Sherrie ‘Sharp-Shooter’'s Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Sherrie's phone buzzed as she turned onto the main road back toward Rust Creek. She glanced at the screen and saw her father's name. The message was short: "Heard you had trouble on the northern route. I'm coming in." She pulled over and stared at the words. Someone had talked. Someone had told him enough to bring him out of retirement and back into the business he'd left in her hands. She had hours, maybe less, before he arrived expecting answers she couldn't give without exposing how deep the problems ran. The driver beside her shifted in his seat, watching her face. She needed to move him somewhere secure and hide the evidence before her father reached town. She drove to the scrap apartment building on the east side, the one she used for storage that her father had never bothered to inspect. The structure was a patchwork of metal panels and salvaged doors, three stories of compartments she'd built after he stepped back. She parked around the side where a young courier waited with a flat tire on his weathered pickup, dust still clinging to his clothes from the southern pass. He straightened when he saw her. "Your father sent me ahead. He's two hours behind me, maybe three if the roads stay rough." Sherrie handed the driver over to the guards inside the building and pulled the courier aside. "Tell my father you delivered the message but couldn't find me. Tell him I'm out fixing the supply chain and I'll meet him at the warehouse tonight." The courier nodded and left. She climbed the stairs to the second floor and began moving boxes marked with her stamps—medical supplies, building materials, food stock that matched the entries on the list she'd burned. She separated what her father could see from what he couldn't, locking the stolen goods and the driver's jacket in a compartment behind a false wall. By the time she finished, the sun had dropped low enough to cast long shadows through the windows. Her father would arrive expecting the business he'd built to still be running clean. She'd bought herself until nightfall to make it look that way.