The Trillionaire Chapter Seven: The Most Valuable of Things

By the time Mr. Kenton returned Tori's call, she was in a full panic.

She could barely explain what had happened.

"There was a party, and I rented the building, but I told them I wasn't using it anymore, and somebody got stabbed, and the police called me—"

"Victoria."

She stopped.

"Did you stab anyone?"

"What? No."

"Did you see the stabbing?"

"No."

"Did you provide anyone with a weapon?"

"No."

"Did you know this was going to happen?"

"Of course not."

"All right."

His calm irritated her.

"That's not all right. Somebody died."

"I understand that. I'm asking about your involvement."

Tori dug her fingernails into her palm.

"I rented the warehouse."

"I heard you."

"There were parties."

"I heard that too."

"I let people stay there."

Kenton went quiet for a moment.

"Have the police asked you to come in?"

"Yes."

"Have you spoken to them?"

"Not yet."

"Good. Don't lie to them, don't destroy anything, and don't discuss the incident with anyone else. I'll contact a local attorney who can accompany you if the police need a formal statement."

Tori's stomach dropped.

"Am I going to jail?"

"I've heard nothing suggesting you're being accused of homicide."

"But it's my fault."

"That's a different question."

Tori didn't know what that meant.

Before she could ask, Kenton told her he needed to make several calls and would contact her again.

Then he hung up.

Tori stared at the telephone.

Was he helping her?

Was she supposed to go to the police station?

Should she wait?

Could the police simply come to the trailer and arrest her?

She paced until she couldn't pace anymore.

Then she crawled beneath her bed.

It was childish and uncomfortable, but the confined space made the trailer feel smaller, and smaller felt safer.

When Kenton called again several hours later, Tori scrambled for the telephone.

"I've spoken with counsel in New Mexico," he said. "I've also spoken with the property owner. At the moment, you don't need to go anywhere."

"What does that mean?"

"It means if investigators want to interview you, they'll arrange it through the attorney."

"Am I in trouble?"

"Possibly regarding the property. That's separate from the homicide investigation."

"Possibly?"

"You're fifteen years old and rented a warehouse that became an unauthorized party location. There are questions that may need answering."

Tori felt sick.

"But you're not going to be arrested tonight."

"How do you know?"

"Because I asked."

That was such a simple answer that Tori didn't know what to do with it.

Kenton continued.

"Do not return to the property by yourself. Do not speak to reporters. Do not attempt to contact anyone involved in the fight. If the police contact you directly, be polite and tell them your attorney will return their call."

Tori swallowed.

"Okay."

"And Victoria?"

"Yeah?"

"This is serious. Treat it that way."

"I am."

"I know."

He hung up.

Tori remained beside the telephone.

She was relieved.

She was also ashamed of being relieved.

Someone was dead.

Whatever legal responsibility belonged to her, she couldn't escape the feeling that she had helped create the circumstances that allowed it to happen.

Being legally innocent of murder didn't feel anything like being innocent.

Tori barely left the trailer for several days.

The homicide investigation moved rapidly.

According to local news reports, the dead man had a criminal record and investigators believed the stabbing resulted from a dispute between him and another adult at the party.

Police arrested a suspect within days.

Tori's name never appeared in the coverage.

Neither did the peculiar story of the fifteen-year-old girl who had rented the warehouse.

To everyone else, the killing was simply another brief local tragedy. It appeared on television, occupied people's attention, then disappeared beneath newer stories.

Tori couldn't dismiss it so easily.

She imagined Jesse on the warehouse floor.

Then Molly.

Then Danny.

Each version ended the same way.

Blood on concrete.

Police lights.

Someone's mother getting a telephone call.

Her guilt became almost unbearable.

A month earlier, she'd been proud of herself.

She had money.

A truck.

A boyfriend.

A building.

People came to a place she'd created.

She'd thought she was helping.

Now she looked back and saw a fifteen-year-old girl playing at adulthood with absolutely no understanding of what she was doing.

Tori withdrew her community-college application.

She couldn't imagine sitting in a classroom pretending everything was normal.

More than that, she suddenly wanted distance from the town itself.

Not because the police were after her.

Because everywhere she looked, she saw something she'd handled badly.

Then a letter arrived from Mr. Peeters.

It contained only a few paragraphs.

Tori was to report to Mr. Kenton's office in Manhattan to begin reviewing the assets and business interests associated with her father's estate. Kenton would arrange transportation if necessary.

Tori read it twice.

Then she looked around the trailer.

The sofa was gone.

Without it, the living area seemed enormous.

She'd slept on that sofa for years after her mother became too sick to manage without the bed. The walls were stained in places where moisture had gotten behind them. No matter how often Tori scrubbed, mildew returned along one seam.

Her dishes were mismatched plastic.

Her blankets came from thrift stores.

The kitchen table wobbled.

Nothing in the trailer had monetary value.

Almost everything had value to Tori.

For the first time, she considered that she might not be coming back soon.

The thought frightened her.

It also brought relief.

The warehouse had taught her something she hadn't wanted to learn.

Having money didn't mean she knew how to use it.

Her father had possessed more money than Tori could comprehend, and from what little she'd seen, it had not made him wise, kind or happy.

Tori didn't want to repeat his mistakes on a smaller scale.

If she had inherited his world, then perhaps she needed to understand it before she spent another dollar trying to improve anyone else's.

Maybe New York was where she needed to be.

For a while.

Before making arrangements, Tori checked beneath the loose floorboard where her mother had once hidden cash.

Nothing remained.

There was no reason for anything to remain. Tori used a bank account now.

Still, she ran her fingers across the empty space.

Another piece of her old life that had become unnecessary.

She replaced the board and rolled the rug over it.

Then she walked across the trailer park to Molly's.

"I need your help."

