Page 57 of Ruthless Lord
“Dead serious. I’m bringing the device to you. Any way you can figure out where it’s transmitting?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Call the rest of the fleet. Any trucks out on the road need to pull over and scan their undercarriage with the electronic wands.”
“Told you that was a good idea.”
“Great, you’re a fucking genius. Get a crew in and scan the trucks still in the depot. I need all those devices found and removed.”
“Got it.” Davide sounds grim and I hear him typing in the background. “You think this has to do with the break-in?”
“Definitely. The office might’ve been a distraction.”
“You think their real goal was the GPS units?”
“That’s my guess.” I shake my head, gripping the little plastic rectangle in my fist. “How many runs have we made since that night?”
“You probably don’t want to know.”
“Pull a report.” I rub my forehead. This means hours of reading and thinking. I need to know what those thieving bastards saw of our operations. I’m hoping nothing important, but I can’t say for sure. We have a lot of trucks on the road and most of them are running legit cargos.
Others though, like Chatty’s big rig over there, they’ve got other illicit payloads.
“I’ll head over to the depot right now. Drop the unit off when you can.”
“I’ve got a fight in a few hours so I’m not sticking around.”
“Why not? You don’t want to raid with me?”
“I’d rather gouge my own eyes out.”
“Ah, come on. You’d make a great Orc Fighter.”
“I don’t know what that means and I really don’t want you to explain it.”
“My guild is always open?—”
I hang up on him and shove the phone back into my pocket. Chatty’s watching, chewing on a cigarette, smoke blowing around his head. I gave him an alright signal, spinning one finger in a circle in the air. He gives me a thumbs-up back, hops off the gate, and gets back in the cab.
I stick around to watch him rumble off, back into the pine barrens.
Fucking GPS unit. I stare at the thing sitting on the seat next to me. Its red light is still on, and I wonder who’s catching the data it’s sending out. Will they notice this long pause?
I don’t care. I gently pry open the edge, find the battery with my fingernail, and pop it out.
The light fades to nothing.
The warehouse is busy.The private booths surrounding the fighting ring are packed with high-end clients. Men in dark suits puffing cigars with multiple coke-skinny girls hanging on their arms. They’re probably throwing absurd amounts of money on each match like it’s nothing. All to impress some expensive Dutch prostitute.
The lock room is buzzing with anticipation. I change into my fighting outfit: a pair of loose black shorts and nothing else. I wrap my fists, taking my time, enjoying the prefight jitters. I always get a little nervous. Doesn’t matter how many times I do this. No matter how good I am, there’s a lot of luck in every fight. I can be faster, stronger, and still get a freak knee to the throat or land on my head and break my neck. Shit happens all the time in the ring.
It doesn’t help that I’m hurting all over. My back’s aching from driving to Jersey and back. Goddamn Jersey. It basically infected me with its awfulness.
“You going in soon?” A young fighter who goes by AcidRain puts a foot on the bench next to me. He does some hip lunges. The guy’s wearing this flamboyant fucking pair of boxing shorts, half bright pink and half bright yellow. They’re ugly as sin, but a lot of the fighters do shit like that.
Branding. Seriously.
My only brand is hurting people. But these fuckers all have styles and fancy names.
