Jace snorts softly, not backing down. “You bring what we agreed?”
The man jerks his chin. “In the van.”
Another man pops the van doors. Inside—crates, three wide, two deep, dark wood, stamped with numbers I recognize from other deals. The scent of oiled metal and pine drifts out, sharp and cold.
He jumps down and drags one crate out, cracks the top with a crowbar. Inside, plastic-wrapped rifles, magazines, matte-black barrels glinting. He snaps it shut again.
Levi steps in closer, voice tight. “We can’t carry that in one truck. It’s too much. Too obvious. You want us to drive that through two state lines in daylight?”
The buyer grins, teeth crooked, gold cap glinting. “Not my problem. You signed on for a transport, here’s your transport. You want out, you’re out. We’ll find someone else.”
I feel the tension sharpen in the air. My hand slides closer to the piece tucked inside my jacket. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“Deals change.” The man flicks his cigarette into the dirt, eyes cold as a winter ditch. “You want the pay, you take the risk. You got another truck? Now’s the time.”
Jace glances at me, then at Levi. I can see the options running through his mind. Walk away, we lose the job, maybe worse—word gets out we backed out, the club’s rep goes to shit.Take it, and we’re risking every cop between here and Mill Creek clocking six illegal crates of guns in broad daylight.
“Half the payment, half the load,” Jace tries.
The man laughs, one sharp bark. “No split. All or nothing. Jinn said you were professionals. Besides, he already took a considerable advance.”
Jinn’s name drops in the dirt like a curse. None of us flinch, but I can see the muscle jump in Levi’s jaw. Jace looks down at the open crate, then at me and Levi, then back at the buyer. He already took an advance? He never mentioned anything.
“When did that happen?” Jace says.
“Last night,” the man replies, looking irritated. “Listen, are we going to do this or not?”
“We’re professionals,” Jace says quietly, “but we’re not idiots. Give us a second.”
He pulls us a few feet away. The men by the van watch but don’t move.
Levi hisses, “We take that much, we might as well put a target on our backs.”
The three of us cluster behind my truck, voices low, keeping our faces neutral for the buyers across the lot. Every second the sun creeps higher, every car that passes on the distant road, feels like a new thread tightening around our necks.
“I can’t believe Jinn took a damn advance already,” I mutter, jaw clenched. “That must be where he disappeared last night.”
Jace’s eyes flick from the van to the buyers, then back to us. “We walk now, we lose everything. Word gets out we can’t close, we’ll be blackballed. And Jinn? He’ll blame us.”
Jace scans the lot, the fence line, the highway beyond. “The longer we stand here, the more we look like bait.” He meets our eyes. “We take it, load fast, get off this gravel. We talk about Jinn after we’re moving.”
None of us likes it. All of us know he’s right.
We turn to the buyers. Jace gives the nod. “We’ll take the lot.”
The lead man smirks and flicks his cigarette away. He jerks his chin and two of his crew pry open another crate to show a neat bed of rifles wrapped in plastic, magazines taped in bricks. The smell of gun oil and pine hits again. My skin crawls.
“Clock is running,” the buyer says.
We move. Levi and I muscle the first crate toward my truck. Weight bites my palms through the gloves. Gravel crunches under our boots.
“This is insane,” I say, and lift anyway.
The van crew brings a fourth crate out. The buyer watches with a bored face and dead eyes. He’s already thinking about his next call.
Levi plants his hands on the side of the truck and leans in close to Jace. “We can’t haul six. If we get pulled, this looks like a parade. We need to break it.”
Jace nods without looking away from the buyer. “We take four. We tell them the last two move tonight.”
