He Thought Tuesdays Were Pottery, Now He Begs Me Home novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Dead Fleet

Cliff sat up in the gray dark, one hand on my back.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Someone who needs me for a few hours."

"The phone in your coat?" he said.

"Yes."

He looked at the second phone in my hand, and then at my face.

He didn't ask anything else.

"Take the truck," he said. "Keys are on the hook. It pulls to the left."

I kissed him once, hard, and ran down the stairs in yesterday's clothes.

Hetherington Freight's headquarters sat on the Flats, a long brick warehouse beside the river with a glass tower on one end.

Every light in it was on.

I badged through the side door with my old employee card, which still worked.

I took the stairs two at a time to the dispatch floor.

It was the largest room in the building.

Forty dispatchers sat at forty desks with their hands off their keyboards, staring at a wall of red screens.

A giant map of the Midwest, usually dotted with three hundred moving green lights, glowed solid red from Toledo to Columbus.

Bennett stood in the middle of the room in his shirtsleeves, with his tie off and a phone to his ear.

He saw me, and his whole body went still.

"Joss."

"Where's your head of IT?"

"Cancun," he said hoarsely. "He lands at noon."

"That's what I thought."

I put my bag on the nearest desk.

"What are you doing?" Bennett said.

"I can help," I said.

"This is a ransomware attack on a dispatch system," he said. "I've got a firm coming from Chicago."

"When?"

"Nine o'clock," he said.

"What's in the trucks?"

He stared at me.

Then he answered with a number that made him sound sick.

"Forty-one refrigerated trailers are idling at the depots and on the road," he said. "The reefer units are controlled from the dispatch system, and the attack shut every one of them down."

← Chapter 11 · All chapters · Chapter 13 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend