My In-Laws Mocked the Tow Driver, Until They Learned I Was Kijin novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Men

Floyd handles Preston's men in the parking lot and finds an eviction notice on his yard. Clifford's driver is at the gate.

"The garage isn't what?" I said.

"Yours," Preston said. "Hallworth Freight owns the land. Dad signed the notice at seven this morning."

He held up a paper and let it flap in the wind.

"Thirty days. Then the bulldozers come."

"You could have mailed it."

"Where's the fun in that?"

He nodded at the two men.

They came at me from both sides.

The one with the tire iron swung first, wide and slow, aiming at my knee.

I stepped inside the swing and caught his wrist against my ribs.

I turned it until the iron fell out of his hand and rang on the driveway.

He yelled, and I let him go before anything broke.

The second man threw a punch at my face.

I ducked it, and my fist stopped an inch from his jaw.

He flinched so hard he sat down on the gravel.

Behind him, the first man had pulled something from his jacket.

It was a folding knife, and he held it low.

"Don't," I said.

"Cut him," Preston said, from a long way back.

The man stepped forward.

I took the knife hand in both of mine, turned my hip, and put him on his back on the driveway.

The knife skidded under my truck.

I knelt on his arm, and he went still.

I looked at Preston.

He had stopped smiling.

"Tell me something," I said. "Does your father know you brought a knife to your sister's grandfather's house?"

"I didn't bring anything."

"Then these two did it on their own."

The man under my knee started to say something.

"Quiet," I told him. He closed his mouth.

I stood up and wiped my palms on my jeans.

I could have broken both of them. Eight years ago I wouldn't have had to think about it.

Now I looked up at the windows of the house.

Clifford's kitchen window was open, and the curtain was still.

"Get in your car," I said to Preston. "Take them with you."

"You touched my men."

"I touched them very gently. Go."

He picked up the notice from where it had fallen and stuffed it into his pocket.

"You're done, Floyd," he said. "You have no idea who you're dealing with."

I said nothing.

I'd been dealing with worse before he could drive.

He got in the Escalade, and the two men climbed in after him, one holding his arm.

The gate swung open, and they pulled out.

I picked up the knife from under my truck and dropped it in the flower bed so nobody would find it.

Then I drove to the yard.

Brannigan Towing sits on two acres off Fifth Avenue, with a cinderblock office, two bays, and a flatbed older than my marriage.

I'd poured the concrete for the second bay myself.

A white envelope was nailed to the office door with a roofing nail.

It was a copy of the same notice, on the company's letterhead, with Gerald's signature at the bottom.

Thirty days.

I stood in front of the door and read it twice.

The customer's tow was still hooked to the flatbed, because I had never gotten the truck back to its owner.

My phone buzzed again in my pocket.

It was a text from Meredith: Did you hurt Preston?

I looked at it for a while.

Then I typed: No. He didn't get a scratch.

She didn't write back.

I put the phone away and unlocked the bay door.

I had a stack of work orders and a month, and I'd start with the work orders.

An old Buick came up the road and pulled in beside the flatbed.

It was the driver from Clifford's gate.

He rolled down the window and held out a folded note.

"Mr. Hallworth would like a word," he said. "He says to bring your coat and not to tell the family."

"Where is he?"

"In his workshop," the old man said. "He asked me to say it's about a job."

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