Pay the Price (Harmony Grove Book 3) Carol Post (poetry books to read txt) 📖

tension, barely restrained temper. “Sonny, I’ve been doing all the hiring for Driggers Porcelain since you were in diapers. And I never had to clear a candidate with your father.”

“Guess what? You don’t work for my father anymore.” Spike turned and disappeared through the double doors, not giving Tom an opportunity to respond.

Shane returned to his area at a swift walk. It wouldn’t be good if he got caught eavesdropping. Either way, though, his time was short. He had four days at the most. Maybe as little as one.

When the bell rang at four, the other workers scrambled to put away assigned tools and gather keys and lunchboxes, but Shane hung back. There was only one reason Spike wanted him gone. There was something at Driggers Porcelain that he didn’t want him to see.

He’d already gotten well-acquainted with the shipping and receiving areas. During his morning and afternoon breaks, while several of his co-workers slipped outside to smoke, he’d listened to conversations and taken in what he could.

According to one of his co-workers, Driggers also ran a night shift. Those employees reported to work at eleven, just a skeleton crew. They handled special projects. When Shane pressed, the guy couldn’t tell him what qualified as a special project.

Another interesting tidbit he’d learned was that Driggers had its own airstrip. It was in back of the factory, hidden from the view of those inside by a narrow stretch of woods. Evidently Carlton Driggers had been a hobby pilot and had the strip installed years ago. If the Driggers brothers were involved in drug running, they had the ideal way to get their shipments in and out.

Was that possibly where the picture Jess had sent him was taken? Neither of them had been able to identify the background. The photo had been taken at night. A circle of light surrounded the men, its source overhead, maybe a streetlight, but everything around them was dark. According to Ron, the Bureau people had enhanced the photo without success. They hadn’t been able to identify the third man yet, either.

Shane pushed open one of the double doors at the end of the warehouse. According to what he’d been told, down that wide, short hall was the heart of the operation, where the porcelain was manufactured. Each side wall was broken by a single closed door. The areas seemed too long to be closets. They weren’t offices, either. Those were all at the other end of the warehouse.

He tried the door on the left. It was locked. He moved further down the hall, toward the door on the opposite wall. As he started to reach for the knob, a muffled male voice penetrated the metal door. He pressed himself against the wall.

“Be careful with the boxes this time.” The voice belonged to Spike. And it wasn’t an instructional tone. More like scolding, implying a previous mistake.

“Sure, boss. But that last one wasn’t all my fault. It got separated from the others and left behind. Then someone else picked it up.”

“It was marked. You weren’t paying attention to what you were doing.”

“It’s all right. We got everything put back where it should’ve been before it was all over.”

Shane tried to place the voice, but it didn’t belong to any of the employees he’d met. It was raspy, with a hint of a New England accent, noticeable in the way he dropped the ending r’s.

“You were able to clean up your mess this time, but that was pure luck. I’m not going to tolerate any more mistakes from you.”

“What, are you going to do to me like we did to the girl?” The laugh he emitted was more sarcasm than humor. “That’ll never happen. You need me to do your dirty work.”

“No one is indispensable. And don’t you forget it.”

The metallic click of the knob turning spurred Shane to action. He bolted the final eight feet down the hall and disappeared through another set of double doors at the end.

Two men looked back at him, silent questions on both of their faces. They stood at a huge kiln. Judging from the rows of vases on the long table next to them, they’d just finished firing some product.

Shane’s gaze circled the room. “I’m looking for Tom. I guess he didn’t come this way after all.”

“No, we haven’t seen him.”

“This is pretty fascinating.” He nodded toward all the equipment, most of which he didn’t recognize. The kilns were obvious. So were the crushers and mills. The other pieces he could only make a wild guess as to their use. He should probably read up on the porcelain making process.

But right now, he had time to kill. If Spike still stood in that hall when he stepped out, Shane would be gone long before the end of the week.

“I work in shipping, but I’d love to see all this in action someday.”

One of the men turned to face him fully, Donald, according to the embroidered patch over his right shirt pocket. “They do tours. I see them come around every so often, bringing people through and explaining the process step by step.”

“I’ll have to watch for that.”

Now finished, both men took jackets from hooks on the wall and made their way to the doors. Shane fell in beside them, hoping the occupants of the room down the hall were gone. When they passed the first door, he breathed a sigh of relief. The room was quiet. Spike and his reprimanded employee—or whatever he was—had left.

What kind of mistake had the man with the raspy voice made? And what kind of dirty work did he do? Was it related to the porcelain business, or something more diabolical? Was Spike’s parting comment a threat to end the guy’s employment, or his life?

And who was the girl the other man had referred to, an employee?

Or Spike’s brother’s nosy girlfriend?

Suds crept up the stainless-steel sides of the sink as it filled, and Jessica added a plate and glass to the pot already there.