Chapter 5: Dawn At The Service Bay
The morning light didn’t break over the junkyard so much as it bled through the gray smog, turning the rusted hoods of old sedans the color of a wet sidewalk. I woke up on the army cot in the corner of Jax’s garage, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that smelled faintly of motor oil and stale tobacco. My bones felt light, though my shoulder still ached from the damp chill of the night before.
Across the concrete floor, the radio was tuned to a scratchy local station playing morning weather and highway traffic reports. Jax was already up, sitting on a low stool by the hydraulic lift with a cup of black coffee steaming between his scarred hands. He had traded his usual heavy vest for a grease-stained canvas work jacket, his long hair tied back with a piece of electrical wire.
The heavy sliding door of the garage groaned as it was shoved open, letting in a sharp gust of cold air and the roar of a passing flatbed truck on the county road. Pete, the mechanic from three bays down, walked in carrying a cardboard tray with two paper cups and a grease-smeared local newspaper folded under his arm.
"Morning, Jax," Pete said, nodding toward me as I sat up on the cot. "Boy’s still here, huh? Thought maybe you’d drop him off at the county intake by midnight."
"He stays," Jax said, his voice gravelly from sleep. He didn't look up from his coffee. "You got that part for the alternator?"
"In the truck," Pete muttered, tossing a rolled-up section of the paper onto the workbench. He leaned against a steel drum, blowing on his coffee. "Saw something in the local social pages this morning you might find interesting, considering your old haunts. That charity shindig at the Grand Royal? They're rolling out the red carpet tonight for some high-society foundation board. Big names. Big money."
Jax’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth. He slowly lowered the coffee cup, setting it down on the workbench with a dull thud. His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking once beneath his dark beard.
"Which foundation?" Jax asked, his voice dropping into that low, flat register that always made the air feel thin.
"The Sterling Heritage Trust," Pete said, tapping the front page of the newspaper with a stubby finger. "Run by that corporate development crowd out in the capital. You know—the ones who buy up old timber land and turn it into golf courses. The woman heading up the gala tonight is Evelyn Sterling. Sound familiar?"
I slipped off the cot, my scuffed sneakers scraping quietly against the concrete as I walked over to the workbench. I looked down at the newspaper photograph. It showed an elegant blonde woman stepping out of a black Rolls-Royce, draped in a white silk shawl, flashing a polished, practiced smile for the flashing cameras. It was the same woman who had looked down at me on the pavement outside the hotel less than twenty-4 hours ago, her eyes sharp and judgmental behind designer sunglasses.
Jax stood up slowly, his tall frame uncoiling like a steel spring. He stared down at the photograph, his thumb tracing the edge of the paper where her face was printed. The silence in the garage grew heavy, broken only by the hum of the small refrigerator in the corner and the drip of a leaky pipe near the back wall.
"Evelyn," Jax murmured, the name sounding like a curse he had kept locked in his teeth for years. He looked over at me, his hazel eyes catching the dim light of the overhead fluorescent bulb. "She always did love a ballroom. She spent her whole life running away from the mud, kid. But tonight, we’re going to pay her a visit."
"You can't just walk into the Grand Royal looking like that, Jax," Pete said, waving a hand toward Jax’s work boots and grease-stained jacket. "They got private security at the doors. They check invitations at the curb. You’ll get tossed out on your ear before you even hit the revolving glass."
May you like
Jax didn't answer right away. He reached into the pocket of his canvas jacket and pulled out a small, worn leather wallet, flicking it open with his thumb. Inside, tucked behind a cracked plastic window, was an old laminated employee badge from a construction firm he’d worked for back when I was just a baby in the photograph. It was faded and yellowed at the corners, but from ten feet away, it looked official enough to fool a tired parking attendant.
"We aren't going through the front doors, Pete," Jax said, pulling his leather vest back on over his shirt. "We're going where the service elevators run. And we're going to see just how solid those walls really are."
