The drive back to Iron & Oil was agonizingly slow. I kept my eyes on the side mirrors, watching the battered blue Honda strapped to the bed of the tow truck. Every car that pulled in behind us felt like a threat. The burner phone was sitting in the cup holder between Bear and me. It had stopped ringing, but its silence was somehow worse.
“You think he knows she survived?” Bear asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“If he’s calling that phone, he’s checking to see if a paramedic or a cop answers,” I said. “He wants confirmation.”
“So what’s the play, Mac? We can’t just fix the brake line and hand the car back to her. We put her back in that driver’s seat, he’ll just try again. We need to go to the cops.”
“With what?” I argued, frustration leaking into my voice. “A cut rubber hose? Any decent lawyer will claim it snapped during the crash, or that she ran over a piece of debris. And if we call the cops, Richard finds out instantly. The guy is smart enough to use a burner and rig an accident. We have to figure out what we’re dealing with before we expose the kid.”
We pulled into the garage. The heavy metal doors rattled as Bear backed the flatbed into the empty rear bay. I hopped out before he even parked, walking straight toward the front office.
Sam was standing near the tool chests, the broom clutched in his hands. He had swept a pristine square in the center of the floor, collecting a small pile of sawdust, dirt, and metal shavings. He looked up at me, his eyes wide, terrified that I was going to tell him the car was unfixable.
“We got it, Sam,” I said, keeping my tone light. “Bear’s unloading it right now. I need you to stay here with Bear for a little bit, okay? Rook and I have to go talk to your mom.”
Sam stepped forward, panic flashing across his face. “No! You can’t tell her I came here. She’ll get mad. She told me to go straight to school. If she knows I skipped to find a mechanic—”
“I’m not going to get you in trouble,” I promised, kneeling down so I was at his eye level. “But I need to understand exactly what happened last night. Because if I fix the wrong thing, the car still won’t be safe for her to drive. Where is she right now?”
“She’s working,” Sam said quietly. “At Mabel’s Diner. Her shift ends at four.”
I checked my watch. It was two-thirty. “Okay. Bear is going to show you how to organize the socket wrenches. You do exactly what he says, and you do not leave this building. Understand?”
Sam nodded frantically.
I stood up and gestured to Rook. We took my personal truck, an old, beat-up Chevy Silverado, and drove back toward Elm Street.
Mabel’s Diner was a relic from the fifties, all chrome edges, cracked red vinyl booths, and checkered tile floors that hadn’t been replaced in three decades. The lunch rush was over, leaving only a few elderly regulars drinking decaf in the corner booths. I spotted Sam’s mother immediately.
She was wiping down the counter near the cash register. She looked to be in her early thirties, but exhaustion had aged her. She had dark hair tied back in a messy ponytail, and she was wearing a standard pink waitress uniform. As I approached the counter, she reached up to push a strand of hair out of her face, and her sleeve pulled back just enough for me to see the dark, ugly purple bruise circling her right wrist.
“Coffee?” she asked without looking up, her voice flat and tired.
“Claire?” I asked.
She froze. The rag stopped moving. She looked up at me, her eyes darting over my leather cut, the tattoos on my neck, and Rook standing silently near the door.
“Who are you?” she asked, taking a defensive half-step back toward the kitchen door.
“My name is Mac. I run Iron & Oil over on 4th Street. Your son, Sam, is sitting in my office right now.”
The color drained from her face entirely. She dropped the rag. “Sam? Is he okay? What happened? Where is he?”
“He’s perfectly fine,” I said quickly, keeping my hands visible on the counter. “He walked into my shop an hour ago and asked for a job to pay for the repairs on your car. We picked up the Honda from the alley.”
Claire leaned against the counter, closing her eyes as a ragged breath escaped her lungs. “Oh, god. He wasn't supposed to… I told him I would handle it. I told him not to worry.”
“He’s terrified, Claire. He told me his stepfather gets home from a business trip tomorrow, and that if the car isn’t fixed, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Claire opened her eyes, and the sheer terror I saw in them mirrored her son’s perfectly. She looked around the diner, suddenly paranoid, lowering her voice to a frantic whisper. “You have to let me pay you in installments. Please. Richard… he tracks our accounts. If he sees a massive withdrawal for auto body repair, he’ll know I ruined the car. He’s obsessed with his property. He hates when things get damaged. I hit a pillar in a parking garage last night. I swear, I’ll pay you double whatever the standard rate is, I just need it to look normal before tomorrow.”
She was covering for him. She had normalized the abuse so deeply that she thought all this panic was just about property damage.
“Claire,” I said softly, “you didn’t just hit a pillar. You couldn’t stop. The brakes failed, didn’t they?”