Page 96 of Travis
Kindt let go of the hand. Adjusted his glasses. Waited until the screaming became whimpering and the whimpering became silence.
“Let me restate the question.”
Same tone. Same patience. He asked again, and the man gave a longer answer, something about a road closure and a rerouted detour. Kindt listened to all of it and then broke a third finger.
“The detour was eleven miles,” Kindt said. “Forty-two minutes. You had a four-hour window. That math doesn’t work in your favor.”
Beside me, Sera had gone rigid. Her hands were in her lap, fingers laced tight.
The interrogation continued for another ninety seconds. Kindt extracted what he wanted. He circled the chair once, then turned to face the camera directly.
The shift was seamless. Same voice. Same composure. He addressed his organization.
“We’ve experienced disruptions in the northern corridor over the past several months. Product has been intercepted. Revenue has been lost. I am aware of this, and I am addressing it.”
He cleaned his glasses with a cloth from his pocket. Put them back on.
“The source of the disruptions will be identified. That process is underway, and I’m confident in its progress. When the source is found, the problem will be resolved permanently.”
He paused. Folded the cloth. Put it away.
“In the meantime, I want to discuss replacement costs. We lost six units in the northern corridor last quarter. Acquisition of replacement inventory at that volume requires timeline adjustments. Sourcing from the southern network takes eight to twelve weeks per unit depending on age specification. Theyounger the unit, the longer the acquisition cycle and the higher the cost to the organization.”
Units.Inventory.Age specification.
He was talking aboutchildrenthe way a business discusses procurement schedules.
“Any courier who allows an intercept going forward will have this conversation with me, except I won’t be as gentle.” He gestured toward the man in the chair without looking at him. “Review your routes and schedules carefully.”
The video ended.
I sat with my jaw locked and my hands pressing into the edge of the desk hard enough that the metal bit into my palms. On the screen, the dark rectangle where Kindt’s face had been was already replaced by scrolling data, but I could still hear him, still see him.
The flat, unhurried cadence. The cloth folding. The glasses going back on.
“He called themunits,” Sera said. Quiet. Almost to herself.
I didn’t respond because there was nothing to say that would make it any less horrible than it was.
I’d been fighting Kindt for eighteen months. I’d tracked his couriers, intercepted his transports, carried his victims to safety. But I’d never heard his voice. I’d never watched him clean his glasses after breaking a man’s hand and then transition without pause into a supply chain discussion about children.
I hated him. It wasn’t a feeling I had to build or sustain. It was already there, fully formed, sitting in my chest with a weight that altered the way I drew breath.
Sera’s hand found my forearm on the desk. She didn’t squeeze. Just placed it there and left it.
After a while I turned back to the intercept data because there was nothing else I could do. The decrypted file had comefrom a batch, and I needed to see what else was in it. I started pulling the associated communications.
Twenty minutes later, I wished I hadn’t.
“Sera. Come look at this.”
She rolled her chair to my station. I pointed at the screen and watched her read it, watched the shift in her expression as the implications registered.
“This is a separate thread,” she said. “Someone in his organization has been assigned to identify the Ghost.”
“Look at the methodology.”
She read further. “They’ve compiled every disruption into a single file. Dates, locations, impact assessments.” Her eyes moved faster down the screen. “They’ve built a geographic profile. Probability radius centered over western Montana.”
