I looked down at the pink slip, then out the plate-glass window at Kevin’s cruiser sitting silent in the dark gravel, waiting for the sheriff’s high beams to appear on the horizon.
I didn't take the slip off the table. Instead, I reached out and took the brass key to Gate Four.
"I'm not leaving you here to take Wayne's beating," I said. "And we aren't running to the barracks to beg for a desk sergeant who might be Miller's cousin. We're going to Gate Four."
CHAPTER 3: The Gate We Bolted Open
The kitchen smelled of cold vegetable shortening and iron. Outside the delivery screen, the damp October night pressed hard against the cinder blocks, thick with the smell of wet river silt and decaying brush.
Thomas leaned against the edge of the dish pit, his left arm pinned tight across his ribs to stifle every ragged breath. His canvas coat hung loose over his left shoulder, exposing the mottled purple bruise that crept like oil across his clavicle. Even in the dim service lighting, his jaw was clamped against the pain, beads of cold sweat cutting through the limestone grime on his forehead.
"You take the paperwork," he whispered again, his gray eye fixed on the rusted iron pry bar I had set on the prep table. "You climb into that pickup, Clara. If you stall out on the logging wash, you run on foot until you reach the state route."
"I told you," I said, sliding the heavy brass key and the folded pink carbon into the inside pocket of my denim work jacket. "You don't cross the culvert creek on two cracked ribs alone, and you don't survive twenty minutes on that gravel if Wayne gets here before you clear the door. My father didn't keep this diner open twenty-five years by feeding strays to the wolves."
I reached up to the wooden rack beside the grease hood and lifted down the heavy brass padlock key to our rear service gate, then hooked the ignition ring for my father's 1994 four-wheel-drive utility flatbed off the pegboard. The truck sat twenty yards out in the dark, parked reverse-in beneath the rusted overhang of the dry-goods shed, hidden from the highway by two stacked tiers of split pine firewood.
"The back alley leads to the old haul road," I told him, keeping my voice low. "The lumber company abandoned the grade eight years ago when the quarry pit went commercial. It's overgrown with bramble and choked with wash-rock, but the subgrade is solid crushed granite. Kevin’s cruiser will bottom out on the first limestone ledge. But if Wayne is already cutting south from the junction on route nine, he’s less than two miles from the apron."
Thomas didn't argue. He understood the math of the road as well as I did. He reached out with his uninjured right hand, gripped the edge of the steel prep table, and pushed himself upright. The movement drew a sharp, whistling hiss through his teeth, but his feet found their footing on the greasy quarry tile.
"Show me the rig," he said.
I unlocked the screen door, easing the rusted spring forward with my fingers so it didn't slap against the pine frame. The wind hit us immediately—raw, damp, carrying the steady rumble of the highway bridge three miles south. We slipped into the alley between the dumpsters and the cedar shed. Through the eight-inch gap between the split firewood tiers, I could see the diner's front parking lot. Kevin's cruiser sat completely dark, parked broadside across the gravel ramp, his amber marker lamps throwing dull yellow halos onto the wet blacktop of route nine. He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, his face lit by the pale bluish glow of the county computer terminal mounted on the dash.
He had no idea the delivery lane existed. In his mind, the diner was an island bordered by highway ditches and dense hemlock timber.
I unlocked the cab of the flatbed. The ancient bench seat smelled of damp foam and my father’s pipe tobacco. I helped Thomas pull himself up into the passenger seat; the cab sagged under his weight, the leaf springs groaning beneath the bed. He pulled the door shut until the latch caught on the first click, avoiding the sharp metallic slam that would have carried across the open gravel.
I climbed behind the wheel, pulled the choke out half an inch, and turned the key.
The starter ground twice with a heavy, rhythmic clatter before the eight-cylinder engine caught with a low, rumbling thrum. I left the headlights dark. Shifting into low gear, I eased the clutch out, letting the idling engine pull the truck forward over the wet grass without touching the accelerator.
At the edge of the diner lot, where the asphalt ended and the black wall of the hemlocks began, an old chain-link gate hung from two cedar posts. I stopped the truck, stepped out into the dark mud, unlocked the padlock with my father's brass key, and swung the iron mesh back into the ferns.