Chapter 6: The Truck at the Storage Yard
Rebecca folded Brenda’s timeline into a paper sleeve and set it beside her phone.
“I’ll find out whether anyone has seen this,” she said. “But if Tyler knows where the truck is, I want to know what’s in it.”
Gaby looked toward the bed where Leo slept, one small fist resting beside his cheek.
“I’m not leaving him with Tyler.”
“No one asked you to,” I said.
Rebecca offered to stay at the motel with Leo. Gaby hesitated, then bent over her son and pressed her lips to his forehead. When she straightened, the fear in her face hadn’t gone away. It had simply made room for something harder.
“Let’s go.”
Tyler was waiting in a dusty sedan on the far side of the motel lot. He glanced at Gaby as she climbed into the back seat, then looked away.
“You said you knew where the truck was,” I told him.
“I do.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “It’s in a yard off Buckeye. I used to take vehicles there for Derek.”
Gaby leaned forward between the seats.
“You took mine.”
Tyler looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Yes.”
The admission sat between us for the rest of the drive. Outside, Phoenix passed in hard morning light: stucco walls, palm fronds stirring above block fences, a man hosing dust from a gas-station sidewalk. I kept checking behind us. I saw no dark SUV, but the empty space where it might have been felt occupied anyway.
The storage yard stood behind a high chain-link fence. Rows of parked vehicles baked beneath the sun. Tyler entered a code at the gate. The lock clicked, and the metal panels rolled apart.
“You still have access?” I asked.
“For a while, nobody bothered changing it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He drove us down a narrow lane. The truck was near the back, its once-red paint dulled beneath a film of dust. Gaby stopped walking when she saw it.
For a moment, she looked like she had when I first found her on Grand Avenue—not because the truck resembled the plastic cup in her hand, but because both seemed to hold a life someone else had taken the liberty of moving around.
She walked up to the driver’s door and laid her palm against it.
“I used to bring groceries home in this,” she said. “Leo’s car seat was behind me.”
Tyler produced a key.
Gaby turned sharply.
“You kept the key?”
“Derek gave it to me.”
“You could have given it back.”
“I should have.”
She took it from him before I could say anything. The door groaned open. A stale, trapped smell came out—dust, old upholstery, the faint sweetness of a spilled drink.
Gaby leaned inside. Her gaze moved over the seat, the empty cup holder, the little mirror she’d once clipped above the passenger side. Then she went still.
Under the seat lay a baby blanket, bunched against the floor rail. Pale blue, with yellow moons stitched along the edge.
Gaby reached for it carefully, as if it might vanish if she moved too fast.
“I thought I lost this.”
She rubbed the fabric between her fingers. I remembered it draped over her shoulder the first time she brought Leo to my house. Back then, the worry on her face had been ordinary new-parent worry: Was he warm enough? Was I holding him right? We hadn’t known that someone was already building a trap around her name.
A thin folder was wedged behind the seat track, its corner gray with dust. Gaby pulled it free. The flap had been tucked closed, but the papers inside were loose.
Tyler looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t move anything else,” he said.
Gaby turned to him. “Now you’re worried about what we touch?”
Before he could answer, an engine turned over near the front gate. A uniformed guard stepped from a small booth and started down the lane, one hand lifted to shade his eyes.
Tyler’s face changed.
“We need to go.”
“We haven’t searched the rest of the truck,” I said.
“He’s going to ask why I’m here.”
“Tell him the truth.”
Tyler gave a short, humorless laugh. “You think Derek’s version of the truth is the one he’s paid to care about?”
The guard called out. Tyler didn’t answer. Gaby tucked the folder against her chest, blanket in her other hand, and shut the truck door.
The guard kept coming.
We left through the gate without running. I hated that we left. I hated more that I understood why.
Tyler drove until the yard disappeared behind a row of warehouses, then pulled into the shade beside a closed tire shop. His eyes stayed on the rearview mirror while Gaby opened the folder on her lap.
The first page was an insurance letter addressed to her. Her name was printed clearly at the top. Below it, a routing line directed correspondence through Citrine Ridge Ventures, LLC.
Gaby read it twice.
“I never asked them to send my mail there.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I know you believe me.” She touched the page. “I need something that shows it.”
There was a receipt beneath the letter, dated months before Leo was born. Citrine Ridge Ventures appeared in the business-name field. The service description was short: “policy file processing.”
It wasn’t proof of who had filled out the forms or who had sent the letter. But it put the company beside Gaby’s insurance paperwork before the story could be blamed on exhaustion, newborn sleep, or a signature she’d supposedly given later.
She pressed the pages flat against her knee.
“They were already in my life,” she whispered. “Before Leo.”
I looked at Tyler. “You knew the truck had these papers.”
His eyes remained on the mirror.
Gaby’s fingers tightened around the blanket. “How long?”
He swallowed.
“Derek told me there was a folder in the truck. I knew it had papers in it.”
“And you said nothing,” I said.
“I thought I’d get paid what they owed me.” His voice dropped. “When they stopped paying, I called you.”
The words landed heavier than the truck door had. Gaby stared at him, holding the evidence that might help her and the blanket that had once meant home.
May you like
Tyler finally looked at her.
“I knew the truck held papers,” he said. “I stayed quiet until the family stopped paying me.”
