Chapter 18: The Loading Dock

The Fulton yard sat behind a chain-link fence, with one long loading dock facing the street.

I put the keys in the gate and typed four-four-one-nine, and the lock clicked open.

I left the truck at the curb and walked in on foot.

A man with a hood pushed up on his head stood smoking beside the first trailer.

He saw me, and he dropped the cigarette.

"Hey," he said. "This is private."

"I'm here for Meredith Hallworth."

He put his hand toward his belt.

I took his wrist, turned it, and set him down on the asphalt on his face.

I pulled the zip tie from his own pocket and used it on him.

The second man came around the trailer with a length of pipe.

He swung it at my head, and I stepped inside the swing and put my forearm against his throat until he stopped.

I laid him down next to the first one.

The third man stood in the doorway of the dock office with a pistol, and he fired once into the ground by my feet.

"Stop there," he said.

I didn't.

He fired again, and the shot went into the trailer wall behind me.

I reached him before he fired a third.

I took the pistol and broke the hand that held it, and he screamed and went down against the door.

I threw the pistol over the fence, into the weeds.

Two more men came out of the warehouse door, and they stopped when they saw their friends on the ground.

"Which of you is going to be next?" I asked.

They looked at each other.

Then they ran, both of them, out through a hole in the fence at the back of the yard.

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