Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“Mmm,” Josie agrees, fingers flying.
I look down at the notebook, the name circled twice by a man who knew exactly how dangerous Thomas Vega was and tried to leave a trail before anyone came looking.
Erik documented atrocities that he’d stumbled upon and it cost him his life.
“Pull it all,” I say quietly. “Everything you can find on him.”
Josie is already working.
CHAPTER 17
Cole
Iease the unmarked Jameson SUV along the access road bordering the southern edge of terminal 18 on Harbor Island. Josie’s in the passenger seat with her tablet propped on her knees, running through preliminary site data.
It’s late morning, clear skies, and the port is fully alive.
Cargo cranes swing overhead in slow, mechanical arcs, flatbeds idle near loading bays and longshoremen in reflective vests move between stacks of containers.
There’s nothing covert about our presence here today. We’ve been hired by port authorities to access security vulnerabilities and daylight tells you what darkness won’t, such as camera angles, blind corners, traffic flow and obstructions.
“Port of Seattle had three anomalous manifest discrepancies in the last six weeks at this terminal specifically,” Josie says as her eyes roam over her screen. “Cargo logged out that doesn’t match what cleared customs. Workers who don’t appear on any union roster clocked in on payroll.”
“Ghost workers,” I say, watching a forklift operator maneuver a container into position.
“Could be payroll fraud.” She scrolls to the next page. “They want a vulnerability assessment before they escalate. Camera placement recommendations. Entry and exit choke points. Access control flaws.”
“Standard recon,” I say.
“Standard recon,” she agrees, finally setting the tablet down to study the perimeter fencing and existing pole-mounted cameras. Malik wanted two sets of eyes in full daylight for redundancy and thus the reason I’m here. I feel bad for leaving Tessa behind, but it can’t be helped at this point.
I slow the SUV near the main vehicle gate, taking in the badge reader, the barrier arm, the pedestrian turnstile off to the right.
“No offense,” I say conversationally. “This is kind of boring.”
She glances at me sideways. “It beats whatever you were going to do today.”
“I was going to watch Tessa argue with her laptop for three hours and then convince her to eat.”
Josie makes a sound that’s equal parts sympathy and amusement. “How’s she doing? Really.”
I turn onto a crossroad heading east across the terminal. “She obviously hates being cooped up. The good part is that she’s been working hard on writing the actual article and that’s coming along.”
Josie’s head turns my way. “I didn’t ask what she’s doing but how she’s doing.”
I glare at Josie. “She’s stir-crazy and you know it as well as I do.”
“She told me.” Josie pulls her jacket tighter as I slow the SUV to a stop beside a maintenance building and kill the engine. “The houseplant comment was particularly vivid.”
I exhale a quiet laugh despite myself. “She said that to you too?”
“She has a gift for imagery.” Josie unclips her seat belt. “For what it’s worth, she’s not wrong to be frustrated. Five days is a long time for someone wired the way she is.”
“I know,” I say again, because I do. I’ve been watching it build since day two—the way she moves through the Jameson floors with too much energy and nowhere to put it, the way she refreshes her email compulsively, the way she looks at the lobby doors sometimes with an expression she thinks she’s hiding.
She’s not hiding it.
I get out of the SUV and move around to the back, pulling out a digital measuring tape from the field kit. Our job today is to observe and notate what improvements can be made. It’s a job that Josie could probably do on her own but two eyes—two fields of perception—are always better than one.
I inhale, noting the air at the waterfront has a different quality than the rest of the city—salt and diesel—which is more than unpleasant.
“Northeast corner first,” Josie says, studying the site map on her tablet. “There’s supposedly a camera blind spot between the secondary warehouse and the container staging area. That’s where the manifest discrepancies are concentrated.”
“Lead the way,” I say.
We move along the eastern fence line, the stacked containers forming a natural corridor between the perimeter fencing and the warehouse wall. Workers in high-visibility vests move through the open lanes twenty yards away, too focused on cargo schedules and handheld scanners to care about two consultants studying infrastructure. Josie is three paces ahead of me, reading the environment and recalibrating her mental map every time a truck blocks a lane or a crane shifts its arc of motion.
“Camera here,” she murmurs, pointing at the corner of the secondary warehouse and typing notes into her tablet. She studies the wall above us, not just for height but for sun exposure, glare bounce, and how the afternoon light will shift the image quality over the course of the day. “If we mount it at approximately eleven feet, we get a one hundred and forty–degree view of the staging area and the access road, and we avoid direct sun flare during peak hours.”