Page 8 of The Woman with the Handcuffs

CHAPTER THREE

Gavino

My spare room was set up as a study.

Or, perhaps more accurately, a library.

Bookcases lined every wall, floor to ceiling. I’d gotten sick of having to build a new one each time I ran out of space, so I knuckled down and filled the whole room. I was able to stack my books a little more stylistically for the time being, but had plenty of space to add new ones when the time came.

The library was usually just a space for relaxing, for sitting on the brown and green tartan wingback chair to read a book, listen to a record, or do a crossword. It was rare that I used the space for its other purpose—work.

For the most part, my line of work didn’t require a hell of a lot of paperwork. That was a surefire way to make sure the law figured us out. It was almost as bad as leaving digital footprints.

But this work was pretty banal. A file folder full of profiles of possible truck drivers. Zeno was still running names, but he’d handed Leo a basic write-up about all of the potential choices. Then Leo had popped by to critique the fact that I’d missed family dinner again while he handed me the file.

I was going to need to hit one of those up in the near future. Whether I wanted to or not. Show my face, make my rounds, eat some good food.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family; I did. But family dinners were crowded affairs. Cloying perfume, spicy cologne, and food smells all tangled together. Conversation, laughter, and kids squealing mingled to create a cacophony that made it hard to think straight. Someone was always squeezing by, clamping you on the shoulder, tugging on your pant leg, or coming in for a hug. Conversations didn’t seem to have a beginning or end, just meandered around from one subject to the next, leaving me hopelessly lost and without a map.

It was complete and utter sensory overload.

I usually felt like I needed to crash for a week afterward, like some well inside me had gone dry.

It’d always been that way for me, though. My more outgoing siblings seemed to get a charge from being around each other or other people, while it felt like it drained my battery.

When I was younger, I got slapped with the title of shy. As I became a teenager, it was ‘antisocial.’ Now, I’d seemed to settle into the role of a recluse. Or a shut-in. A grump. An asshole.

The only person with whom I felt bit of a kinship with when it came to my loner ways was Zeno.

But I guess he got away with it more than I did because when someone did drag him away from his computers and out of his apartment, he could easily fall into the role of the life of the party for a few hours before he went back to his computers.

I, on the other hand, hadn’t inherited that charm. So I generally endured the overwhelm while trying to have a few words with everyone so no one worried about me. Then, as soon as the meal was done and everyone was distracted, I just… slid out the door.

Mentally, I penciled in a family dinner, then got back to the files. I immediately set aside the ones for anyone under thirty. Maybe it was ageist of me, but I found younger associates to be a lot more reckless and demanding.

Give me a middle-aged guy who’d been driving rigs for fifteen or twenty years, who knew their tractors better than their homes, who was looking down the barrel of their kids going off to college and wasn’t sure how the fuck they were going to swing paying for it. Give me a man with a mortgage, some credit card or medical debt, and the bone-deep desire to get out from under the relentless pressure of bills.

That was someone who would be careful, because they had so much to lose. And it was someone who would be loyal to the person ensuring that they got the relief they were looking for.

Meaning me. And Leo. But this was my scheme. I’d planned it, pounded out the details, found contacts along the way. I’d brought Leo in to handle the front-facing aspects of it. For a cut of the profits.

He’d been glad not to have to figure out his next job, just handle the soldiers and associates so I didn’t have to. For a nearly equal amount of money I was making.

It was a good deal for him.

And I got to not talk to anyone but him.

So far, it had been incredibly profitable. No one had ever gotten caught. We’d had one guy retire. We had one die from natural causes. But we’d never had someone leave without permission or try to fuck us over. And we certainly never had anyone just… disappear.

I probably should have been looking into the situation myself. Checking the police reports. Seeing if they actually investigated shit. Did they search the woods on the side of the road? I mean, it wasn’t a rare occasion for a trucker to have to pull over to take a piss. Maybe he’d wandered into the trees, had a heart attack or stroke, and croaked. Trucking life was, by nature, sedentary. And a lot of the guys ate shitty fast food because it was quick, cheap, and easy. It wouldn’t be odd if we lost more truckers to heart disease.

Had he just… had it?

Walked away from his rig with a bottle of pills, a knife, or a rope?

Those seemed like the most likely explanations for the dude disappearing. And if he didn’t have any of my product in the truck before it happened, it wasn’t my business. Aside from the inconvenience of replacing him.

So far, Leo didn’t have any answers from his soldiers either.