Chapter 2: The Man Who Helped Move Her Truck
I left Gaby and Leo in the motel room with the prepaid phone on the bed between them.
“Call me if anyone comes to the door,” I said.
Gaby’s fingers closed around the phone. She looked tired enough to disappear, but her eyes stayed on mine.
“And don’t come back pretending you didn’t see anything,” she said.
“I won’t.”
That was all I could promise.
At nine, the sun was already glaring off the windows along Grand Avenue. I chose a crowded diner with a glass front and a parking lot I could see from the counter. Families filled the booths. A waitress poured coffee. A bell jingled each time someone came through the door.
I kept my back to the wall.
Tyler arrived seven minutes late. He walked in without looking around, which was the first thing that made me suspicious. Men who wanted a private meeting usually looked for witnesses before they sat down.
He slid into the booth across from me.
“You came alone.”
“You asked me to.”
“I asked you to come alone. I didn’t ask you to trust me.”
“I don’t.”
The waitress stopped beside us. Tyler ordered coffee. I didn’t take my eyes off him.
He looked past me toward the glass. His jaw tightened.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then look at me.”
He did. There was a faint red mark across one cheek, like he’d shaved in a hurry. His work shirt was clean but wrinkled at the collar.
“Your daughter said I moved her truck,” he said.
“She was right?”
Tyler glanced down at the table.
“I drove it away.”
The answer hit harder than I expected. I curled my fingers around my coffee cup until the heat stung my palm.
“Where?”
“Derek told me to take it to a storage yard. Said he needed it out of the way.”
“Out of whose way?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.” Tyler’s voice dropped. “I expect you to understand I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
For a moment I could see Gaby in my mind, waiting at that motel window with Leo tucked against her shoulder. Tyler had stood near her truck while someone else took away the last thing she owned that could get her out.
“You helped him,” I said.
“Yes.”
The waitress set down Tyler’s coffee. He waited until she moved away, then pulled a folded packet from inside his shirt. The papers were creased and soft at the edges, as if he’d carried them around for a while.
“Before you look,” he said, “I want you to know I copied this. It’s not the original.”
“Why keep it?”
“Because Derek owed me money. One hundred and eighty thousand. I wanted proof.”
“That’s your whole reason?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He opened the packet. The top sheet was a grid of dates, numbers, and abbreviated descriptions. Some entries had handwritten marks beside them. It looked like a ledger, but a copy could be made to look like anything.
Tyler tapped one line with his finger.
“This entry is dated before Leo was born. Gaby’s name is beside an account number. It doesn’t show her signing anything. It doesn’t show who got the money.”
I studied the line. The date was clear. The account number wasn’t. Someone had written a short note in the margin, but the copy blurred into a dark smudge.
“What does the note say?”
“I can’t read it.”
“Convenient.”
His face hardened. “You think I made this?”
“I think you’ve already told me you helped take her truck.”
“I did. And I’m telling you I kept the only copy I knew about when Derek started clearing files.”
“Why?”
“Because he stopped paying me. Because I knew he’d deny the debt. Because I figured one day I might need something he couldn’t explain away.” He leaned closer. “Pick whichever answer makes me look worst. They’re all true.”
I looked again at the dates. One came before Leo. Another was just weeks later. Nothing on the page told me where the money had gone, or what it had been for. But Gaby’s name sat in those narrow columns as if she had been present for every entry.
She hadn’t even known the account existed.
“Did Derek know you copied it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I hid it from him.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Tyler said. “It isn’t.”
His eyes flicked toward the window again.
This time I followed his gaze. Across the street, a dark SUV sat at the curb. Sun flashed across its windshield, hiding whoever was inside.
“Is that why you keep looking out there?”
Tyler stared into his coffee.
“I don’t know who’s in it.”
“You brought me here and now you don’t know?”
“I told you the next move was already underway.”
“What move?”
“I don’t know exactly.” His fingers curled around the paper packet. “Derek’s been asking where I am. Brenda called my house twice last night. If they’ve figured out I kept this—”
“You’re saying they’re watching you.”
“I’m saying they notice when someone stops doing what they’re told.”
He pushed the copied ledger across the table. I didn’t reach for it.
“If I take this, you’re done being a bystander,” I said.
“I was never a bystander.”
“Then stop talking like the money you’re owed makes this even.”
A flush climbed his neck. “It doesn’t.”
“Does Gaby know you drove her truck?”
“She does now.”
“She knows you were there. She doesn’t know you drove it away.”
He didn’t answer.
I took the papers. The diner’s bell jingled behind me, and my shoulders tightened before I could stop them. A man in a baseball cap passed our booth carrying a paper bag. Nobody else looked up.
Tyler put a few bills on the table.
“Don’t go straight back to the motel,” he said.
“Why?”
“If someone’s watching, don’t lead them to her.”
He stood before I could ask anything else. For half a second, he looked like he might say more. Then he turned and walked out into the white heat.
I waited. I watched through the window as he crossed the lot and climbed into an old sedan. He pulled into traffic without looking back.
I gave it five minutes before leaving.
The copied ledger lay on the passenger seat, its blurred lines shaking with every seam in the road. I checked the mirror at the first light. A dark SUV was two cars behind me.
Phoenix traffic thickened around Grand Avenue. I changed lanes. The SUV changed lanes.
At the next turn, I took a side street I didn’t need. The SUV followed.
My mouth went dry. I drove another mile, turned toward a row of strip malls, and watched the mirror again.
May you like
The same dark SUV appeared behind me for the second time.
Only then did I understand: Tyler might not have been the one who brought me there. But someone had been watching him.
