Page 12 of Cold Foot Cash (Wreck’s Mountains #4)

“I freaking knew it,” Cash said as he read the text messages in Darth’s phone. “Didn’t I say it was Darth? He’s fuckin’ creepy, right?”

“I’m right here,” Darth muttered. “I can hear you.”

Cash looked over at him and held up the asshole’s phone. “You are creepy! You should be called out. Look at this.” He pointed the text thread toward him. “You pretended to be me just to talk to this girl? You tricked her, man. You’re disgusting.”

“You don’t understand how it is—”

Kade was just as fast as he was powerful. He grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the brick wall in the back of the cabinet shop. “Don’t you dare try to make excuses for this shit. There is no excuse. You got this girl sending you pictures of herself thinking she was falling in love.”

“She didn’t even ask for video proof—Ack!”

“She didn’t have any reason not to trust you, man! You send her pictures of Cash and pretended you were him! Normal people wouldn’t assume you are a pathological liar. Dude, why?” Kade barked out, releasing his neck and shoving him away. “Why would you do this? You’re in decent shape. You have a steady job. You aren’t hideous.”

“I do it because I want to.”

“Hey, Carolina. This is Cash, the real Cash, messaging from Darth Milner’s phone. Google him. He’s the one who catfished you. He works at the cabinet shop in Darby,” he read aloud as he typed out the text to Carolina from Darth’s phone.

“Don’t send that to her!” Darth yelled. “Please! Don’t do that.”

He reached for his phone, but Cash snatched it away and shoved him back. “She deserves to know the asshole who tricked her, and you deserve to be held accountable. If I go through your messages, what will I find? Have you done this to other women?” Cash demanded.

“You’re stealing. That’s my phone. That’s my property.”

Darth reached for the phone again, but Cash grabbed the front of his shirt and pushed him back against the wall. “Don’t reach for me again. I’m trying to be patient with you, but it’s thin right now, bro. Will I find you catfishing other women in this phone?”

Darth’s eyes were wide, and his voice lost its conviction on the word, “No.”

“You just lied to us,” Kade said, pacing away and back.

Disgusted, Cash started scrolling through text threads. There were three other girls immediately. “Geez,” he ground out, appalled.

A text came through from Carolina. Prove it.

Cash flipped the video function on himself and waved. “Hi Carolina. It’s me, the real Cash. And this…” He flipped the camera toward Darth, “Is the guy you’ve been talking to.”

Darth looked like a deer caught in headlights. “I…I…”

“Say hi to her, dude. You’re so comfortable talking to these women, pretending to be someone else, here’s your chance to just be you. Say hi.”

“It’s her own fault—”

“Try again,” Cash interrupted.

“Try what again?” Darth yelled.

“I see the way you’re talking to them in these texts. You’re pressuring them for nude pictures of themselves! Threatening to stop talking to them if they don’t send them. There has to be a hundred in your damn phone and not a one of these were sent to you. They were sent to the person you’re pretending to be. Catfishy as hell, man.”

“A lot of people do this. It’s not just me.”

Cash made a disgusted click sound behind his teeth and turned the camera back to him. “You aren’t the only girl he’s done it to, so don’t feel bad. Just ask for videos from here on. Some guys are shitty. Save this video quick in case Darth Milner, M-I-L-N-E-R of Darby, Montana deletes it out of the text. Hell, take it to police if you want. I’m about to message the other girls he’s done this to.” Cash ended the video and sent it to her.

“Give me my phone back—”

“Sit down, you sick fuck,” Cash demanded.

Darth sank down with his back against the building.

“What the hell are you all doing out here?” his boss, Tommy, yelled from the corner of the building. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your breaks were over ten minutes ago!”

Cash gestured to Darth. “We’re taking care of something. Five more minutes.”

Tommy barreled down on them like an enraged grizzly. “What could you possibly be doing that is so damn important that it’s about to cost you your job.”

“This idiot has been pretending to be me, and catfishing women.”

“The fuck?” Tommy asked, the anger for Cash disappearing immediately. His bushy grey eyebrows arched up as he stared at Darth. “Are you really doing that?”

Darth didn’t answer. Instead, she crossed his arms over his chest and refused to meet any of their eyes.

“Begging girls to send him titty pics and using my pictures, pretending to be me, going by my name, the works,” Cash gritted out as he texted some woman named Alexis.

“You’re fired,” Tommy said, and oooh that fury was back in his voice.

Surprised, Cash looked up, concerned Tommy was talking to him. He wasn’t. His rage was aimed at Darth.

“Wh-what?” Darth asked. “My personal life has nothing to do with me working here.”

“Someone did that to my daughter, and it wrecked her,” Tommy said, red creeping into his cheeks. He jammed a finger at him. “You’re so fuckin’ fired.”

“But…I need this job.”

“The world doesn’t owe you, bro,” Kade gritted out.

Tommy walked away, shaking his head. “Cash, Kade, you can have an extra hour break to deal with it.”

“But they stole my phone!” Darth yelled after his boss. “This is illegal.”

Tommy turned back and walked backward as he said, “I’ll happily call the police for you, Darth. You really want that? Let’s tell them the reason these boys decided to take your phone. Let’s tell them what you’ve been doing with it, hmm? You want that?”

