The Beast Within (The Elite Series) - By Jonathan Yanez Page 0,10

he had decided on a flannel shirt, work jeans that pleaded for the washing machine, and brown boots.

He pulled up to the store and was greeted with a warm smile. “Well; hello sleepy head. I was going to wake you but you looked so peaceful, I decided to let you sleep in.”

“Thanks, after my date with Laren last night, I was beat.”

His mother gave him a quizzical look. “Laren is—?” Realization hit her like a hammer. “Connor, you’re not going out with the daughter of our landlord, are you?”

Connor stuck out his lower lip and raised his eyebrows. “Maybe.”

“Connor Moore, you stop teasing me and be serious.”

“Whoops, look at the time. I’m going to be late with all those deliveries. Got to go!”

He left his mother in the store shaking her head. More than likely, she was rolling her eyes and laughing, but Connor was already out the door.

Grabbing the delivery order form from the back wall, he began loading his truck with supplies that customers had ordered. His mother used to hire men to do all the deliveries for her. Seeing the money she was paying for this service, Connor insisted that she allow him to make all the deliveries himself. They had agreed he would do the majority of them, save the orders that required a heavier truck due to weight issues or the need for more than one man to lift the material.

Donning a pair of ancient work gloves, Connor attacked this assignment with fervor. Having missed his morning workout, he used this opportunity to get some exercise. Lifting, pulling, and tugging, he loaded his truck with the supplies for the day’s deliveries in record time. Perspiration gathered on his brow as Connor pulled from his seemingly unlimited supply of energy.

As he finished lifting the last bag of mulch into his vehicle, he saw the other delivery truck pulling up. It was a burly F-350 with added support to the rear axle to compensate for weight. At one time the truck had been bright fire engine red, but that time had passed many moons ago. Now it was a chipped, dented, faded maroon. The color resembled a piece of clay after being shaped and placed in the furnace.

Jumping out of the truck were two men, Joe and Pete. Physically, two people couldn’t be more different. Joe was a stocky middle-aged man with a button nose and a smile that was too big for his face. Pete was tall and about the same age as Joe. Pete’s ears seemed to get larger every time Connor saw him and every year that passed brought more and more wrinkles to line his ever-grinning face.

Joe and Pete saw Connor and waved. They had both been working for his mother ever since Connor could remember and seemed more like uncles than anything else. Connor walked over to the two men as they discussed the best way to arrange the supplies they needed to deliver in their truck.

“No, we should put the two palm trees in first so they’re not leaning up against the tailgate,” Joe explained in a motherly tone to Pete.

“Joe, how many times do we have to go through this? The heaviest items need to stay in the rear right over the axle, where there’s the most support.”

“Pete, you have to trust me on this one. You know I aced math in school.”

“That was eighth grade!”

“Well, I still did.”

“Are you guys arguing on how to load the truck again?” Connor reached the two with a smile on his face from hearing their debate; it reminded him of two dogs arguing over a bone.

“Just discussing the proper way, Cowboy,” Joe explained.

Because the two older men had known Connor for so long, they had taken to calling him ‘Cowboy.’ When Connor was little, he would run around his mother’s store with a cowboy hat and a homemade horse, a wooden broomstick with a brown, stuffed animal horse head attached to one end. Since then, the men had called him Cowboy and the name stuck.

“You two need any help?”

“Thanks for the offer, but that’s why your mom pays us,” Pete reminded him.

“Where you headed today?” Joe asked.

“Haven’t looked yet. Just finished loading up the truck.”

Joe took Connor’s delivery sheet and whistled, “You have yourself a drive today.”

“What do you mean?” Connor asked.

“You’re delivering to the Hubers and you have a run into Catskill.”

Connor grabbed the delivery manifest. Sure enough, Joe was right. He had a total of five deliveries that day: two to