“Robert suspected the Duvalls were circling something bigger than electronics,” Gabe continues. “He didn’t know what yet. Only that they were meeting people they didn’t need, in places they didn’t usually meet. He wanted time. And he wanted options.”
“So Tripp was one of those options.”
“Yes.”
“They needed Stone Intermodal’s lanes,” Gabe says. “Their usual routes couldn’t handle the volume without drawing scrutiny. Baton Rouge was tightening. The shipment was already too far along to reroute without catastrophic losses.”
That lands.
“Your father said no,” Gabe continues. “And once the photos confirmed what was actually in the containers, they knew he wouldn’t bend.”
“And Tripp?” I ask.
“He was adjacency,” Gabe says. “Accessible without being embedded. Your father kept the directive narrow. No questions. No information gathering. Just proximity—if he ever needed it.”
I breathe out slowly.
“Tripp didn’t know what he was orbiting,” Gabe adds. “He wasn’t working toward an outcome. He wasn’t playing both sides. He was exactly what he appeared to be—someone already in the room.”
It fits. Cleanly. Horribly.
“Once your father confirmed the fentanyl,” Gabe says, “everything accelerated. Whatever he might have done with Tripp became irrelevant overnight.”
“And Tripp never knew any of it.”
“No,” Gabe says. “He was never brought inside. He stayed exactly where he was told to stay.”
I turn away, pace once, then stop. My hands curl at my sides.
Tripp was never a breach.
He didn’t move product or money or timing.
He operated in the margins, where access overlapped, and relationships blurred.
Enough to be seen.
Not enough to be protected.
“By the time my father understood what was really coming through the ports,” I say, “Tripp stopped mattering.”
Gabe nods. “Once fentanyl entered the equation, everything else became background noise.”
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, holding it there.
“He died because he held the key to the port access into the city,” I say.
Gabe doesn’t argue.
I drag a hand down my face and breathe through the tightness in my chest. Tripp trusted the structure. He trusted that saying yes, the way dockworkers always had, meant opportunity, not consequence, and that the real responsibility belonged to someone else.
The anger doesn’t burn. It settles. Cold. Precise.
“Then he wasn’t the problem,” I say.
Gabe looks at me but doesn’t say a word.
“If Tripp wasn’t tied to this,” I continue, my voice flattening, “then he died in vain.”
