"This is a time-sensitive decision," I protested, following him out of the cafe.
"I'll be in touch," he said lightly. He unlocked his car and held the passenger side door open for me. Was he serious? We weren't done yet.
"Cameron, this is big. Bigger than just you. It's the other stockbrokers. It's hundreds of people's jobs." The architects, contractors, landscapers, everyone who got a job when a new property development started. Everyone who would potentially lose their job if both Cameron and Brett were out of the picture. The stake he owned, which was valued in the hundreds of millions, that many people, a lot of those people he claimed to hate so much, would be after him. He slammed the door shut and turned to me.
"I'm not running. You know exactly where to find me. I trust Brett. He'll understand when I tell him what I'm doing." How was he still not seeing the point? "Can I take you back to work now, or is there something else?"
Any more of this, and we'd just keep talking in circles. He was being stubborn. Stubborn and selfish. He wasn't going to budge. I opened the car and got in. He took me back to the office and drove away without a word. I would have to tell Brett this ridiculous plan of his. Yeah, I thought, and he just gets to drive away, not a care in the world about the consequences of his actions and the lives of hundreds of other people. All I would have to do was have an uncomfortable conversation with Brett; for a lot of other people, it was going to be much worse.
Chapter Nine
Cameron
It only took me a few days to get everything packed. The living room, office, and kitchen were already bare. The stuff that wasn't coming to the new house with me was all in storage. I'd do something with it at some point, but nothing was certain yet. I owned my house in Provo and had been going back and forth about selling it. I owned three other places besides the one that I lived in, and those were definitely getting listed. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the properties my parents had owned, so I hadn't done anything. I had a shit pile a mile high to tackle; I had to start somewhere, and this was it. Some time out in the mountains, and I'd probably manage to think of something. If I didn't... well, not doing anything wasn’t an option I had. With everything on my plate, I had to start somewhere. If anything was happening, it wasn't going to happen from here.
I was going to get to the house, settle in, and then once I felt like I wasn't going to explode anymore, the other shit could get taken care of. That was the plan, but I actually had to get out there first. I had moved before, but never like this, out somewhere I’d have no neighbors, and the nearest town was miles away. I was excited; was that weird? It was finally a break. A total separation from everything and everyone I knew. The light had totally gone out for me once my parents had died. I couldn’t do anything to fix the world I lived in, and leaving it wasn’t an absolute solution, but it was the closest I’d ever have to one.
I walked into my bedroom and started moving the boxes full of my clothes out to the truck. I had used it for the first time moving out of my parents’ place and driving to college. I figured I'd get better use out of it than I got out of my BMW, so I sold the car to a dealership. The mountains got snow early, and it would be cold already. I liked to think that I would be prepared, but I wasn't sure what would happen out there. Not once I was alone. I just wanted to leave. I wanted peace, and it wasn't going to come while I was still here. Still surrounded by everything I hated in the wake of my parents' deaths. Frankly, I had nothing to lose and nothing keeping me where I was. It was that simple. Once I finished with the house in an hour or so, I was gone.
My new place was in the mountains. It would take me at least two hours to get there, then up to another hour more on the unpaved mountain trail to get to the actual house. I mean, that was what my realtor had told me. I hadn't been there yet. I had seen enough pictures of the place to get a good enough idea though. It had been out of use for a long time but recently renovated. About one thousand five hundred square feet, secluded after miles of all-weather road. The closest city, Park City, would be thirty miles away.
"Need help?" I looked up and saw Brett coming out of his car. I hadn't heard him drive up. I dusted my hands off and jumped down off the back of my truck.
"Skippin
g work, Brett?" I asked.
"Looks like I caught you just before you went off the grid."
"Naw, it's not all that," I told him. "If I was trying to disappear and never be found again, I'd head out further than just the mountains."
"Natalie told me that was your plan. I had to come ask you myself." He had a coat over his usual work clothes, what I used to wear every day too. Those, I had left in the house. Getting rid of them felt a little premature. I wasn’t chomping at the bit to sell and run anymore, and I wanted to have at least made a definitive decision before letting go of them.
"The two of you seem to spend a lot of time together," I observed.
"That might be changing soon," he said. "She's sick of you."
I nodded and shrugged. "Well, there's no chance of us running into each other again after today."
"Are you sure about this, Cameron?"
"I bought the house already, and I'm moving in."
"I'll tell you," he said, "you couldn't have picked a worse time to do this if you tried."
"I'm sorry, Brett, but I have to do this. I can't be here anymore. Everything was one way, and then it had completely changed in a second. I wasn’t ready for it. I have nothing. Everyone's looking at me to have all the answers, and I just don't Brett. Not yet, maybe not ever."
"This isn't permanent, is it? Cameron, you can’t just disappear—"
"It isn't. I'm tired, not an idiot. This will only solve part of the problem, and not even the biggest part. I realize that. Let me do this first, and hopefully, the rest of the stuff will start making sense.”
"How much did that mountain house set you back?" he asked.
"If you're trying to buy me out, it isn't going to work."
He laughed and shook his head. "Can you blame me for trying?" he asked. I couldn't. I knew why he was doing it. He had to. I had asked him to take care of things at the company, but that move had to be temporary. I felt bad about it, but he had to understand why I did it. The company shit... I'd get to it but I couldn't right now.
"Nope. You're just doing your job."