Chapter 9 - The Collision at Dock Four
The Lincoln was gone before noon, leaving behind no tire tracks on the asphalt and no doubt about who had just lost the opening skirmish. But Arthur’s parting shot hadn't missed its mark.
By two o'clock, I had my truck pointed south down Route 1 toward the commercial freight yards near the Woodbridge waterfront. The sky had turned a heavy, bruised gray, promising an afternoon squall that usually rolled off the Potomac this time of year.
When I pulled up to Dock Four, the air smelled of diesel exhaust, wet timber, and salt water. Massive steel shipping containers were stacked three high against the gray horizon, and the rhythmic clack-clack of overhead cranes echoed across the asphalt like distant artillery fire.
I found Derek standing beside a wooden pallet of industrial electrical cables, wearing a heavy orange safety vest over his flannel shirt, his hands wrapped around a metal pry bar as he struggled to break the steel band on a fresh crate. His face was streaked with gray warehouse dust, and his shoulders were hunched with the awkward, clumsy posture of a man whose body wasn't yet conditioned for twelve-hour shifts on concrete.
Sergeant Major Higgins stood ten feet away, leaning against the side of a forklift with a cup of black coffee in his hand, watching Derek like a hawk watching a raw recruit on the obstacle course.
“He’s slow,” Higgins said without looking at me as I walked up beside him. “And he holds that pry bar like he’s trying to open a jar of mayonnaise instead of a five-hundred-pound export crate. But he hasn't stopped once since six this morning. I’ll give him that.”
“He’s got reasons to keep moving today, Sarge,” I said, keeping my eyes on Derek as he finally snapped the steel band with a heavy grunt.
Derek dropped the pry bar, wiped his forehead with his forearm, and looked up just in time to see me standing by the forklift. He froze, his expression twisting with a mixture of exhaustion and sudden, raw panic. He dropped the tool entirely and walked over, his boots crunching against the gravel.
“Did he come to the house?” Derek asked, his voice shaking before I could even open my mouth. “Arthur... my dad called me ten minutes ago. He said you threatened him with a federal audit. He said if I don't sign a retraction form by tonight, he’ll cut me out of the family estate completely.”
“Your father didn't build that estate on honest work, Derek, and you know it,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady against the roar of a nearby diesel engine. “He built it by covering up data leaks and threatening people who didn't want to play his corporate games. Did you know about the Quantico server breach before he fired you in January?”
Derek staggered back half a step, his eyes widening until the whites showed all the way around. The color drained from his dusty face so fast he looked like he’d just taken a round to the chest.
“Who... who told you that?” he whispered.
“Arthur told us this morning in your living room,” I said. “He walked in thinking he could bully Sarah and me into silence with the threat of federal investigators. He didn't realize that the trust I set up yesterday isn't just a mortgage bailout—it’s a legal preservation order tied directly to your personnel file.”
Derek’s knees buckled slightly. He reached out and grabbed the metal edge of a nearby steel pallet to steady himself, his chest heaving under the orange safety vest.
“I didn't sell those credentials to hurt anyone,” he choked out, his voice breaking into a ragged sob that he tried desperately to swallow back in front of Higgins. “They... the guys in Arlington, they told me it was just market research data. They said it was standard tech consulting. By the time I realized what they were pulling from the logistics database, the audit was already locked down, and Dad walked into my office with the NDA and said if I didn't sign it, he’d let the corporate prosecutors throw the book at me.”
He looked up at me, tears cutting clean tracks through the warehouse dust on his cheeks.
“He didn't save me, Frank. He just bought my silence so his own firm wouldn't lose their defense contracts.”
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed in my pocket with a sharp, insistent vibration. I pulled it out.
It wasn't an email from the legal counsel in Dover. It was a text message from Sarah, sent at 2:14 PM, containing only a single sentence:
May you like
Arthur is back, and he brought someone from the county sheriff's office with him.
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