He Bought My Father's Debt, So Now He Owns Me novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Note
Jo's POV
The sheriff's cruiser was parked across the head of the pier when I got to the dock.
Its lights were off, and a deputy sat in it with a clipboard, eating a sandwich.
My father stood on the shell lot in front of it with his captain's cap crushed in one fist and a sheet of paper in the other.
He looked as if somebody had let the air out of him.
"It's a notice to preserve," the sheriff said, when I walked up. He was a heavy, tired man with a wet cigar he wasn't smoking. "Nobody's under arrest, Miss Guidry. Nobody's been charged. Three men came into my office this morning with a lawyer, and they say they worked on your daddy's boats as boys."
"Three men," I said.
"Three so far."
My father made a noise.
"I need every record on this property kept where it is," the sheriff said. "Every ledger, every log, every piece of paper. If something goes missing between now and the hearing, I'll take it personally."
"Yes, sir," I said.
I thought about a black clothbound book in my duffel bag, on the seat of the truck, ten yards behind me.
The sheriff looked at me for one long moment, and I looked back at him.
"It's not going anywhere," I said.
"See that it doesn't."
He got into the cruiser, and the deputy started the engine.
My father watched them go.
"Who sent them?" he said. "Who's got the names?"
"You did, Daddy," I said. "Forty years of them."
I walked past him to the house.
I did not go back to Dog River that night.
I slept in my own room, under the eaves, in the bed I had slept in until I was nineteen.
The ceiling fan turned over me, and I lay with my eyes open listening to the bayou.
I had told a man I was leaving, and I had left.
I waited for it to feel like freedom.
It felt like walking out of a church.
At nine the next morning my phone rang with a Mobile number and a woman's voice, crisp and formal, on the other end.
"Miss Guidry? This is the office of counsel for Reese Cold Chain."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Bought My Father's Debt, So Now He Owns Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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