Darth begrudgingly stayed silent and dropped his gaze.

“That’s what I thought. Toughen up, take the consequences for your actions. You fucked up, Darth. Cash and Kade are your Karma. Get your tools and get the hell off my property.” He jammed his finger at him again and roared, “You should be ashamed of yourself. You should feel disgusting because that’s what you are.”

Whooo, Tommy was mad. Cash exchanged an impressed look with Kade. Okay, he had always disliked Tommy, but now he understood the man a little better. He liked him. He was tough, but fair. And he was a girl-dad with no patience for grody-man-bullshit. Nice.

“I appreciate you, Boss,” Cash called.

“Fuck off, Cash.”

Cash pursed his lips into a smile and went back to texting the girls Darth had been catfishing. Some were still very active. “Let’s see. You have a few social media pages,” Cash murmured, typing out the first post on his biggest one.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting your friends and family know what a dirtbag you are.”

“It’s literally their fault! None of them care that I’m someone else. They just want someone to talk to!”

“I can’t with the bullshit,” Kade ground out.

“Want to punch him? I bet he’ll talk less with a broken jaw.”

“Yeah, and you’ll have the whole town raining down on you, you fuckin’ trash shifters. You trash shifters!”

“You trash shifters,” Kade mocked him, and Cash snorted. This was the most he’d ever liked Kade.

Cash copied and pasted the post, put them on all of his pages along with the video he’d taken for Carolina, and a disclaimer that people should screen record it quick, in case Darth removed the post when Cash gave him his phone back. Or perhaps he would just dunk the phone into a cup of beer.

“I’m feeling spicy today,” Cash announced.

“You feel spicy every day,” Kade pointed out.

“Oh yeah. Hey Darth?” He held up his phone and shook it. “I’m going to keep this for a little while.”

“Why? So you can look at those girls’ pictures?”

“Ew, gross, no.” Cash scrunched up his face. “I don’t need to steal peeks at private pictures. Not my gig. That’s all you, Creepo. Nah, I just want a little time for everyone to see what you’ve been doing, and to be able to respond to your victims.”

“They aren’t victims. I keep trying to tell you that.”

“You lied to them about who you are. You pretended to be someone you are not. You stole my identity and you tricked these women into falling for someone who does not exist, and then you took advantage of them. You might have justified all this in your mind by convincing yourself that women are objects to be used, but it’s actually messed up. Do you understand how many people you have hurt by this?” God, he wanted to put his fist through this guy’s smug face. “These women won’t trust as easily anymore. They will feel taken advantage of, and that’s fair for them to feel that way. You did take advantage of them. This will be a part of their romantic history now and it’s awful what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter how much you have justified your behavior, it’s awful. I’m telling you, as someone who isn’t jaded as fuck to this stuff, as a normal man, what you’re doing is so messed up. And the worst part is I know you don’t care. I can see it on your face. You aren’t hearing a word I’m saying, you do not care at all about these women, or how you have hurt them. You just care about yourself, and this sick hobby of yours. If you ever use my picture or my name, or anything about me again, I will find out, and I will kill you, is that understood?” He stepped closer and roared, “Is that understood?”

Fear had a stink about it. It was bitter and heavy. He could tell Darth was scared now, and at least there was this small sense of satisfaction. If Cash couldn’t speak to this man’s moral compass, he could at least strike fear into him.

“Understood,” Darth whispered.

“Sweet,” Cash said brightly. He clapped him on the shoulder. “You heard Tommy. Go get your tools and get the fuck off his property.”

He watched the village idiot stagger toward the front of the building.

“Do you think he’ll stop?” Kade asked.

“I don’t think he respects women enough to stop. He might slow down for a little while, but he isn’t decent. He will start justifying it to himself again.”

“What a loser.”

“Totally.” Cash pulled his own phone out of his pocket and checked for a text from Harley, but she still hadn’t responded to his good morning text.

He frowned and typed out, Kade and I figured out Carolina’s catfish. I sent her a message from his phone and gave her the info. You good? Send.

He chewed the side of his lip as he waited for a response that didn’t come. Huh. Maybe she was sleeping in. Until one pm? Nah, something was off. He could feel it.

“Trouble in paradise already?” Kade asked.

Cash shoved his phone back into his pocket and followed his Crewmate toward the front of the building. “She’s just quiet today.”

“Maybe she saw you in your natural environment last night and figured out how lame you are,” Kade teased.

“Maybe. I don’t know. She’s high caliber, you know?”

“Dude, I was joking. You aren’t lame.”

“I mean, I’m a convicted felon, prison escapee, and I only have about fifty percent of my life together.”

Kade snorted. “You’re living in a brand-new cabin, Damon wiped your prison records, you make good money, have solid friends, and shower regularly. You’re good. Hey, you’re way better than Darth Milner.”

Cash snorted. “Thanks for setting that bar real low.”

He checked his phone again, but still nothing from Harley.

Yesterday had been the best day of his life to date, and he hadn’t even seen her boobs. He just loved being around her, and he’d felt it—she had been relaxed and happy around him too. She’d had fun. She’d laughed the night away and had stalled being apart from him when he dropped her off at her motel room late last night, so what gave with the silent treatment today?

Something was happening.

He just knew it.