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)
“Blind spot on the south side,” I note, scanning the layout where a double stack of containers temporarily blocks the line of sight from ground level.
“We can put a unit on that container crane housing,” she says, pointing to her left. “Overlapping fields. No dead zone once both are live.”
“I like it,” I say and follow her to the next building.
“So,” she says conversationally, her voice barely above the chorus of dock noise, “when are you going to tell her?”
“Tell who what?” I lean against a container as Josie takes a series of measurements.
“Tessa is the who and the what is that you’re in love with her.” She says it the same way she’d report a data point. Flat. Factual. Completely without mercy.
“We’re working,” I say drolly. “Let’s keep this professional.”
“We’re making a game plan of where to mount cameras,” she corrects. “I have plenty of bandwidth for this conversation.”
“Josie.”
“Cole.” She mimics my tone precisely enough that I can hear her smiling without seeing her face. “I’ve watched you for five days walk around that building like a man who’s been handed a package he’s terrified to drop. It’s very sweet. It’s also slightly exhausting to witness.”
“I’m not—”
“You set a mug out for her before you leave in the morning,” she says. “Every single day. Before she’s even awake.”
I don’t respond.
“Tessa told me,” she adds. “It matters to her that you do that.”
“It’s common courtesy,” I mutter. “She’s a guest in my home.”
Josie rolls her eyes and we move toward the container crane housing, skirting the edge of the staging area where two workers are moving a pallet jack near the far wall. Neither of them looks our way.
I wait for her to hit me up again, trying to force conversation about Tessa. And while I pushed her off once, to be honest… I’m kind of interested to know what Josie thinks. She and Tessa have bonded.
“She’s almost done with the article,” I say, reopening the door.
“I know,” Josie says. “She told me. Two more days, maybe three.” A pause as we reach the base of the crane housing and she studies the mounting options above us. “Then what?”
“Then we push it to the police,” I say. “We have Malik’s FBI contact standing by. The evidence package is as solid as we’re going to get it… financial trails, shell corporations, Pelham’s connection to DelRey, and I assume we’ll be able to tie Vega to SAPG. It’s not everything a prosecutor would want, but it’s enough to open a federal investigation at a minimum.”
Josie nods, hands moving over the crane housing surface, finding the right mounting position to notate. “And the article drops at the same time?”
“The article will drop first, then we’ll hand all the evidence over to the FBI. Public pressure plus a federal investigation running simultaneously. DelRey won’t be able to buy his way out of both.”
“She’s the one, you know,” Josie says, not looking at me.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“Then stop treating it like a problem to solve and start treating it like a fact to build on.” She turns to face me, eyes dead serious. “You’re good at building things.”
I don’t have an answer for that so I watch the perimeter instead, scanning the angles between the containers as if they might have the answers. Across the staging area, an object catches my eye.
A section of the secondary warehouse wall holds a bracket for a camera, but it looks broken and without an actual device. The angle would cover the door if it were functional.
I point at it. “Is that on the manifest?”
She follows my eyeline, then scrolls on her tablet. “It says a camera should be there. This wasn’t an area we were to evaluate.”
“Well, someone took that camera down by force.”
She pulls out her phone and photographs it without moving closer, then opens her site map and zooms in on that section of the warehouse wall. “That’s weird.”
“What?” I ask, looking over her shoulder.
“The door isn’t there. I mean… I see it’s there, and you see it’s there, but it’s not on the list of areas for us to look at. I’ll cross-reference the building permits and the original construction plans when we get back. It might be nothing more than a modification that wasn’t filed.”
“Could be a modification that was deliberately not filed,” I say.
She nods, already making notes. Her eyes are sharp and calculating, the intelligence specialist and the field agent operating simultaneously without friction. “I’ll dig into it.”
We finish the remaining checks over the next forty minutes, working our way methodically through the blind spots Josie had mapped in advance. She’s thorough and efficient and she asks good questions—not just about camera placement but about sightlines and approach vectors and the kind of operational detail that tells me she’s thinking several steps past a simple threat assessment.