“Why are they stopping in Dallas?”
My day has been a trainwreck. Not that that’s Amara’s fault. The scheduling was perfect, everything as it should be, the meetings on time, not going over. Apex is running like a well-oiled machine—no pun intended—but the problem is with El Paso. The northbound trucks are stalled in Dallas, Texas of all places.
“A check point from the looks of it,” Maverick tells me as we walk into the warehouse, where two of our trucks just shipped out to Nashville.
“We don’t have a fucking checkpoint in Dallas,” I bark out. “El Paso to Las Cruces to Nashville and home. The fact we even have one stop at all between point A and point B is insane.”
“I agree,” Maverick says as we go into the office and look at the map on the desktop screen.
“I have two trucks headed to Nashville now. And two trucks that are supposed to meet them in Nashville at the same time. But they’re in Dallas. Stalled. Why?”
“Could just be a fluke,” Baron says, always trying to be the bright-side guy. “Sometimes trucks get randomly flagged. They could be running every 5-axel through there.”
“They’re engineered well enough,” Maverick adds casually. “I doubt some minimum-wager in Big D is going to figure out that there’s a loaded, hidden cargo bay.”
“I’ve got close to atonof powder between those trucks!” I growl. “I can’t ride on your assumption that security is having an off day. I need to know why my trucks are at a standstill in the middle of fucking Texas.”
I rake my hands through my hair, holding them on my head for a moment before looking back at the screen. I hit refresh but no change. They really aren’t moving. At all.
Fuck.
“I hate to bring up the obvious,” Barons starts in, and I cut him off.
“Then don’t.”
“But what do you think the odds are that Tristan is behind it?”
I can literally feel the pounding of a headache forming behind my eyes.
Maverick grunts. “I mean, that’s where my head went. Why else would they be stuck at an unknown checkpoint hours after loading up in Las Cruces?”
“You think they’re unloading?” Baron asks.
My stomach goes sour.
“Unloading into what?” Maverick asks.
“Chadovich trucks?” Baron suggests.
I turn around, sick of looking at the screen. Sick of talking to them. “If that is the case, and Tristan was smart enough to hijack our shipment, we will know soon enough when the trucks are running again and we get correspondence from the drivers.”
“You’re assuming they’re alive.”
Mav phrases it as a joke, but I know he’s actually serious. Because if Tristan is behind this and did send in men to cut off my trucks, I would be shocked to find my drivers still breathing.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Maverick asks.
“Do we have men in Dallas?” Baron asks.
“I have men everywhere,” I say.
“So we check it out. Easy.” Maverick says.
“No.” I shake my head. “We do that and we fall into trap number two.”
“So what? We just wait? And in the meantime the Chadovichs swipe eight-hundred pounds of blow from us? You’ve got to be jok?—”
“Tristan wants us to make a sudden move. And if he is behind this, which I don’t doubt that he is, hijacking two of our trucks is only half our problem. He’s focusing our attention elsewhere.” I clench my fists at my sides. I hate this most of all—sitting still, doing nothing—but we can’t be losing our heads. Not when it’s exactly what Tristan is banking on. “So we wait. We don’t react. Let the pieces fall together so we can see all of his movements. And then, when we know the full scope?—”
