Sherrie ‘Sharp-Shooter’'s Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Sherrie sat in the scrap apartment building and waited for her father to arrive. The sun had dropped below the roof line. The shadows stretched across the concrete floor where she'd separated the inventory into two groups—what he could see and what he couldn't. Her father's truck pulled up outside as darkness settled. She heard his boots on the stairs before she saw him. He stepped through the door and stopped when he saw the boxes arranged in neat rows. His eyes moved across the medical supplies, the building materials, the food stock. She'd made it look clean. He nodded once and turned to leave, then paused. "The northern route," he said. "What happened?" She told him about the Ravens blocking the tunnel, about rerouting shipments south. He listened without interrupting. Then he asked if there was anything else. She felt the weight of the driver locked in the room upstairs, the stolen goods behind the false wall, the jacket filled with intelligence she'd hidden an hour before. She opened her mouth to say no. Instead she said, "We've been losing stock. Someone on the inside has been skimming for weeks." Her father's face didn't change. He walked to the window and looked out at the darkening street. "Show me," he said. She pulled the false wall panel aside and brought out three boxes marked with her stamps. He opened them one by one and checked the contents against the manifest she'd kept hidden. When he finished, he asked who was responsible. She told him about the driver, about the toolbox Barry had shown her, about the jacket with the Raven intelligence stitched inside. Her father was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "The Ravens aren't just blocking routes. They're looking for something specific." He walked to the table and pulled a folded map from his coat. It showed the tunnel, the old train station, and three marked locations underground. "They're digging," he said. "They found something pre-war and they need access to finish the job. Your driver found their supply lines because he was tracking the wrong thing. What they're protecting isn't weapons. It's excavation equipment." He tapped the map where the tunnel met the station. "You stop them by collapsing their access point. Cut off the tunnel and they lose six months of work." Sherrie looked at the map and understood what it would cost. Collapsing the tunnel meant losing the northern route permanently. Her father met her eyes. "You wanted to protect what I built," he said. "This is how you do it. You sacrifice the route to save the business." She took the map from his hands and studied the markings. The choice was clear now. She could keep hiding the problems or she could end the Ravens for good. Her father had given her the answer she needed, but hearing it had meant confessing everything she'd tried to keep from him. He knew about the missing stock, the driver, the intelligence hidden upstairs. There was no going back to the version of herself who thought she could fix it all before he found out. She folded the map and put it in her pocket. "I'll handle it," she said. Her father nodded and left without another word.