He Thought I Had Nowhere to Go Until I Disappeared novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Parking Garage

Nolan's POV

The lawyer wanted the originals in the prosecutor's hands by noon, and nobody else was going to carry them.

I put the box on the passenger seat of the truck, belted it in, and felt ridiculous.

Keeley had stood in the lane in her coat while I did it.

"If you get a flat tire, call me," she said.

"I won't get a flat tire."

"If you do."

"I'll call you."

She kissed me quickly, with her cold hand on my jaw, and I drove away with the taste of her coffee still on my mouth.

The prosecutor's office was in a gray building on Third Street, with a metal detector and a clerk who took the box from me and gave me a receipt.

That was all.

The clerk didn't ask me my name twice.

I walked down to the parking garage feeling lighter than I'd felt in seven months, which should have warned me.

My truck was on the third level, between a pillar and a concrete wall.

Corbin Arbogast was leaning on the driver's door.

He wore a gray overcoat, and he had both hands in the pockets, and he straightened up slowly when he saw me.

"Hatch," he said. "I hoped it would be you."

I stopped ten feet away.

"You're in my spot."

"I wanted a word. Man to man. Before this gets out of hand."

"It's out of hand."

"Is it?" He smiled, a small and reasonable smile. "I've looked into you. Boat yard on a lot you don't own, with a lien. Twenty years living off an old woman's property. Do you know what that looks like to a county judge?"

"I know what it looks like to the old woman."

"I could make you a better offer." He took a flat envelope from his coat and held it up. "Twenty thousand dollars. You go home. You tell Ardis you can't be part of this family business. She'll be hurt, but she'll get over it, and I take my wife home and nobody has to see a courtroom."

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