Done in Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Out the Window

Raylene and Macey go out the bathroom window, but the process server is waiting at their dead truck; he catches the lawyer's lie, puts the papers away, and warns them a second server is coming.

I put my hand over Macey's mouth before she was fully awake.

Her eyes went wide over my fingers.

I pointed at the door, then at the bathroom.

She nodded.

"Mrs. Kilgore?" the voice said again. "I've got all morning, ma'am. Coffee's getting cold, but I've got all morning."

I grabbed the coffee can and both pairs of boots.

Macey grabbed her backpack, and we went into the bathroom in our socks.

The window over the toilet was small and painted shut.

I hit the frame twice with the heel of my hand and it gave.

"You first," I whispered.

"I'm not going first. What if there's a guy?"

"There's a guy at the front. That's the point."

She went first.

She landed in the weeds behind the motel with a grunt and a word I pretended not to hear.

I handed down the can and the boots and went out after her.

We ran around the end of the building in our socks, across the gravel, to the truck.

I got in, jammed the key in and turned it.

Nothing.

I turned it again.

Macey slapped the dash.

Then I looked up.

The man from the gray pickup was leaning on my hood.

He had a cup of coffee in each hand and a manila envelope tucked under his arm.

He lifted one of the cups an inch.

"Morning," he said through the windshield. "I pulled your fuse at four. Figured y'all were window people."

Macey lunged across me and rolled her window down two inches.

"I will scream kidnap," she told him. "I'm fourteen. I have very good lungs. I was in choir."

"I believe you," he said.

He looked at me.

"Ma'am, I'm told you took this girl out of the county against a custody order."

Macey's mouth fell open.

"There's no order," she said. "I came because my dad's a creep."

He blinked.

He studied me through the glass with steady light gray eyes.

"Is there an order?" he asked me.

"No."

"Is there a custody case?"

"There's a divorce petition," I said. "I found it at four in the morning yesterday. Under the butcher paper."

So I told a stranger in a motel parking lot what I hadn't told anyone in fifteen years.

All of it, in order, to a man holding an envelope.

If I wasn't served by midnight Thursday, half of the family's share was mine.

If I was, I walked off with a coffee can.

He listened without moving.

When I finished, he looked down at the envelope under his arm.

He took his phone out of his shirt pocket and dialed with his thumb.

He put it on speaker and set it on my hood.

A man answered on the second ring.

"Tell me you've got her."

"I've got her," the gray-truck man said. "Quick question first. What's the cause number on that custody order? I like to have it on my return."

A pause.

"Just serve her, Crockett."

"Cause number."

"There's a temporary matter pending."

"Pending where?"

"It's a family situation. The grandmother is very worried."

"So there's no order."

"Crockett, you're paid to deliver an envelope, not to practice law."

"The kid's sitting right here telling me her daddy's a creep."

Macey leaned toward the phone.

"Hi," she said. "He is."

The lawyer went quiet.

"I'm off it," the gray-truck man said. "Keep the fee."

"Fine," the lawyer said. "I'll have another man on it by noon. A better one. She won't see this one coming."

The line went dead.

The man put his phone back in his pocket.

He opened his pickup's passenger door, set the envelope in the glovebox and shut it.

Then he walked to my side of the hood, lifted the latch, did something quick under there and closed it again.

He came around to my window and handed me the second coffee.

"Deke," he said. "Deke Crockett. I used to be a deputy. Now I mostly hand people bad news."

"Raylene."

"I know." He almost smiled. "It's on the envelope."

He crouched beside my door so he was eye level with Macey.

"Are your phones on a company plan?"

"Kilgore's family plan," Macey said. "Grandma Doreen pays it and reads the bill."

"Turn them off. Take the batteries out if you can. That's how I found you."

We turned them off.

Deke went around to the back of my truck and lay down on the gravel on his back.

He came out from under the bumper with a black box the size of a deck of cards.

"Fleet tracker," he said. "Company truck. They always know where it is."

He walked it across the lot and stuck it under the trailer of a cattle hauler idling by the diesel pumps.

The cattle hauler pulled out ten minutes later, headed east.

"Bye, Grandma Doreen," she said.

Deke came back and leaned on my door.

"Where are y'all headed?"

"West."

"West is a direction, not a place."

"It's all I've got."

He looked at the coffee can on my seat.

He looked at Macey, who was still in her socks.

He rubbed his beard and said a word under his breath.

"He's hired a second man," he said. "You won't see this one coming. I know the type the lawyer uses."

"So what do I do?"

He pushed off my door and pulled his keys out of his pocket.

"Follow my truck."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend