Page 29 of Carver’s Crusade

Raven pretends to keep walking past the tools, while I pull her back. “Hold on, I want to check something.”

“Oh, you and your tools. Don’t you already have one of everything?” Raven asks, sharing a smirk with the girl behind the table. “Men, right?”

The girl smiles at Raven as she moves toward us. “Are you looking for anything specific?”

“I could use a new level; I dropped mine and broke it,” I tell her.

“Oh, I have a couple that you might like.” She moves behind her brother to select three levels leaning against the back table. Two of them are 4-foot levels with multiple vials, allowing the user to measure horizontally, vertically, and at a 45-degree angle, great for measuring framing and larger surfaces. The third is much longer and is one we use to measure walls or floors.

I examine one of the levels, running my thumb over a scrape on the bottom. “These are all used tools? Correct?”

The girl nods. “They are.”

“Where do you find them?”

“Wherever we can. Usually, we pick them up at garage sales or at the junkyard. You’d be surprised how many people toss away perfectly good tools. We find them, clean them up, and then sell them.”

“I’ll take this,” I tell her, pulling out my wallet and handing her a twenty. She pulls out a metal box, takes my money, and offers me a smile.

“That’s interesting,” Raven says, capturing the girl’s attention. “It’s amazing what people will throw away, isn’t it? I found my dresser on the side of the road. All it took was some soap and water to clean it up and a new coat of paint.”

“We’ve talked about doing that, too,” the girl gushes. “I know there are some sellers here who repurpose items.”

“Really?” Raven asks, glancing around. “I’d love to see what they have. Do you know where they have their booths?”

While the girl gives Raven directions, I slip a tracking device into the open money box. We keep the trackers on hand in case we need them. Even if we lose the kids, we should be able to find them. Or at least the money.

I take my purchase, grab Raven’s hand, and wave goodbye to the girl before joining Jackson and Axel in a neighboring aisle.

“Well?” Jackson asks.

I hand him the level. “I’m pretty sure this is one of ours.”

Jackson studies it. “Could be. It’s the brand we use.”

“I put a tracker in their cashbox,” I say.

“I slipped one in a toolbox when he wasn’t looking,” Axel adds.

“Good, we should be able to find them, and maybe they’ll lead us to who is running this scam.”

CHAPTER 14: RAVEN

“So, what will you do now?” I ask Carver as he walks me to my car.

“We’ll use the trackers to find them and figure out who they’re working for,” he says.

“What if they aren’t working for anyone but themselves?”

“Then we’ll have a talk with them and try to figure out how to keep them from stealing from us.”

I feel a twinge of guilt at my part in the discovery. If they hurt those kids… No. I shake my head. No one who supports a place like Crossroads could hurt a child. However. “What does that mean?”

Carver smirks at me. “You mean, are we going to beat them bloody and take our pound of flesh?”

I shake my head. “No, I didn’t think you were going to hurt them. However, scaring them was a consideration.”

He chuckles. “Frightening them is unavoidable. We’re going to confront them, and they’ll likely be scared when we do. However, we’re going to figure out what’s going on. We need to know so we can fix the problem. If they’re working for someone, we need to know who is using them so we can stop him. If they’re kids who are stealing because they need to eat, then we’ll see what we can do to make the thefts unnecessary.”