Chapter 8 Rafe
RAFE
Riley's already up working. She's been at this for an hour now while I sip my coffee and think about her strange challenge three days ago in my kitchen.
The damn woman would probably freeze herself to death if it meant defying me and pissing me off.
It makes me grin even now, how feisty she is.
Something in the way she wants to press every button I have intrigues me. What does she get out of it?
I sigh and take a sip of my coffee while turning toward the window in my office to admire the snow that lines every branch and surface.
Winter reminds me how even the ugliest of things can be concealed, which gives me a shred of hope that all of the nasty things Marco Lombardi did to try to sink me can be covered up, at least enough to get me through the end of this year and into a new calendar.
My phone rings and I look down at it with a scowl.
I've given strict orders to handle things without calling me to every one of my men and every manager who reports to me.
Getting a call means something isn't going well, so before I even pick up the phone, I'm feeling annoyed.
But Feodor's face on my screen stares up at me, reminding me that he's at NextGen, our drug plant that handles logistics for actual pharmaceuticals while moving our street drugs in tandem. It's not something I can ignore.
I answer without greeting him. "Talk."
"The shipment got flagged, Rafe. Feds want to inspect it before it leaves the warehouse. We got a call about ten minutes ago."
I sit up and swing my chair around until I’m facing my computer, and my jaw is already tight.
The pharmaceuticals were supposed to ship out yesterday morning.
Their manifests were filed weeks ago, and to my knowledge, the reports were completely unremarkable.
But Marco handled those filings, and Marco is dead.
It's like he's trying to sabotage me from the grave. Every day, I find another hole he left behind, another trap waiting to spring.
"When are they coming?" I ask, looking at the time stamp on my security feed readout.
"Ten o'clock. Maybe sooner if they process their paperwork faster than usual."
That gives me less than two hours to fix a problem that I never saw coming. I trust people to do this shit for me, and I don't have the first clue what to do to track down an issue in paperwork. I don't even know what could've flagged the Feds to want to see the shipment or paperwork.
"What's missing?" I ask.
"Carrier records say it’s headed to Seattle, but the paperwork in our system still shows Portland.
Marco updated the routing in the warehouse system but never corrected the official manifest. The EDI scan caught it, flagged it as a discrepancy, and now the Feds want to compare the shipment to the paperwork before it moves. ”
I stand and walk to the window to look out at the white powder dancing in the breeze.
"Can we stall them?" I ask him, already spinning through a dozen ideas of ways to make this work.
It was wrong to trust so much of my business to one person.
With Lombardi dead, I need a new person capable of doing this shit, but who? And how can I find them quick enough?
"Not without raising more flags. If we push back, they'll assume we're hiding something."
"We are hiding something."
Feodor doesn't respond to that. We both know what's in that shipment.
Our street drugs make the shipment heavier, but unless someone opens the truck prematurely, no one ever knows.
The blend moves through our distribution network on the west coast, where it gets separated and sold through channels that keep our hands clean.
And I become an even richer man day by day.
But if the Feds open those crates and run tests, we're done.
"I need the paperwork fixed," I growl and spin back around, glowering at the huge inconvenience I'm facing thanks to Lombardi.
"That's why I'm calling, man. The system requires admin-level access to backdate filings, and Marco was the only one with those credentials. I'd need someone who can hack into the database and make the changes look like they were filed weeks ago."
I close my eyes. Of course. Of course it comes back to Marco's access codes, his locked-down systems, his paranoid control over every piece of documentation that kept this operation running.
"How fast can we get someone in there?" I ask.
"We can't. Not in two hours. Even if I had a name, I'd need time to vet them, bring them in, explain what we need. We don't have that time."
Feodor is right. Vetting alone could take days we don't have. "Dammit!" I shout, kicking my chair and toppling it. I'm in the water holding an anchor and sinking fast.
And then I think of Riley.
She hacked into the bank's system two days ago and rerouted a vendor payment that should've been impossible to access, and she did it in under three hours, bypassing firewalls and spoofing credentials. This should be child's play compared to that.
