Prologue: Welcome

1

If Tom hadn’t left his sweater in his locker, if he hadn’t gone back to get it, and if he hadn’t passed the main office on the way, the whole dark night might’ve been avoided.

“Hold up a minute, Tommy. Got one more run for you.”

Dammit. Tom had a fun night planned ahead. A great one. Pizza, beer, old movies, feet on the table, and the open prairie of the living room to himself.

“Where to, Jerry?”

Before his boss even said the city name, Tom knew he’d scratch his evening plans. He never said no to Jerry.

“Goblin.”

Goblin?

“Jeez, Jerry. Goblin’s what…an hour away? I haven’t been to Goblin in something close to…thirty years.”

To Goblin might’ve been an hour’s drive, but there and back would make it two.

“I know it,” Jerry said, making his most sympathetic face. Cigar smoke rose from the ashtray on his desk and curled about his big belly. “And I’m gonna give you triple for the run. The recipient gave us some extra. Wants it done his way. Very specific.”

“Triple? Wow. What is it, Jerry?”

Jerry shrugged and looked to a stack of papers.

“It’s a pain in the ass is what it is. Obsessive instructions. And he wants it delivered at midnight. No kidding. Maybe there’s a party going on or who knows…but I’d send you with a carload of uncuffed prisoners for this kind of money. There’s a whole list of demands attached to the crate.”

“Crate?”

“Box.”

Tom removed his yellow ball cap and ran greasy fingers through his greasy hair. Triple. That added up to $1.20 a mile. What with Goblin hanging at least seventy miles north (and maybe even more, Tom would certainly check), not to mention the seventy back, he stood to make a cool hundred sixty-eight dollars on a last-minute run. Tom could drop the box off at midnight and be in front of his TV by two in the morning. Hell, he could drink all day from there.

“Just follow the directions to a T, Tommy. The fella already made good on his money. Now it’s just up to us not to mess it up.”

The union had the drivers going at eighteen an hour or taking forty cents on the mile. Most of the guys opted for the hourly because most of the guys factored in the dreaded long wait upon delivery. But Tom had been driving for sixteen years and he knew this guy there and that guy here and by the time the option was granted he’d had his routes down pat. And if there was an unexpected delay? Well, that was okay, too. Tom loved to count the miles. He wasn’t about to give that small distraction up.