Chapter 6 - Blood and Freight
The heat coming off the asphalt outside the Jackson County Courthouse on 12th Street was thick enough to chew.
Kansas City in late June was a crucible of high humidity and baking limestone. As Travis maneuvered the heavy Ford truck through the downtown corridor, the city seemed to vibrate with tension.
We had just turned off Grand Boulevard when Travis’s dash-mounted communications radio crackled to life with a blast of static.
"Dispatch to Unit One," a voice barked over the speaker. It was Marcus, Travis’s head of operations at the West Bottoms terminal. His voice carried that tight, clipped cadence that usually meant a multi-rig pileup on the turnpike. "Travis, you there?"
Travis tapped the microphone clipped to the steering column. "Go ahead, Marcus."
"We got a situation at the South Terminal off 85th Street," Marcus said, the sound of shouting men and idling diesel engines audible in the background. "Three inspectors from the Missouri Department of Transportation commercial vehicle division just rolled onto the lot with two municipal code enforcement officers."
Travis’s knuckles whitened against the leather of the steering wheel. "On what grounds?"
"They’re claiming an anonymous commercial safety complaint," Marcus replied, his frustration boiling through the static. "Brake line irregularities, logbook discrepancies, environmental run-off from the wash bays. They’ve red-tagged twelve of our outbound freight rigs. They’re refusing to let the afternoon line-hauls pull out for St. Louis."
I turned to Travis, my stomach plummeting into my shoes. "Diane."
Travis didn't answer Marcus immediately. He kept his eyes fixed on the traffic light at 11th Street, his jaw working with a slow, rhythmic grind that made the muscles in his temples twitch.
"Marcus," Travis said into the mic, his voice dropping into that chilling, icy calm. "Who is the lead DOT inspector?"
"Guy named Miller," Marcus said. "Badge number 412. He’s carrying a clipboard and acting like he owns the county."
"Miller is Arthur Vance’s brother-in-law," Travis muttered, releasing the mic. He didn't look at me, but the air inside the cab suddenly felt twenty degrees colder. "Diane’s brother sits on the regional transportation oversight committee. They’re hitting the business."
"Travis, turn around," I said, reaching out with my good hand to touch his forearm. "Call Marcus and tell him to hold the rigs. If they red-tag your fleet, you lose your carrier insurance. You can't fight the state DOT."
"I’m not turning around," Travis said.
"Travis, you’re losing thousands of dollars every hour those trucks sit on the asphalt!"
"And you’re going to lose your life if we don't get that restraining order stamped by the presiding judge before four o'clock," Travis said, turning his face toward me. His dark eyes were ablaze with a cold, ruthless focus. "Listen to me, Brooke. For thirteen years, I watched the Holloways and the Vances treat this town like their private sandbox. They think because they have oil paintings of their grandfathers in the city library, the rest of us are just cattle they can run over whenever we get in the way of their balance sheets."
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel, the crack sounding like a pistol shot inside the cab.
"My uncle lost his first repair shop because Gavin’s grandfather manipulated the city drainage easements to force him off the property! I spent my whole damn life knowing that eventually, I’d have to break their teeth or let them bury me. They want to play DOT games? Let them play."
He picked up the radio mic again. "Marcus."
"Yeah, Travis?"
"Call our maritime logistics contact at the river port in Argentine," Travis ordered, his voice clipped and precise. "Reroute all sixty inbound intermodal containers to the rail siding. Tell the Kansas City Southern yardmaster we’re exercising our secondary interchange agreement under contract 804. If the state DOT won't let our rubber hit the highway, we’ll move the freight on iron rails under federal interstate commerce jurisdiction. The state inspectors don't have the authority to touch a railcar without a federal warrant."
A brief pause on the radio, followed by Marcus’s low, appreciative whistle. "That’ll cost us eight percent on the margin, Boss."
"Pay it," Travis said. "And Marcus?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell Inspector Miller that if he steps one foot inside the maintenance shop without an administrative search warrant signed by an active circuit judge, release the yard dogs and call the county sheriff for commercial trespassing."
Travis clicked the mic off and tossed it onto the console.
We pulled up to the curb outside the courthouse.
Standing on the broad limestone steps, surrounded by three junior associates in matching navy suits, was Gavin Holloway.
He wasn't in handcuffs. He was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his hair neatly parted, though his skin carried that sickly, yellowish pallor of a man who had spent thirty-six hours running on adrenaline, single-malt scotch, and fear. His left hand was shoved into his pocket, but as our truck idled at the red light, his eyes locked onto the passenger window.
He saw me.
And then he saw Travis Keene sitting in the driver’s seat beside me.
Gavin’s face contorted into an expression of such pure, unadulterated venom that even through the tinted safety glass, the hatred was suffocating. He took two steps down the stairs, breaking away from his lawyers, his hand coming out of his pocket, pointing directly at the windshield.
"Brooke!" his voice carried faintly over the roar of the downtown traffic.
"Keep your seat belt on," Travis said quietly.
