Chapter 6: Augustus

I climbed down out of the cab.

Alastair came down the other side and walked around the front of my truck to stand next to me.

Augustus's driver got out too. He was a thick man with an earpiece, and his hand was already inside his jacket.

Four Shardlow men had their guns out before he got it there.

"Easy," Alastair said. "Everybody's very wet and very tired. Let's not."

The driver looked at Augustus.

Augustus lifted one hand without looking back. The driver let go of whatever he was holding.

"Shardlow," Augustus said. "I should've known. Your father's boy, robbing my trucks on a Friday night."

"My father's dead," Alastair said. "And it's not your truck tonight."

"That trailer is carrying thirty-two thousand dollars of compressor housings for a plant in Elkins. I signed the manifest myself."

"Did you look inside?"

"I run a company. I don't open boxes."

He turned to me.

"And who are you?"

"I drive."

"Then you'll lose your license. You'll lose your truck. My father is going to take everything you have and..."

"Come look in your trailer," I said.

He laughed at me.

"Come look," I said again, "or go home and never say you didn't know."

He stopped laughing.

I walked to the back of the Kesterson trailer. I didn't check if he followed.

He did.

I shined my flashlight in through the gap between the crates.

The steel ring in the floor.

The cut chain lying beside it in a curl.

The bucket.

A plastic jug of water, half empty.

A pink hair tie on the floorboards.

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