"With what?"

"I want my sofa back."

Molly stared at her.

"From the murder warehouse?"

Tori winced.

"Please don't call it that."

"What should I call it?"

"I don't know. Just help me."

They drove Tori's truck across the road.

Police tape still hung in places around the property, although the scene itself had been released. Tori had confirmed through the landlord that she could retrieve her belongings before surrendering the keys.

Even so, entering the building made her stomach tighten.

It looked smaller now.

Dirtier.

Beer cans littered the floor. Graffiti had appeared on another wall. Somebody had kicked a hole through a sheet of drywall.

The warehouse no longer looked like possibility.

It looked abandoned.

Her sofa remained against the wall where they'd left it for Danny.

He was gone.

So were the other teenagers who'd been sleeping there.

Tori hoped they'd found somewhere safe.

She knew better than to assume they had.

The sofa was filthy. Beer had been spilled across one cushion, and something had burned a small hole into the arm.

Molly looked at it.

"You seriously want this back?"

"Yes."

"Tori."

"I want it."

Molly shrugged.

"Okay."

Tori touched the worn fabric.

Her mother had sat there on the last evening they'd spent together.

That alone made the sofa more valuable than anything she'd seen in Sweden.

Molly seemed to understand.

She stopped complaining and helped Tori wrestle it into the truck.

The next morning, Tori began dismantling her life.

She rented a small storage unit and hired movers to pack the possessions she wanted to keep.

The sofa went first.

Then her mother's things.

Photographs.

Documents.

A chipped ceramic bowl.

A blanket Tori remembered from childhood.

Objects nobody else would have paid five dollars for.

Tori kept all of them.

She arranged a flight to New York and reserved an inexpensive hotel near Kenton's office

after confirming the plans with his staff.

Then she opened her closet.

Sweaters from lost-and-found boxes.

Hand-me-down jeans.

Shirts that had belonged to people whose names she'd never known.

Tori ran her hand along them.

For most of her life, clothes had simply been things that covered her body.

She packed very little.

Her backpack held the things that mattered: identification, court papers, bank information and several photographs of her mother.

That was enough.

There were only two people left.

Jesse and Molly.

Tori cared about Jesse more than she wanted to admit.

That was precisely why she didn't ask him to come.

She had seen her father's world.

Lawyers.

Security.

Private aircraft.

People who could arrange another person's entire life with a few telephone calls.

Tori didn't understand that world well enough to bring somebody she cared about into it.

She barely knew how to protect herself.

So she told Jesse she had family business in New York and didn't know how long it would take.

He wasn't happy.

Neither was she.

But he kissed her goodbye anyway.

Molly deserved more.

Tori ate dinner with her that night.

Ramen noodles.

Tori added ketchup because it was one of the few meals she knew how to make without instructions.

Molly stared into her bowl.

"You're really leaving?"

"For a while."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

"What are you doing?"

"Summer job."

Molly looked suspicious.

"In New York?"

"Yeah."

"Doing what?"

Tori smiled.

"I'll tell you when I figure that out."

It was another lie.

Tori was becoming disturbingly good at them.

Molly eventually accepted it.

"I'll tell Jesse you're coming back."

Tori's smile weakened.

"Tell him I'll call."

That was safer.

They left before sunrise.

Molly drove Tori's truck while Tori sat in the passenger seat watching the desert pass outside.

At the airport drop-off lane, Molly parked.

They hugged.

Not the quick hug Tori had expected.

A real one.

When they separated, Tori handed her the trailer key.

"The movers are coming today. After they're done, you can use the place until the lot arrangement gets sorted out."

Molly looked at the key.

"Okay."

"And there's something else."

Tori nodded toward the glove compartment.

Molly opened it.

Inside was the truck title.

She looked at Tori.

"No."

"Yes."

"Tori."

"I don't need it."

"You're coming back."

"I can get another truck."

Molly's expression changed.

Tori realized too late what she'd said.

People like Molly didn't say things like that.

People like the Tori from six months ago hadn't either.

I can get another truck.

As though trucks simply appeared when you wanted one.

Tori suddenly hated the sentence.

"Molly, I didn't mean—"

"I'm not taking your truck."

"I want you to."

"Why?"

"Because you need it."

Molly looked down.

Tori continued more quietly.

"And because somebody should have something good come out of all this."

There was cash in the glove compartment for registration and insurance expenses, along with several prepaid fuel cards.

Molly began crying.

"Oh, don't do that."

"Shut up."

Now Tori was crying too.

They hugged again.

Tori eventually pulled away because if she didn't, she suspected she might miss the flight

intentionally.

She put on her backpack.

"Take care of yourself."

"You too."

Tori started toward the terminal.

Then she turned.

Molly was still standing beside the truck.

For one second, Tori saw the entire life she was leaving.

The trailer park.

The desert.

The battered truck.

Molly.

Jesse.

Her mother.

Not literally her mother, of course.

But the world in which her mother had existed.

Tori raised her hand.

Molly waved back.

Then Tori noticed the man standing several yards away.

Navy T-shirt.

Chinos.

Sunglasses.

No luggage.

She recognized him immediately.

Harris.

The security contractor who had followed her from Albuquerque to New York months earlier.

Tori looked around.

Another man stood farther down the terminal entrance pretending to read something on his

phone.

Security.

Mr. Peeters hadn't mentioned them.

Of course he hadn't.

Tori looked back toward Molly.

The truck was already pulling away.

She was alone again.

Except, apparently, she wasn't.

Harris met her eyes.

He gave the slightest nod.

Months earlier, discovering that men had been following her would have terrified Tori.

This time she merely adjusted the strap of her backpack.

Then she nodded back.

She understood the message.

Her father's world had come to collect her.

Tori turned toward the terminal and walked inside.