Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
I knew she meant well, but it was humiliating enough having some asshole talk to me like that. I just wanted to pretend it never happened. Besides, if I said something to HR, Mr. Ripley would hear about it, and my dad would find out. He already felt like shit about me, his twenty-three-year-old daughter, supporting him. How much worse would he feel knowing I was getting harassed every day? With my petite frame and large breasts, I didn’t see it stopping anytime soon. Not with this crew. The guys Ripley hired tended to be macho cavemen, willing to work in conditions no one else would. For the right pay.
Also, I was pretty sure Randall was a psycho. God only knew what he would do if he got fired. He was not a nice man. And the world, at least for me, was already a not-so-nice place. It would break you if you gave it the chance.
“Rosie!” thundered a panicked voice from the doorway.
Rosie and I both looked up at the foreman, Gilberto, with his husky frame halfway inside the trailer.
“Yeah?” Rosie said.
“You gotta come quick! You gotta see this.”
“Gilly,” she said in her nasally tone, “I’m busy here. What is it?”
“I don’t fucking know,” he replied.
CHAPTER TWO
I exited the big white trailer, lagging behind Rosie and Gilberto. I hated going outside. The stench of rotting fish hung heavy in the salty air, drawing frenzied droves of squawking, crapping seagulls. Today was also exceptionally cold and drizzly for an autumn morning in Florida. The weather just wouldn’t give us a break.
It had been about a week since nature decided to chew up Tampa and spit it back out. Then another storm passed through yesterday, bringing with it more rain. Most of the towns along the coast were dealing with horrible flooding. Everything was a wet mess.
Of course, our crew kept on working no matter what. The National Guard had a barge on the way, filled with food, medical supplies, generators, and everything you needed to clear heavy debris. At the moment, there was only one open road heading east.
Shivering in my plain red T-shirt and jeans, I folded my arms and walked up behind Gilly, Rosie, and the group of workers who’d gathered along the edge of the clearing we were using as a temporary parking lot. Everyone was leaning over the seawall, watching someone below on the rocky beach. From the loud grinding sound, I guessed it was one of the crew cutting through something heavy.
“Now use the crowbar!” Gilly yelled to whoever was down there.
From my vantage point, I couldn’t see, but lots of things had been washing up near the shipping container yard. Two days ago, they’d found an entire playset, one of those plastic ones for toddlers. I hoped that the people it belonged to had made it out in time. Many hadn’t. Overnight, the hurricane had turned from a weakening Category 1 to a Category 2. Then the storm just stopped moving and pummeled everything for two days, dumping massive amounts of water. They said it was a fluke. Some weather system from the north had created a wall of pressure preventing the hurricane from moving inland. I’d never heard of anything like it. Neither had the history books.
I was just about to lean over the wall for a look when Rosie screamed and turned away.
The workers all stepped back from the wall.
“What is it?” I asked the guy in a hard hat standing next to me.
“A metal box washed up on shore. There’s a body inside.”
“A body?” I had zero interest in seeing a dead person, especially if it was weeks old.
“Oh God. I’ll call the police,” Rosie said and started toward the trailer.
I followed her back inside, wanting to get far away from that beach.
“Who’s in there?” I shut the door behind me, realizing what I really meant to ask was if it was a man, woman, child or what.
“Some poor bastard. Looks like someone locked him inside that box and threw him off a boat.” She picked up her sat phone and started dialing. “Or maybe he was already dead when they put him in there. Who knows? But it was all filled with water.” She spoke into the phone. “Hello? Yeah, hi. I’m over at the container port…”
As Rosie explained the situation to the police, my mind was drawn to the dead man in the metal box. There was something infinitely more horrifying about a murdered body versus just an unfortunate soul who got sucked out to sea during a hurricane.
Who had done that to him?
Why?
Honestly, it sounded like the sort of thing you read about happening in Miami, when the occasional body washed up in a suitcase. But here? Tampa?
Rosie ended the call with a sigh.
“Well?” I asked. “What’d they say?”