Page 5 of Taken for Granite
As she turned off the interstate, she heard thumping in the back of the van.
Shit.
In a panic, she turned up the volume of the radio. Maybe if she couldn’t hear…
Thump.
No. Oh, no no no.
That was a person.
Thump.
That was a fucking person in the back of the van.
Look, she knew the catering gig to the docks was shady. She wasn’t an idiot, but she never thought too hard on it, either. She just had to deliver the bagels, leave the back of the van unlocked, and not ask questions. Easy. Someone slipped a package in the back of the van and Juniper brought it back to the diner. She never looked in the back. Not ever. Keeping her nose out of Mickey’s business was the only way to play this game.
Mickey was beyond paranoid. If he ever thought she peeked at the cargo, he’d… She didn’t know, exactly. Nothing good. Mickey had so many ways to hurt her. She’d suffer a beating if she had to, but if he threatened to hurt Chloe—
Yeah, right. She heard what he did to Raul and his cousin when the cash drawer came up short. Mickey had her over a barrel. Complete loyalty and willful blindness kept her and her sister safe.
Thump.
The van shook with the force of the thumping. Black painted plywood vibrated as if someone intended to punch their way through. She needed to pull over and sort it out, even if that broke both of Mickey’s rules.
On her first catering run, one of Mickey’s enforcers sat in the back, ready to catch Juniper if she got curious and tried to check out the cargo.
She had kept her eyes forward the entire time and just drove.
She needed to do that now, but her gut churned. It was easier when she figured the cargo was drugs or a stolen batch of the hot new cell phone. Whatever. She didn’t swell up with pride at her choices, but her driving didn’t hurt people. Those drugs were already in the port. Those cell phones were already stolen.
But that thump—that was a person and they clearly didn’t want to be there.
Shit.
She turned the van off the main road into a stretch of mostly abandoned warehouses. She pulled into a pothole-riddled parking lot. She needed to think.
That annoyingly upbeat music rubbed her the wrong way with its positivity and sunshine lyrics. She turned off the radio while the engine idled.
She was okay with smuggling and theft, but not human trafficking. That could be a kid. Or some woman who had been promised a job as an au pair but would find herself in a brothel.
The thought made Juniper’s skin crawl. Drugs and stolen gadgets were things. It was easier to stomach the shadiness when she just drove a box of most likely stolen or illegalstuff.
Stuff. Not people. A person. A human.
Whoever was back there, they needed her help. She’d tell Mickey… something. They escaped while she was on the road. With all the thumping in the back, that was probably true.
Decision already made, she grabbed the bottle of water and the candy bar from her bag.
Warmed by the afternoon sun, the uneven pavement poked at the soles of her shoes. A low growl sounded nearby. Juniper spun, looking for a stray dog but found nothing.
“Hello?” She knocked on the rear door. The thumping stilled, but the threatening growl remained. “I don’t know you if you can hear me. Or speak English. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to open the door now. Okay? Okay.”
Taking a deep breath, she mentally prepared herself to find a starved, naked person desperately needing water, food, and medical care.
The door creaked open, revealing a shattered wooden crate. Something shuffled in the back, lurking in the shadows.
“Hello? I have water. Agua.” She set the bottle down on the floor and backed away.
