Chapter 2 - The Man Behind Me
I didn’t turn immediately.
That probably saved me.
At sixty-eight, speed wasn’t something I wasted.
I watched Irving’s eyes.
They shifted slightly to my left.
So I moved right.
A hand swept past my shoulder.
I turned and caught the wrist of a man I recognized from the party upstairs.
Tall.
Forties.
Gray suit.
I had seen him drinking beside Sabrina ten minutes earlier.
Now he held a syringe.
He hadn’t expected an old truck driver to move.
I drove his wrist into the shelf.
The syringe dropped.
Then Wyatt shouted.
“Dad!”
Sabrina grabbed the phone from my hand.
Almost.
I caught it against my chest.
Irving moved toward me.
“Enough.”
The countdown upstairs reached three.
Two.
One.
Cheers exploded through the house.
Midnight.
I looked at my son chained to concrete while strangers celebrated twenty feet above him.
“Happy New Year,” Sabrina said.
Then she smiled.
That smile told me she still believed she controlled the room.
Good.
Overconfidence makes people explain themselves.
“You should have listened to Wyatt,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because now we have another problem.”
Irving stepped downstairs.
The man with the syringe retrieved it.
I glanced toward Wyatt.
He understood.
Stay still.
Stay alive.
I lifted my hands.
“You want the phone?”
Sabrina held out her palm.
“Yes.”
I gave it to her.
Her surprise lasted half a second.
She deleted the recording.
Then deleted it from recently deleted files.
“Problem solved.”
I almost admired her efficiency.
Almost.
What she didn’t know was that my phone automatically uploaded recordings to a secure Heartland server.
Evelyn had once accused me of being paranoid.
Sometimes paranoia is simply preparation that hasn’t become useful yet.
Sabrina handed the phone back.
“Go home, Abraham.”
“And Wyatt?”
“He’s sick.”
“He’s chained to a column.”
“Because he’s dangerous when he’s using.”
There it was.
The story.
Drugs.
Violence.
Overdose.
A respectable wife desperately trying to save her troubled husband.
Irving crouched beside Wyatt.
“Tomorrow morning, everyone upstairs will remember how unstable he seemed.”
I looked toward the ceiling.
“The guests?”
“Witnesses.”
Not guests.
Pieces.
That meant this plan had been built carefully.
Then the man with the syringe spoke.
“We need to finish.”
I recognized his voice.
Not from tonight.
From somewhere else.
Years earlier.
A Heartland board meeting.
I looked at him properly.
“Peter?”
He froze.
Peter Larkin.
Former corporate counsel for Heartland Freight.
A man I had fired twelve years ago for manipulating vendor contracts.
Sabrina looked between us.
“You know him?”
Peter’s face hardened.
“He was nobody back then.”
I smiled.
Wrong answer.
I had just learned Sabrina didn’t know who I was.
But Peter did.
And Peter suddenly looked far more frightened of me than Sabrina was.
That meant the Palmers weren’t running this operation.
Someone who understood Heartland was.
I looked at Peter.
“Who hired you?”
Nobody answered.
Then Wyatt started laughing.
Weakly.
Painfully.
But laughing.
Sabrina turned.
“What’s funny?”
Wyatt raised his head.
“You still don’t understand who my father is.”
Peter’s face drained of color.
Irving looked irritated.
“Retired truck driver.”
Peter whispered:
“No.”
Sabrina slowly turned toward him.
Peter backed away.
“No, Sabrina.”
His voice shook.
“That’s Abraham Yates.”
Silence.
Then:
“Founder of Heartland Freight Systems.”
Irving’s smile disappeared.
But Sabrina didn’t look shocked.
She looked confused.
Because upstairs, something had suddenly changed.
The music stopped.
Then came footsteps.
May you like
Many footsteps.
And someone locked the basement door from the outside.
