LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Two

      The hand-painted NICK’S REPAIR sign was so faded that nobody driving by on Route 23 would notice it hanging there. But it didn’t much matter. Nick’s Repair already had all the customers it needed, and they knew exactly where to find it.

      Even though April was ninety-five percent certain that the shop was connected to Rose’s disappearance, she wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was looking for when she’d set out on an almost two-hour bus ride from Philly that took her to a random stop just west of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. For most of the morning, she’d just stood outside of Nick’s, across the two-lane highway, behind a bush, and watched.

      She didn’t see too many trucks go in. Those that entered, didn’t stay long. Nobody, from what she could tell, was actually going to the shop to have their truck repaired—this fit what she already knew about the place: that it was a truck repair shop in name only.

      Rose, too, had known this. And this bit of information was the reason for her sudden disappearance— at least, April suspected as much. For almost three years, Rose had dated the co-owner of this shop, a man named Ricky Devereux. Ricky was the kind of guy who liked to tell people that he was an “independent businessman,” without specifying what kind of business. And he always made a point of handing out a business card, whether or not the occasion warranted it. It had been a running joke between Rose and April. Especially when April discovered that the card read “Richard J. Devereux” on it.

      “Richard? Ha!” April had said when she’d seen the card. “That guy’s a ‘Ricky’ all the way.”

      Any time she’d wanted to make her sister giggle, April would adopt an over-the-top posh English accent, curtsey, and say, “Charmed to make your acquaintance, Sir Richard.”

      But it wasn’t long before Rose and Ricky became more serious as a couple and April had to tone down her mockery. Despite the chaos of her own love life, or perhaps because of it, April had a difficult time watching Rose grow closer to a man she considered a lowlife, who offered her beloved sister only heartache, and possibly also serious trouble. April’s efforts to advise Rose—sometimes tactfully, usually not—to break up with Ricky, had become a constant source of tension between the inseparable sisters.

      Once, when Rose had asked her, “What’s so bad about him?” April had lost her temper and begun shouting.

      “Um, lemme see . . . well, first of all, he’s a lying-piece-of-trash-grease-monkey-thug. And that’s just one thing. Want me to name others?”

      After these outbursts, the sisters would stop talking for a bit, usually for about a week, but sometimes for as long as a month. This was the reason April hadn’t, at first, realized that Rose was missing—they’d recently had another fight over Ricky.

      Still, the sisters’ bond was unshakable. They not only reconciled after fights, they continued to confide in each other completely. Rose never concealed the things she’d learned about Ricky, and they weren’t pretty. He was involved in a racket which, from what Rose could tell, had grown from a small indiscretion here and there into a full-fledged criminal operation that had turned a once-legitimate truck repair business—founded twenty years earlier by Ricky’s father, Nick—into a front.

      Having grown up in the shop, Ricky had made deep connections among the teamsters whose trucks he repaired. Occasionally he’d hook them up with some pills. Aderall for alertness. But also prescription painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. He’d done this mostly as favors, as a friend who knew how tough it was out there on the road. The truckers trusted him completely, and vice versa.

      But when Ricky’s brother-in-law, Dylan, joined the shop, and eventually became a co-owner after Nick died, things changed. Dylan was a shrewd businessman and he also happened to have absolutely no scruples. He realized that their teamster clientele was not only an excellent market for pills but that the truckers could serve as a reliable delivery service for what he imagined could be, and eventually became, a major cross-country smuggling operation. Instead of fixing trucks and handing out pills as small favors to their best clients, Nick’s Repair became primarily a drug operation that fixed trucks as favors, and as a front.

      Rose had learned about all of this from Ricky, who’d begun to have much more money to throw around and had also become increasingly anxious about getting caught. He’d needed someone to confide in and that person was Rose. April had long feared that this knowledge would lead to major trouble for her sister (and even for her—she’d stopped talking to Rose about Ricky’s work over the phone, for fear that someone, Dylan or the police, might be listening in).

      Rose had become increasingly agitated and suspicious. April could tell that something terrible had happened—something that Rose refused to tell her. Rose gave hints that cops, maybe even the feds, were tracing Dylan and Ricky, and that she might have to testify against them or risk a serious penalty herself. She wouldn’t elaborate. Not because she didn’t trust April but because she didn’t want to implicate her. She was trying to be a good sister. And then, suddenly, she disappeared.

      That was what brought April out to Nick’s Repair that day, to watch, to try to gather whatever information she could. But as it became more and more clear that April wasn’t going to learn anything new by hiding in a bush and staking out the shop, she faced a decision: go inside or leave.

      But just as she began to call a car to take her back to the bus station, she changed her mind. She needed to be brave if she was going to find Rose. If these guys knew something about where her sister was—where she’d been for weeks now—it meant they were the ones to talk to, even if they were dangerous. What choice did she have? For all she knew, Rose was right here, somewhere in that shop.

      The thought of her sister being so close by . . . just the thought of it clutched at April’s heart. She hadn’t quite felt their separation physically until then, hadn’t quite admitted, even to herself, how much she missed her sister.

      April marched toward the shop. She reminded herself to be watchful for any clues. The first one came the moment she pushed the door open. The body language of the two men sitting in the shop sent a clear message: guilt. Guilty of what, April didn’t know. But these guys were undeniably hiding something. One of the men, sitting at a dingy desk, tensed up; the other, who was sitting on the desk, jumped off as though he were about to spring into action. Instead, he folded his arms over his large chest. He was a massive man. She immediately recognized him. Something in his face told her that he, too, recognized her.

      “Yeah?” he said.

      To which the other man, the one seated at the desk, added, “Whadayou? Lost?”

      “No,” April said.

      “Well, we do repairs. You got a rig needs work?”

      “Nope,” April said.

      The men exchanged a look.

      “Have we met?” the desk guy said.

      He squinted and leaned forward to get a better look at April in the dim light of the window-less shop. April stood in front of the door, within arm’s reach of it. Just in case she needed to flee.

      Now the standing man uncrossed his arms and wagged a finger insistently at April.

      “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know you! We met at the boss’s. At a party. You’re Rose’s friend, right?”

      “Sister,” April said.

      “Right!” he replied, and, turning to the other man, added, “Rose

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