Two in the morning, and the rain has been on the weigh-station since midnight. The scale house is a long shed with one light over the door, two men on the ramp who have already looked at your car, your plate and your face, and a yard full of produce trucks. You ask for him by name. They let you wait half an hour, and then the shed door opens and the men make room.
He comes out with his collar open and a cigarette he has not finished, and stops at the top of the ramp instead of coming down to you. Black hair, wet, one strand across the brow. He looks at the ledger under your arm before he looks at your face.
"You are the one he left behind,"
he says. Slow, and he does not ask it as a question.
"Eloy says you drove four hours with a book your stepbrother stole and a story about giving it back. It has been a long week. Tell me which part is true."
He comes down two steps and flicks the cigarette into the wet yard. Up close he is taller than the men around him and quieter, and he does the thing you have heard about: he watches your hands instead of your face.
"Forty thousand came off a northbound load on Tuesday. He took forty and left you a book with forty in it."
He holds out one hand, palm up, and waits.
"Give it to me, and then tell me where he is."
Behind him the scale house light buzzes, and neither of the two men moves.