I needed a way inside before Sutter put another door between Daniel and me. The loading entrance stood open, but light spread across the apron, and the van left barely enough room for a man to pass. I backed around the corner instead. Rainwater spilled from a broken gutter onto my neck. Along the rear wall, weeds brushed three low windows. Two were boarded. Behind the third, something pale moved, then stopped when my shoe scraped brick.
Ruth looked out through glass cloudy with old dust. I knew her from the freight office, though the woman behind that pane seemed older than the one who used to ask me for signed delivery slips. She raised a hand. I held a finger to my lips and tried the frame. It moved an inch before catching. My shoulder burned. Inside, a man's steps crossed the room, and Ruth vanished below the sill.
I crouched beneath the window. Through the wall came Sutter's voice, too muffled for words, then Daniel saying, clearly, 'I can walk.' A door banged farther inside. Ruth appeared again and pushed upward with both palms. Together we lifted the swollen sash far enough for her head. She got one elbow outside, then stopped, breathing hard. I put my good arm beneath her ribs. 'Come toward me.' Her shoe struck the inside wall. We both froze. No footsteps returned.
She slid over the sill and landed against me harder than either of us expected. My bad arm folded. We dropped into the wet weeds, her knee striking my thigh, my cheek scraping the brick. For a moment neither of us could get air. Then she rolled away and crawled behind a stack of discarded pallets. I followed. Through the window came the scrape of a chair. Whoever had made that sound did not come to look out.
'Daniel?' I whispered. She pointed along the building. 'Sutter took him back. Small room by the yard.' I started to rise, but she caught my coat. Her fingers were cold and surprisingly strong. 'You came alone?' 'Leon was coming to the cold store. They moved you first.' She closed her eyes, then opened them at a sound inside. I could not tell whether she had heard a voice or only the rain working through the roof.
We moved along the pallets toward the drainage strip. Ruth favored one leg, and I offered the arm that still worked. She refused it until a loose board tipped beneath her shoe. Then she leaned against me. At the corner I looked toward the road. No headlights, no Leon. There was a service station beyond the bend, closed at this hour, with a public telephone under its awning. I remembered passing it when my truck could still carry me.
'Mercer said Leon took the money,' I told her. It came out like an accusation, though I had meant to ask where she could run. 'Mercer took it,' she said. 'I kept the freight books. He moved company money to himself, then told you it was missing.' I stared at her. 'You saw that?' 'I entered the payments. When I asked him why, he shut my office.' Her account explained his anger, but I had only her word and what he had done to us.
I remembered going after Leon with Mercer's grievance in my mouth, ready to make another man's enemy my own. Ruth tugged my sleeve before I could sink further into it. 'We have to move.' She was right. Nothing she had told me would open Daniel's door. I led her across a patch of standing water and showed her the darker line of the road. Each step away from the annex made it easier to imagine continuing with her.
At the drainage strip she stopped. 'His room has a green door. Near the yard exit. I saw it when they brought us through.' Behind us, a shadow crossed the window we had emptied. I could get Ruth to the telephone, or I could return while Daniel was still where she had last seen him. 'Go to the station,' I said. 'If you meet Leon, bring him here. Don't come back alone.' She studied my face, then released my sleeve.
I gave her the dry bills from my pocket for the telephone and kept the folded boat money beneath my shirt. She asked whether I could manage that shoulder. I said, 'I'll use the other one.' It was not much of an answer. She stepped into the ditch, climbed out with both hands, and began running toward the road. I watched until she cleared the bend. Then I crossed back through the weeds and pulled myself into the annex through her window.