"I have someone," I say.
Feodor pauses. "Who?"
"Maddox."
There's another pause and this time, I feel the skepticism ooze through the line as he says, "The girl?"
"She's good with systems. She'll figure it out."
"Rafe, this isn't a bank transfer. This is federal documentation. If she screws this up—"
"She won't," I bark, and he knows better than to challenge me.
Feodor exhales, and I can hear the reluctance in the sound. But he doesn't argue because we're out of options.
"I'll meet you at the warehouse in a half hour," he says.
I hang up before he can say more and I'm already moving toward the living room.
Riley's going to fight me on this, but she doesn’t get a choice.
I need her help, and I'm not a man who responds well to pressure when I feel the heat breathing down my neck.
When faced with the certainty of jail time or forcing someone to do a job they aren't sure about, the choice is easy.
When I walk in, she's hunched over the computer, typing away at the screen. Her hair is tied into a messy bun with a pen shoved down the center of it and she sits with crossed legs, more comfortable than I've seen her in the week she’s been here.
"Get dressed," I say. "We're leaving in twenty minutes."
She blinks at me, dazed and still half focused on the computer. "Leaving? What?"
"I need you to fix something at my warehouse."
Her expression shifts from confusion to wariness as she turns on the chair and plants her feet on the ground. "What needs fixing?"
"I'll explain on the way. Get dressed," I order, and I walk back out of the room before she can protest. In my room I pull on jeans and a sweater while I walk through what I'm going to have to do.
With Lombardi's credentials, Riley should be able to make the changes necessary, though backdating them will be challenging if we're going to avoid getting caught.
And I'd rather not pin it on a mistake on her part.
It could keep us from getting the shipment seized, but it'd make us look foolish for employing someone incompetent.
Not to mention how it would cast doubt on us in the future.
When I walk back into the hallway, Riley's already waiting by the front door. She's dressed in jeans and the oversized sweatshirt she's been wearing around the house, her hair brushed and pulled into a ponytail. Her face is pale, but her eyes are alert.
"Let's go," I say.
She follows me out to the car without a word and we're five minutes into the drive before she speaks.
"So, what am I fixing?" She sounds hesitant, but I'm confident enough for the both of us.
I keep my eyes on the road. "Reroute paperwork for a pharmaceutical shipment. The Feds flagged it for inspection because the manifest doesn't match the routing codes. I need you to hack into the database and backdate the filing so it looks like everything was filed correctly."
She turns to look at me. "You want me to forge federal documents." She stops and exhales, rubbing her temples. I can see the way lines crease on her forehead in tension. She's not happy, and I don't care. "This is federal documentation. If they trace it back to me—"
"They won't." I don't have time to offer vague reassurances. Every minute that passes shortens the time we have to fix this before DEA agents show up and start snooping.
She stares at me for a long moment with a hard glare, then she turns back to the window and says nothing.
Riley doesn't speak again until we pull into the warehouse parking lot. Feodor's car is already parked near the entrance, and I see him standing by the door with a grim expression. I park and kill the engine, and Riley unbuckles her seatbelt but doesn't move to get out.
"What happens if I can't do this?" she asks quietly.
I look at her. "You will."
"But if I can't—"
"Then we all go down. You, me, and everyone in that building. So I suggest you figure it out."
Her throat moves as she swallows hard, revealing her anxiety about this. It's either her or nothing. I can't even cut and run. My name is all over this business.
Feodor meets us at the entrance, eyes flicking to Riley before settling on me. "System's set up in the office. You've got an hour and twenty minutes."
"Have you heard from them?" I ask him as he opens the door, and he grunts.
"Nah, but I know they're coming based on the email response we got this morning. It's just a matter of time."
Riley stays close to me, her arms wrapped around herself, as we enter the main offices. I don’t come here often, but when I do, I always draw stares. Employees gawk at us as we walk past, probably wondering why the head honcho is here. And a few of them look curious as to who Riley is.