LITMIR.BIZ

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when the cargo had been transferred. God!

      She opened her eyes and saw Buck watching her with evident concern.

      “I’m sure,” he said, “you don’t want to come to the La-Z-Rest with me. I’m equally certain you don’t want me to know where you live. So where else will you feel safe while we talk?”

      Haley nodded as her mind stopped reeling. The whole town was going to be talking if she and Buck stood here any longer. “Do you know where the college campus is?”

      “Yeah. I walked around some today.”

      “I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.” She didn’t offer him a ride. That would make people talk, too. But over on the college campus there were people who weren’t local. A stranger wouldn’t stick out and tongues wouldn’t start wagging. “There are some benches in the center of the quad.” And there’d still be plenty of students and faculty around at this hour, even if it was summer.

      “Fifteen minutes,” he agreed.

      She drove off, glancing at him in her rearview mirror, and wondering what the heck she had just gotten into.

      Buck had spent the day wandering. A need to know the physical territory was ingrained in him. He’d hit a surplus shop and found a decent pair of lace-up boots he could run in, and added some extra jeans and some shirts that would fit in around here, although he didn’t go for anything approaching the perennially popular Western look. A ball cap suited him better than a cowboy hat, and he wasn’t putting anything on his feet that might keep him from moving fast.

      He could have run to the campus. In fact, he would have liked to run, it would have felt good, but he figured it would draw attention. A brisk walk would have to do, and he still arrived at the quad on campus before Haley.

      He sat there on the bench, wondering if she would even show, or if he’d find himself talking to a couple of cops, explaining why he was harassing a nice local girl.

      He wondered about it, but he didn’t worry about it. He didn’t worry about much, and he was fairly sure that even a superficial background check would reassure the cops. The stuff they’d never see, the stuff so deeply classified it would never see the light of day, was another story. But nobody could get at that.

      So he waited, pondering how best to gain Haley’s trust after having given her plenty of reason to think he was either crazy or a con man. He could see it from her point of view. Seeing things from other people’s points of view was one of his gifts—and one of his curses.

      She was right to be dubious, and he sure as hell hadn’t given her a thing to reassure her. Wild story from a stranger. Great start.

      But she showed up. He heard the car door slam and turned his head in time to see her coming his way.

      She was still wearing the simple black dress she had worn at the funeral home and he couldn’t resist giving her the once-over. Trim figure, shapely calves, delicate ankles. Even so modestly dressed she wouldn’t ever fail to catch a man’s attention. Much to his surprise, she carried two large cups of takeout coffee and when she reached him, she handed him one.

      “Okay,” she said as she sat on the bench beside him. A group of young men and women emerged from a building and started walking across the far side of the quad from them. Not long after, a smaller group appeared.

      “I’m waiting,” she reminded him.

      “Somebody know you’re here?”

      “Of course.”

      “With me?”

      “Yes.”

      He sighed. “I hope you trust whoever it is.”

      “More than I trust you right now.”

      “Just tell me you didn’t tell them the whole story.”

      “Of course not! Sheesh, Buck, I don’t believe it myself yet. It sounds like something out of a movie.”

      “I’ll give you that.” He put his coffee on the ground beside his feet and pulled out his wallet. Opening it, he flipped out his military ID and his commercial driver’s license. “The ID doesn’t say much, but maybe it’ll help.”

      She peered at the two laminated cards in the dim light from a nearby pole. “How can you still be military and drive a truck?”

      “Ex-military. I have privileges because I was medically discharged. That card means I can use base facilities, like the exchange and the hospital.”

      “What happened?”

      “That’s a long story for another time. There’s a more pressing matter.”

      Slowly she handed the cards back to him, but her eyes were on his face. “Buxton Devlin,” she said slowly. “It looks real, I guess. But Buxton?”

      “My mother’s maiden name. She died having me and my dad named me for her. I guess he figured Mary wouldn’t work.”

      Humor sparkled briefly across her face. “I guess it wouldn’t.”

      “Anyway, Buxton became Buck real fast. My dad shortened it when I first started talking and couldn’t get the whole thing out right. Good thing, too, since I was a military brat. It was easier navigating childhood as Buck.”

      “That probably would have been true almost anywhere.” She paused, waiting. Okay, his name appeared to be real, but what else could she be sure of? A little childhood story hardly added up to a huge heap of truth.

      He shoved his wallet into his jeans pocket and picked up his coffee. “This is hard.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m not used to having to prove my credentials. I either worked solo, or with a group of other MPs. Either way, I had a badge. Explaining this to someone who doesn’t have any background…” He paused, then shrugged. “I’ll try. Ask questions. I’ll answer what I know.”

      “Okay.” She was agreeable to that. Her eyes followed another group walking toward the little student union, hardly more than a coffee shop, but a great place to gather.

      “Before I left Seattle on my last run, my boss asked me to keep my ear to the ground. It seems some shipments are getting messed up and they can’t figure out how or why.” He stopped. “Maybe I need to backtrack.”

      She just nodded and waited.

      “We’re pretty careful about what goes on our trucks. Drivers are supposed to be extra careful, because when we sign for a load, we’re responsible for it until it reaches the next terminal or destination for off-load. You get that?”

      “Perfectly.” It seemed sensible to her.

      “Okay. Well, everything that comes into the terminal for shipping is in crates or containers. Those are all labeled. Everything has a bar code. So we scan those labels every time we move anything around. When my truck gets loaded, I stand there, count crates, and every crate is scanned while it’s being loaded. I have a manifest of what they said they were going to load, to compare to the scan of everything that goes on my truck. It covers my butt, and covers the company. So when I pull out of the terminal, I know my manifest matches exactly what’s on the truck.”

      She nodded. “Makes sense.”

      “It does. And it works. Or it did until about four months ago. Then something started to go wrong. My boss said they couldn’t find anything wrong at the terminal. No mismatched scans or anything. But somehow, by the time trucks arrived in Denver, the cargoes had changed. Some crates arrived late and on different trucks. And it’s getting more frequent.”

      Suddenly she understood. “What I saw in the lot!”

      “Maybe. Bill, my boss, figured something had to be happening along the road, and he asked me to keep an eye out because I used to be an MP.”

      “Why not just call

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