Chapter 287: She Was Shedding Evidence

Alden sent Lyle to fetch a mattress while Dove stood in the breakroom doorway and tried not to look at the radio.

Lyle was the man with the shotgun. Up close, he had sunburn across his nose and a ring of keys clipped to his belt. He didn’t speak to her. He looked at Alden when he wanted an answer, which told Dove who she would have to distract before she could get near those keys.

The radio sat inside the front office, visible through its open door. A charger wire ran behind a desk. Beside it lay a stack of stained maps and a mug holding pens. She could reach it in perhaps four steps, if nobody grabbed her first.

Everybody here seemed very enthusiastic about grabbing her.

"Come along," Alden said.

Dove followed him down the rear hallway, because refusing would teach her nothing except how many men it took to carry her. The guard stayed behind her. At the glass door, she slowed to rub her sore hip and looked through the wired pane.

The vehicle shed stood directly across the narrow concrete path. Its broad garage doors faced the yard on the right. To the left, a wooden staircase climbed the outside wall to a small office built above the front corner. Beneath the stairs, weeds crowded a drainage strip along the fence.

That was somewhere a person might hide. It was also somewhere a person might get trapped. She needed to see the far end before deciding which.

Alden opened a small door beside the garage bays. Warm air rolled out, smelling of motor oil, rubber, and dust. Three trucks occupied the shed, one with its hood open. Cots lined the wall beyond them. Two men playing cards stopped mid-hand when Dove entered.

One rose so quickly his chair fell over.

"Didn’t know she was coming through here," he muttered.

Alden looked pleased. Dove didn’t. Being stared at could be useful, but she was getting very tired of being useful in that particular way.

"Chair’s still on the floor," she told the man.

He picked it up without looking away from her until his friend kicked his boot. Their attention followed her through the shed. She kept hers on the route: past the parked trucks, past a shelf of oil cans, left into a short passage at the back.

The room Alden opened had a narrow window, a desk with one broken drawer, and a cot waiting without a mattress. A second door stood on the right. Outside the window, the fence was close enough to touch if the bars hadn’t been there.

"A little space, a quiet place," Alden said.

Dove looked at the bars, then at him. "Very thoughtful of you to stop the view escaping."

The guard made a noise behind her. Alden ignored it.

"We’ll open the window. There’s a fan somewhere."

"Where does that door go?"

"Washroom. It sticks. Lyle will check it."

Dove watched him try the handle. The door didn’t open. A lock clicked on the other side when he knocked, then a voice answered. Not a private washroom, then. A shared one with another entrance.

When Lyle came through the washroom, he lifted a loose hook beneath the handle before pushing the door into her room. Dove watched without turning her head. A bent catch, not a mysterious lock. The door opened toward her room, and the hook dropped back when it shut. If she needed it later, she would remember how to lift the catch.

She filed that away and sat on the cot frame rather than let her knees show how badly she wanted to sit. The metal pressed through her skirt.

"I need my beast husband," she said.

Alden’s face hardened around the cigar. "Rest in bed. Clear your head."

"I can need two things. I’m talented."

He didn’t appreciate that. He also didn’t take her back to the breakroom, which was something. The guard went to help Lyle with the mattress, leaving Alden in the doorway with his thumb hooked beneath his belt.

"When you’ve calmed down, you’ll understand."

Dove looked at the open window instead of giving him an answer. Hot air moved through it. Beyond the fence, traffic hummed somewhere she couldn’t see. They weren’t miles from everything. There were roads. There were people who weren’t in this room.

Can we offer him a quest to shut up?

I can’t issue quests to other people.

Shame. I’d pay extra.

Alden finally left when Lyle returned with the mattress. Dove stood while they dropped it on the cot, then asked for the fan again. Lyle said he’d look. It was the first thing he had said directly to her.

"And something to cover the window," she added.

"It’s barred."

"I noticed. I’d still rather not give the whole yard a show when I change."

He glanced at the clean shirt, then away. "I’ll find a towel."

She thanked him, carefully. Not because she trusted him. Because one man choosing to look away could matter later.

When they led her back through the shed to fetch the promised towel, Dove let her fingers skim the sheltered rail beneath the outside stairs. Loose fur caught on rough wood. At the little door, she paused to straighten her skirt and pressed a thread from her torn shirt, retrieved quietly into her hand, into a split in the frame.

She didn’t know who would find it. She needed to believe somebody might.

Back in the room, she draped the towel over the window bars and arranged it so she could still see the yard through one side. The chair wire remained in her pocket. Her storage remained hers. Her husbands were still alive beneath the awful distance in her chest.

Dove sat down and pressed both hands over her face for three breaths. Then she lowered them. Crying could wait until she had done something more useful than leaving evidence of where she’d been locked up.

She listened to the men beyond the wall, the cards hitting a table, the scrape of a chair.

The second door clicked.

Someone on the other side began turning the handle.