive to Ward Markets on Elm Street."

"The supermarket? Why? You want snacks?"

"I want to buy it."

Benji slowly put the receipt down. "You want to buy a supermarket."

"Three of them. And the warehouse behind the Elm Street store."

"Damon. Are you okay? You've been weird since Saturday. You hug me, you bet on the Foxes, you made my coffee cup go outside, and now you want to buy supermarkets. Should I take you to a doctor?"

"Just drive, Benji."

In his last life, Ward Markets had been the first place people ran to when the outbreak started, and the warehouse behind the Elm Street store had held enough canned food, rice and bottled water to keep two hundred people alive for a year. Celeste had taken it in the first week. Jace had led the men inside, and when Lena refused to hand over the keys, he had dragged her and her little brother out through the loading door and locked it behind them while the dead came down the street. Damon had found them two days later, Lena lying on top of the boy she had tried to protect.

He had never forgotten her face.

Lena was standing at a checkout counter when they walked in, arguing with a delivery man about an invoice, and she didn't even look up. She was twenty-six, with her dark hair tied up in a messy knot, a pencil behind her ear, and a store apron that was much too big for her. A boy of about eight sat on the counter beside her eating crackers and swinging his legs.

"I paid this last month," she was saying. "I have the receipt. I'm not paying it twice just because your company lost the paperwork."

"Lady, I just drive the truck."

"Then drive it back and tell your boss to call me."

The delivery man left, muttering, and Lena finally looked up at Damon and Benji with a tired frown. "If you're from the bank, I already told your boss I need until the end of the month."

"I'm not from the bank," Damon said. "I want to buy the store. All three of them, and the Elm Street warehouse."

Lena stared at him for a moment, then laughed, short and sharp. "Okay. Who sent you? Was it that Sterling boy? Because I told him on Friday he can take his offer and choke on it."

"Nobody sent me."

"Then you're a stranger who walked in off the street and decided to buy a supermarket chain on a Monday morning."

"Yes."

"With what, your good looks?"

Benji snorted. Damon gave him a look, and he turned it into a cough.

"What did Jace offer you?" Damon asked.

Lena's eyes narrowed. "How do you know his name?"

"I used to be his brother-in-law."

"Used to?"

"As of Saturday."

Something in her face changed a little. She leaned back against the counter and folded her arms. "He offered two hundred and fifty for all three stores and the warehouse. It's worth twice that. My dad built these stores with his own hands, and that boy walked in here, called them dumps, and told me I'd be lucky if anyone else even made an offer, because the bank's going to take them by Christmas anyway."

"Will they?"

She didn't answer, and that was answer enough.

The boy on the counter tugged at her sleeve. "Lena, is the man going to buy the store?"

"Max, eat your crackers."

Damon looked at the boy and felt his throat tighten. He looked away before anyone could see it.

"Four hundred," Damon said. "For all of it. And I want you to keep running the stores for me, on a salary, with your name staying on the sign."

Lena's arms dropped. "Four hundred thousand?"

"Yes."

"Why would you pay more than the bank wants for them?"

"Because I need someone who knows every shelf in these stores, and you know them better than anyone."

"That's not a reason, that's a compliment."

"It's both."

Before she could answer, the front doors slid open, and Jace walked in, freshly showered, in a clean suit, with a lawyer in a grey tie walking right behind him. He saw Damon and stopped dead.

"You've got to be kidding me," Jace said. "What are you doing here?"

"Shopping," Damon said.

"Get out. This is my deal." Jace turned to Lena and put on a wide smile. "Miss Ward, I've talked to my father, and I'm ready to go up to two hundred and seventy. Final offer. You sign today, and I'll even let you keep the apron."

Lena looked at Jace, then at Damon. "He just offered me four hundred."

Jace laughed. "He doesn't have four hundred. Two days ago he had an allowance."

"He paid off my van loan in cash this morning," Benji said helpfully. "Like, an hour ago."

Jace's smile dropped. He turned to his lawyer and hissed, "Call my sister."

"Call her," Damon said. "And while you're on the phone, tell her about the two hundred thousand you borrowed from Mickey Rourke's guys last month to cover your losses before Sunday. Because they'll be wanting that back too, and I don't think she knows yet."

The lawyer froze with his phone halfway to his ear.

Jace went very pale. "How do you know about Mickey?"

In his last life, two of Mickey's men had broken Jace's arm in the Sterling garage the week before the outbreak, and the whole family had blamed Damon for leaving the side gate unlocked. Damon had found out the real story three months later from one of Mickey's men, who had been bitten and was dying in a corner of Riverside Base, laughing about it.

"Everybody knows," Damon said. "You just didn't know they knew."

The lawyer quietly put his phone away. "Mr. Sterling," he said, "I think we should go."

"I'm not going anywhere," Jace snapped, but his voice shook. He jabbed his finger at Damon. "This isn't over. You hear me? You don't get to walk around like you're better than me."

"Jace," Lena said. "Get out of my store."

He looked at her, at Damon, at Benji grinning by the door, and then he turned and walked out so fast his lawyer had to jog to keep up.

The store was quiet. Max stopped swinging his legs.

Lena looked at Damon for a long moment. "I'll need my uncle's lawyer to look at the papers."

"Take as long as you need, as long as it's this week."

"And I'm keeping my dad's name on the sign."

"I already said yes."

"And you don't get to tell me how to run my stores."

"I'll only tell you what to stock," Damon said.

She rolled her eyes, but she pulled the pencil from behind her ear and held it out. "Fine. Show me what you want to stock."

She gave him the tour herself. Damon walked every aisle of the Elm Street store with Lena talking beside him about suppliers and prices, and he touched everything, his palm sliding along the shelves, the canned goods, the rice sacks, the water bottles, the freezers in the back. Then she unlocked the warehouse, and he walked down every row of pallets with his hand out, tapping each one as he passed, while his forearm burned under his sleeve and Benji followed behind him eating a bag of chips he hadn't paid for.

Lena stopped walking near the loading door.

"Why do you keep touching everything?" she asked.

"Habit."

"It's weird."

"I've been told."

She leaned against a stack of pallets and studied him, and Damon realized they were standing in the exact spot where he had found her in his last life, right by the loading door.

He couldn't stop himself from looking at the floor.

Lena noticed. Her voice went quiet. "You did it again."

"Did what?"

"When you first walked in, you looked at Max like you'd seen a ghost. And now you're looking at the floor next to my feet the same way." She crossed her arms tighter. "I don't know you, Damon. I've never met you in my life. So why do you look at me like you've already watched me die?"