"Travis, don't—"
Travis didn't accelerate into traffic. He didn't reach for a weapon. He put the heavy truck into park right in the loading zone, killed the ignition, and stepped out onto the street.
The downtown pedestrian crowd—paralegals, county clerks, bail bondsmen, and lunch-hour office workers—slowed down. The contrast was absurd: Gavin Holloway, the golden boy of the Kansas City financial district, standing on the courthouse stairs in a three-thousand-dollar suit, facing off against a man in steel-toed boots with a scar running through his eyebrow and diesel grease under his fingernails.
"You’re a dead man, Keene," Gavin hissed, descending the remaining three steps, his voice low enough to escape the ears of the courthouse deputies standing by the metal detectors twenty yards away. "You think you can take my wife? You think you can steal my property?"
Travis walked to the passenger side of the truck, opened my door, and offered his hand. I took it, stepping down onto the pavement, my fiberglass splint stark white against my black cotton dress.
Gavin’s eyes dropped to the cast, then to the dark, weeping contusion around my eye. For a split second, something flickered across his face—a brief, pathetic tremor of guilt.
Then Arthur Vance rushed down the steps, catching Gavin by the elbow, his face florid with panic. "Gavin, stop! Not here! There are reporters from the municipal desk inside!"
Gavin wrenched his arm out of his lawyer’s grip. "I don't give a damn about the reporters! She’s my wife! She signed those guarantees, Arthur! If she doesn't appear at the zoning board on Wednesday, the bank—"
"Shut up, Gavin!" Arthur Vance snapped, his voice cracking with genuine terror as he realized Gavin was shouting corporate secrets into an open street.
Travis stepped between Gavin and me, his body an impenetrable shield.
"The warrant for felony assault was issued forty minutes ago, Holloway," Travis said, his voice carrying clearly to the two sheriff’s deputies standing under the courthouse portico. "I suggest you go inside and turn yourself over to the bailiff before they drag you out of your private equity office in front of your clients."
Gavin took a half-step forward, his fists balling at his sides, his breath coming in ragged, audible gasps. "She’s nothing without me! Do you hear me, Keene? She was a broke engineering student living in an attic apartment when I found her! I bought her clothes! I gave her a name! She’s a Holloway!"
I stepped out from behind Travis’s shoulder.
The midday sun beat down on the limestone steps, blinding and hot. My eye throbbed, my ribs screamed, and my knees felt like they were made of damp sand. But when I looked at Gavin Holloway, the man who had controlled every breath I took for seven years, I didn't see an empire.
I saw a small, terrified little boy who had stolen his father’s checkbook and was now realizing that the ink was dry.
"My name is Brooke Kelly," I said, using my maiden name for the first time in seven years. The sound of it was clean, sharp, like a glass bell ringing in a quiet room. "And you’re going to spend the rest of your life learning how much that name is going to cost you."
Gavin lunged.
It was an instinctive, uncoordinated move—the lunge of a spoiled child trying to break a toy he had been told he couldn't keep.
He never reached me.
Travis Keene didn't throw a punch. He didn't draw a weapon. He simply stepped inside Gavin’s reach, his left hand catching Gavin by the throat with the terrifying, mechanical speed of an industrial clamp, slamming him backward against the heavy bronze handrail of the courthouse steps.
Gavin’s head cracked against the metal with a sickening *thud*.
"Sheriff!" Arthur Vance screamed, his face turning purple. "Assault! Arrest him!"
Four sheriff’s deputies came down the steps at a dead sprint, their boots slamming against the limestone, their hands on their duty holsters.
"Hands where I can see them!" the lead sergeant shouted.
Travis didn't flinch. He slowly released his grip on Gavin’s throat, stepped back two paces, and raised both hands, palms open, completely calm, completely balanced.
Gavin slumped against the handrail, coughing violently, clutching his neck, his polished hair falling across his forehead in greasy strands.
"Sergeant," Travis said, not a trace of adrenaline in his voice. "I am Travis Keene. This is Brooke Holloway. We are here to serve a felony warrant on Gavin Holloway for domestic assault in the second degree, issued by Magistrate Campbell twenty minutes ago. As you just witnessed, Mr. Holloway attempted to breach the statutory fifty-foot protection perimeter to attack the victim on the public steps."
The lead sergeant looked at Travis, then at Gavin, who was still wheezing against the rail, and then at me.
His eyes lingered on my bruised face and the fiberglass splint.
The sergeant pulled his radio from his shoulder. "Dispatch, this is Unit 4. Confirm active felony warrant for Gavin Holloway, date of birth 11-14-88."
A beat of static. Then: *"Unit 4, confirmed. Active felony warrant, domestic assault second, spousal enhancement. No bail set per Magistrate Campbell."*
The sergeant looked down at Gavin. He didn't look angry. He looked disgusted.
He unclipped the heavy steel cuffs from his duty belt.
May you like
"Mr. Holloway," the sergeant said, taking Gavin by the shoulder and spinning him around against the bronze rail with enough force to knock his designer sunglasses onto the concrete. "Put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest."
***
