The Seventh Time novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Dock

Killian started on the dock at noon, in a borrowed Carhartt jacket with the tags still on.

Pete put him on a pallet jack with the old forklift driver and told him not to hit anything.

By one o'clock he had hit three things.

By two, every person on the floor knew who he was.

Nobody said it.

They watched him from behind boxes and forklifts, and the cold hung between us.

At three, during the break, Killian climbed onto an overturned crate in the middle of the dock.

I was standing at the end of the line with my coffee, and I almost dropped it.

"Excuse me," he said.

Forty heads turned.

"My name is Killian Ashworth. I'm Broderick Ashworth's son. Most of you know that already."

"We know," said a man near the wall.

"Then you know what my family did to this building," Killian said. "My father called your note."

"He took Midwest Fresh," he said. "That's a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a month."

Nobody spoke.

"What you may not know is that your paychecks were the leash. I knew it. I pulled anyway."

His voice was steady, though his hands were not.

I stared at him.

"The paper will have the rest," he said. "Every word of it is true, and none of it was his doing but mine."

A low sound moved along the dock.

The old driver set down her thermos.

"I'm not telling you this to be forgiven," Killian said. "Romy hasn't. She shouldn't."

"I'm telling you so you hear it from me and not from the paper," he said. "I'm going to work here, if Pete lets me. I'm going to be bad at it."

"If anyone wants me to leave, say so, and I'll leave," he said.

He stepped off the crate.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then she walked across the concrete in her steel-toed boots and stopped in front of him.

She was five foot two.

She looked him up and down.

"You're a load of trouble, kid," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're late to everything," she said. "Tomorrow you're on this dock at five."

She held up the handle of a pallet jack.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Seventh Time from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.