Page 91 of The Woman in the Garage

And if someone looked over at me, I didn’t even really notice.

Still, by the time I got to my desk, my stomach was in knots and my heart was threatening to break out of my chest.

“Okay. Alright. You got through it,” I murmured to myself as I looked around my desk.

My uncle’s paperweight was situated in the wrong spot and I reached immediately to set it to rights before I sat down.

Santo wanted me to bring all my notes home that I’d jotted down about the books. And, if possible, all the actual proof—receipts—from the work that had been done that didn’t make any sense.

So I spent the morning and early afternoon taking what I could or snapping pictures of things I didn’t want to remove from work.

I made four trips out to the waiting room: two times to use the bathroom, two more for coffee.

It was a normal enough number of times that no one seemed to notice anything weird.

As for me, I tried to glance over at them, to see if anyone was watching me, trying to figure out why there were no bruises under my eyes or around my throat.

But everyone ignored me as usual.

Maybe the attack had truly been random?

Or, barring that, from some shady character my uncle had been connected to that I didn’t even know.

Or, I guess, both things could be true.

Like he promised, Massimo sat in the waiting room the whole day. I’d even heard a couple of the guys commenting that the guy was crazy for being willing to wait all day.

Eventually, his car was done. And I pretended to fiddle with mine—as if I had any idea at all what to do with a car that wasn’t working—climbed in, and headed to Santo’s house.

I don’t think I even realized how incredibly tense I was all day until I walked in the back door and into Santo’s arms.

“Did something happen?” Santo asked when I just stood there holding onto him, letting the day of anxiety and uncertainty melt away.

“No. Everything was alright. I mean… nothing happened. I was just anxious about being there. But I’m glad I went. I think if I waited to go back, it would have been a lot harder. Plus, I got everything we needed from my files there. I went back three years.”

“Why three?” Santo asked, releasing me enough to let me move back to look at him.

“I wanted to check something.”

“Want wine for this conversation?”

“If ever a day called for it…” I said, getting a little smile from him as he turned to pour the wine that had already been breathing on the island. “Thanks,” I said, accepting the glass. “So, I knew that the shipping container orders from Mexico went back just about two years. I wanted to see if the discrepancies in receipts went back further.”

“Did they?”

My gaze cut to his. “No.” I took a sip of my wine, the sweetness teasing across my taste buds. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“I think I do,” Santo said. He reached for his own wine and took a sip. “He’s moving drugs through the shop.”

“Oh,” I said, brows raising. That would be easy, wouldn’t it? The cars roll in, the drugs could be stashed inside of them, and then the owner could pay the shop and have it all look above-board.

“I always thought that shop was a lot busier than seemed normal.”

That was fair. Cars were constantly coming in and going out. “But… why would someone pay for an oil change if they just want drugs?”

“My best guess is that they aren’t. You’ve been poring over the books, right?”

“Endlessly,” I told him. I was pretty sure I was going to need glasses from straining my eyes looking at all the disorganized paperwork.

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