Page 25 of Load Bearing
Keith and Kyle were chatterboxes, but they rarely raised their voices, so when Keith echoed his brother, Trixie signaled to the crane operator to stop lowering the trusses. “What is it?” she asked, trying not to sound cross. It was one thing not to rush, but quite another to be dragging things out.
“There’s a problem with the studs at this end!”
“What kind of problem?”
“You gotta see it.” Keith and Kyle were at the end of the wing where the trusses were being lowered, ready to scurry up and connect them once contact had been made.
Trixie walked carefully back along the wall to the ladder as the crane operator leaned out and hollered, “What’s up?”
“Give me a minute!” Trixie hollered back, hurrying down. “This had better be good,” she warned Keith…and then she saw why he’d called her.
The studs in the corners and all along the short wall had been cut partway through from the power penetrations,back against the sheathing where she wouldn’t have noticed it until too late. “Shi?—”
Trixie wasn’t an engineer, but she could guess the weight that the studs would safely take in their current compromised state before they buckled. It was possible that the wall would have held under the trusses, but it was more likely that they would have crumpled and failed, and the failure would have taken half the wall, the trusses, and probably Trixie herself when they broke. Who knows what further damage would have occurred when the sheathing ripped off. A dozen of the most critical studs had been very deliberately sabotaged.
“I got other deliveries!” the crane operator hollered. He couldn’t see through the sheathing on the second floor, so it probably just looked like they were standing around chatting.
“Hold on!” Trixie dashed for the other end of the work site, stopping to inspect the studs at regular intervals. Only the delivery end had been damaged. Someone knew when and where the trusses would be placed. This damage hadn’t been there the night before, and it had been done with surgical precision and in such a way that they wouldn’t be noticed easily. She went back and out through the porch opening where she’d sat with Hunter the night before. “Change of plans!” she shouted. “We’re putting the trusses at that end.” She pointed imperiously.
The crane operator swore and grumbled, then retracted the boom while Noah walked the guide line in. The driver had to get out of the truck and draw in the outriggers, cussing like a sailor, but it wasn’t long before he was repositioned at the far end of the building and the trusses were dropped without drama onto the waiting walls.
“That could have been bad,” Trixie said, when the delivery truck was gone. “Noah, Hunter, we need that wallripped out and rebuilt. Keith, Kyle, I owe you. That could have killed someone. We’re behind again, but let’s get to work and see if we can close the gap. I’m good for all the overtime I can legally offer and dinner as well. We’ll stage a pile of trusses there”—she stabbed a finger at a bay far enough from the end wall to be sturdy—”and start working back from there. It adds a step, but not like hauling them up one by one would have.”
Keith and Kyle swarmed back up onto the walls and Noah went to get new 2x6s for the replacement studs.
“Could have killedsomeone, or could have killed you?” Hunter growled, when the others were out of easy earshot.
“There’s no reason to assume it’sthatpersonal,” Trixie said, but the idea had occurred to her. “Anyone could have been collateral.”
“But you would have been up there, the closest.” Hunter’s voice was flat and unforgiving.
“I could have sent anyone up,” Trixie said with a shrug. But she wouldn’t have. She was always working point on her jobs, and she was slighter than anyone else, with a natural head for heights. “Hunter…”
“I didn’t protect you.”
“It turned out okay,” Trixie said. It was flattering that Hunter looked incredibly bent out of shape at her near miss, and she wanted to indulge in a hard embrace to chase the last of the shock from her limbs, but she was a professional, and so was he. She lowered her voice. “We might need to expand your search, though. Keith and Kyle were the ones who pointed it out.”
Hunter frowned and glared down the building. Keith and Kyle had already unwrapped the trusses and were starting to walk the first one down the building, Dylan beneath them keeping an eye on their level and spotting them towards the bay that Trixie had indicated.
“I’m up,” Trixie said, and she risked a quick squeeze of his shoulder. “Go help Noah replace that wall. We’ll stage six of them here,” she commanded as she raised her voice. “Then we can start building backwards. Dylan, hold the tape, we need to make sure this measurement isperfect.”
21
HUNTER
Hunter threw himself into the work to drown his sense of responsibility. If he’d stayed around the night before, maybe the saboteur would have seen his truck and decided against risking the damage. If Hunter was worth his salt as an investigator, he’d already havefoundthe culprit and brought him to justice.
Trixie called the incident in to the Tok trooper when they broke for lunch, and Hunter balled his hands into fists as he listened in on the conversation and heard them brush her off.
“There’s nothing on my camera,” she said, discouraged, when she’d hung up. “But I had it trained on the generator and tool boxes, not a blank wall. There was nothing to steal there. I didn’t hear anything last night, but it was done with hand tools, so I probably wouldn’t have. And we’ve already rebuilt the wall, so it’s not like we have a lot of evidence for them to look at. I wasn’t going to hold up the project to dust for fingerprints. The expense was pretty minimal, we were lucky. It’s on file, they’ll sendsomeone if they have free time, but it’s more likely this is just a file that will be cheerfully ignored.”
“I don’t think much of your local sheriff,” Hunter admitted.
Trixie looked conflicted. “He’s a state trooper. And I mean, he’s got a tough job. It’s probably someone local, and I’m the outsider. This is an unpopular job. And no one was actually hurt. He’s on the brink of retirement, so he wants to rock the boat as little as possible.”
“You like it here, though?”
Trixie’s face softened. “I really do. I’m going to miss my trailer here when the house is handed off. I love the area. I like the people, except for the jerk trying to run us off. It’s going to be a beautiful house.” She sounded wistful.
