Page 80 of More Than Nothing
“Couple of packages.”
“What’s in them?”
“Don’t know.” He shot her a quizzical glance.
“What?”
“How’d you get the chief’s truck to Pedlar’s End?”
“I lifted his keys in the diner.”
Dean’s head bobbed. His mouth twisted in an impressed smirk.
It wasn’t true. Roman and Dougie had handled the arson themselves and his truck currently idled unharmed in Milo’s locked garage. The torched ringer, a write-off with duplicate plates to Roman’s F-150, had come from a junkyard.
They lapsed into silence and, for the next ninety minutes or so, Elenie let the long, straight roads with their tree-lined woodland edges lull her into a soporific daze. She passed the time lost in dirty thoughts of one very sexy lawman.
The GPS took them to the outskirts of Saginaw. It was late when they pulled up curbside in front of an ordinary-looking house with a host of cars on the drive. Dean killed the engine. Memorizing the address, Elenie watched her stepbrother type out a message on his phone.
“Now what?”
He ignored her.
A couple of minutes went by and the front door opened. Dean’s fingers drummed on his leg. Two muscular thugs strolledtoward the truck and he lowered his window. One had pulled the fabric hood of his sweatshirt up, the other wore a baseball cap over a mainly shaven head.
Thug One peered in through the window. He eyed them both. “Got something for me?” His voice was surprisingly high. Elenie suppressed a nervous giggle and bit her lip. This was beginning to feel like a scene from a bad movie.
Dean leaned over to pull a fat envelope from the glovebox. He passed it through the window. Thug One broke the seal, glanced inside, and gave a brief nod. Thug Two slouched behind him, staring at the screen of his phone.
“Give us a minute.” They walked back up the path. Dean blew out a breath and gave her a cocky wink. Elenie watched the front door. Five minutes went by before the men re-emerged. This time, Thug One passed Dean something bulky, wrapped neatly inside a plastic bag.
“Tell Frank I’ll be in touch.” He leaned on the car window sill and squinted at Elenie. “Who’s the Fuck Bunny?”
Dean snorted. “This is my sister. She’s more of a Fucking Pain In My Side.”
Elenie dredged up a fake grin and a finger wiggle. Dealing with Frank had taught her it was all about the attitude.
His eyes lost interest. With a jerk of his chin, he tapped on the side of the truck. The two men melted back into the night.
Dean dropped the package in her lap; it was heavy and very solid. “Shove that under your seat.”
“What is it?”Worth another try.
He started the truck and didn’t answer. Elenie bent down to push the bag between her feet, wedging it under the passenger seat just behind her ankles.
Twenty minutes later, Dean pulled onto the forecourt of a gas station. “Dad wants the truck back full,” he grunted and climbed out.
Elenie watched him through the window, her heart beginning to jump. He reached for one of the pumps and she heard the thrum of the gas when it started to flow. It seemed to take an age to fill the tank, but finally Dean pushed the filler cap closed and sloped off toward the kiosk to pay.
As soon as his back was turned, she grabbed the package from under her seat and dragged it out into the footwell. Her hands weren’t quite steady as she unwrapped it and reached inside. Three items slid onto the mat. Two clear plastic bags held a multitude of tightly packed pills—some white, some blue. There were thousands of them. Elenie began to sweat.
The third item was wrapped inside a folded piece of old cloth. She swallowed compulsively when she picked it up. Its shape and weight were unmistakable. A quick glance at the kiosk, where Dean stood in line to pay, revealed just one person in front of him. Scrambling through her backpack, Elenie pulled her phone out with one hand and unwrapped the cloth with the other.
The handgun lay between her feet—black, menacing, and dangerous. A breathy whimper escaped her lips. Her trembling fingers flicked the camera to selfie mode by accident. Righting it swiftly, she snapped four quick photographs of all three items, plus a close-up of the gun.
Glancing through the windshield, she saw Dean push away from the counter. Her stomach rolled. With the speed of a professional gift wrapper, Elenie closed the cloth around the handgun. She stacked it on top of the drugs and pushed all three items back inside the plastic bag, praying to God the gun had its safety on. With seconds to spare, she shoved them under her seat,texting the photographs she’d taken to Roman as Dean sauntered across the forecourt. When he pulled open the door of the truck, she’d just dumped her phone into the backpack on her lap.
“I could have sworn I had some cookies in here somewhere,” Elenie muttered, keeping her hair across her face in a curtain while she tried to stop her lips from trembling. She put her bag back down by her ankles and shrugged. “Must have eaten them, I guess.”
