Page 49 of Surge

“Sorry, I’m not dying for you!”

“Please. Wai—” Her breath backed into her throat as she saw a large shape blur at the driver.

* * *

Garrett threw himself at the guy going after Rogue. They went to ground, and he flipped the guy and drew back his fist.

“Garrett, no!”

“Hey!” the kid yelped.

Fury stayed, Garrett considered the two. “What’re you doing?”

“He’s mydriver,” came Delaney’s whispered cry.

Garrett thought to punch the punk anyway for bringing her to this place—begging for danger. Standing out in the open with trouble across the road.

“He’s my Grab driver,” Delaney snapped as she trotted over and crouched with Surge.

Garrett hauled the guy upright, then pitched him aside.

“Forget the pay. I’m outta here.” Man Bun sprang into his car and pulled out of the parking lot.

Garrett turned to Delaney, trying not to yell at her. “Behind the SUV,” Garrett ordered, pulling out his gun and following her into the SUV’s shadows. “What were you thinking? Why’d you leave the shoe factory?”

She clenched her fists around Surge’s leash. “Hakim, Rashid, and Tariq are over there in that storage yard.”

He eyed the yard, then thumbed her toward the SUV. “Let’s get out of view.” In the SUV, he used his binoculars and found the three men, just as she’d said. He swallowed. Man . . . Hakim.

Zim snatched his camera out of his backpack, screwed on a zoom lens. “Confirm eyes on Rashid, Tariq, and that’s Hakim.” He snapped pictures of the men standing under the streetlights in the growing dark.

Garrett clenched his jaw, all his preconceived verbal lashings falling to his feet like wet noodles. She’d done it. Yeah, he’d been ticked that she’d taken off from the factory, left them, compromised the op, them, herself—but she’d done it. What intel had failed to do. She’d found Hakim.

“Look, I know what I did wasn’t ideal, but when I saw Hakim, then Torrence threatened to leave me here . . . I didn’t feel I had a choice.” She sighed heavily from the back seat. “But I’m glad you’re here—that you came.”

Garrett didn’t trust himself to answer that, wasn’t sure what it meant that she was glad to see him. He eyed the yard again through the nocs. “How did you know to follow them?”

“There was an accident—beer spilled over the road from a truck”—she nodded toward the semi parked in front of the office?—“and I caught a glimpse of the boxes inside one of them. They had the Sachaai S, exactly like the boxes in the factory. The containers both did too.”

“Describe them. Please.”

“Silver cubes with triangular cutouts on the bottom. I’ve seen semis putting two or three of them on their beds instead of a regular-sized shipping container. Not sure what they’re called. Square pods?”

Garrett used his phone and pulled up images of the LD3 containers and turned the phone to her. “Containers like this?”

“That’s it.” She waved at the fenced container yard. “I only saw the semi come in here, but I would guess they’re all in here somewhere.”

Garrett again used his nocs and surveyed the container yard.

“There are a ton of silver containers in there, of all sizes,” Zim said, still peering through his zoom camera.

“And security cameras.” Garrett comm’d Caldwell to hack into them, take a look around the container yard.

Zim clicked his camera. “I got a pic. Five-six-four.”

“What’s that?”

“The last digits of a silver container ID number. Can’t read the rest. This one looks like it was just put in place, even though I can’t see a Sachaai S.” He glanced at Delaney. “I don’t see a second.”

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