Chapter 1 - THE BLUE VEST
The sharp chime of the smart doorbell cut through Myranda Ellis’s apartment just as she was closing the monthly claims report on her laptop.
She glanced at the security feed.
A man stood in the hallway wearing a bright blue delivery vest, a bucket hat pulled low over his forehead, and a dark mustache that looked too carefully trimmed for his tired face. He held a clipboard against his chest.
Myranda hadn’t ordered anything she could remember. Still, her daughter bought half her textbooks online, and her husband was always ordering replacement parts for jobs he no longer seemed to get.
She opened the door with the chain still attached.
“Delivery?”
The man looked directly at her.
“Myranda Ellis?”
His voice carried none of the hurried friendliness she expected from a driver halfway through a crowded route.
“Yes.”
The word had barely left her mouth when he pulled a folded document from beneath the clipboard and pushed it through the narrow opening.
“You’ve been served.”
Before she could ask anything, he turned and walked toward the stairwell. There was no package at his feet, no scanner in his hand, and no company van visible through the lobby windows below.
Myranda closed the door and unfolded the paper.
FRANKLIN COUNTY MUNICIPAL COURT.
Her name appeared in bold letters above a summons connected to an unpaid $250 traffic citation. The violation had occurred at 2:13 in the morning on March 4, at the intersection of East Broad Street and Parsons Avenue.
She had not been in Columbus that night.
She had been in Dayton, sleeping upright in a vinyl chair beside her mother after outpatient surgery.
The apartment door opened behind her. Derek stepped inside carrying a paper sack from the grocery store. At forty-nine, he still had the broad shoulders of the contractor he had once been, but five months without steady work had changed the way he entered a room. He moved cautiously now, as if every ordinary question might expose something.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Myranda handed him the summons.
His eyes moved across the page.
“Two hundred fifty dollars?” he said. “That’s not the end of the world. We’ll pay it.”
Myranda watched him set the groceries on the counter.
She had not shown him the second page.
The amount was printed there.
“How did you know it was two hundred fifty?”
Derek’s hand stopped inside the grocery bag.
For one second, he looked toward the hallway leading to their daughter’s room.
Then he forced a shrug.
May you like
“Traffic tickets are usually around that much.”
From behind Callie’s closed bedroom door, the music playing through her speakers abruptly stopped.
