Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
On Monday morning, Ryder refilled two travel mugs with coffee while Nell finished getting dressed for work. His laptop sat on the dining table beside a notebook and the small toolbox he’d brought in from the truck.
Nell came out of the hallway in dark trousers and a pale green blouse, fastening one earring as she crossed the living room. She took the mug he held out and kissed him before reaching for her work bag on the console.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yep.”
Ryder waited while Nell locked the apartment, then followed her down the front stairs and onto the sidewalk. Morning traffic moved steadily past the building. His truck stood half a block away, where he had found a street space after the zoo.
Nell put her bag at her feet once they were inside.
Ryder set his coffee in the cup holder and pulled away from the curb.
Buses claimed the right lane at every stop.
A cyclist slipped between a line of parked cars and the moving lane, and Ryder gave him extra space before turning.
Nell drank her coffee and looked through the windshield while downtown drew closer around them.
Then her mug stopped halfway to her mouth. She turned toward the passenger window and checked the side mirror. A moment later, she looked over her shoulder.
“What is it?” Ryder asked.
“There’s a van behind us.”
His rearview mirror held a white sedan, a small blue hatchback, and a dark cargo van beyond them.
“I think it’s the same one that followed me on Friday,” Nell said.
The one behind them looked like a thousand generic commercial vehicles anyone might see in the city.
“What makes you say that?” he asked. He wanted to take her seriously. She’d been through way too much to not be believed. Either way, he was staying with her until she felt safe.
Nell watched it in the mirror. “I don’t know. It just looks the same to me. It’s like it’s been following me all over the city. Every time I see it, I think the traffickers are after me again.”
The light ahead turned yellow. Ryder slowed with the rest of traffic and stopped behind a delivery car. The dark van settled four vehicles back.
When the light turned green, Ryder followed the route to Hartwell & Moss. The van remained behind them through the next two lights, sometimes hidden by a bus or a taller vehicle, then visible again.
“You should photograph the plates,” Ryder said, coming up with a way to put her mind at ease. If Axel traced the plates, he could show Nell that it was just an ordinary cargo van.
Nell set her coffee in the cup holder and took out her phone.
Cars slowed near an intersection where one lane narrowed around utility work.
The white sedan moved left and the hatchback pulled ahead, leaving only a pickup between Ryder’s truck and the van.
For several seconds the front of the van appeared in his mirror.
The driver wore a dark work shirt and sat upright behind the wheel. Nothing covered his face, but windshield glare erased his features whenever the angle changed. The pickup rolled forward. Nell twisted in her seat and raised her phone toward the rear window.
“I got it,” she said.
The intersection opened ahead. Ryder turned toward the office building. The pickup followed him, but the van continued straight. Nell watched until buildings cut off the view. She faced forward again and looked down at the photograph.
“The plate is clear.”
Ryder pulled into the rideshare space beneath the shallow canopy at Hartwell & Moss. Cars passed close beside them, tires hissing over pavement still damp from an earlier shower.
“Send it to me,” he said. “I’ll ask Axel to run it.”
Nell sent the photograph, and Ryder’s phone chimed in the console.
“Tell me what he finds.”
“I will.”
She picked up her bag, leaned across the console to kiss him, and got out. Ryder stayed until she disappeared through the glass vestibule. He opened the photograph. The plate filled the center of the frame, sharp enough to read. Ryder forwarded the image to Axel.
Nell thinks this cargo van has been following her around the city. It seems pretty generic to me, but I want to take her concerns seriously and put her mind at ease. Can you check the registration?
Axel’s answer came before Ryder left the pullout.
Yes.
Ryder put the phone away and drove back to Nell’s apartment.
He carried the hard drone case in from the truck and set it on the cleared half of the dining table.
One of the gimbal dampers had begun to split, and replacing it took only a few minutes.
He powered up the camera after the repair and turned the drone by hand, checking that the horizon stayed level through each change of angle.
Ryder spent the rest of the morning revising security plans for a client’s loading dock.
He adjusted the camera placements to eliminate a blind spot, added the installation notes Dom would need, and sent him the updated plans.
His phone buzzed around noon. Axel had sent a company name and an address.
Plate is registered to Cascadia Equipment Services. Listed address is a warehouse at 11480 Northeast Commerce Way, Portland.
An equipment-services company owning a cargo van was almost aggressively ordinary. The address placed it at a warehouse in east Portland, exactly where a company like that might operate.
Ryder finished the camera plan, checked the repaired gimbal again, and returned the drone to its fitted compartment.
The case remained open on the table while he worked through two equipment reports and answered a question about a remote sensor that kept dropping its connection after dark.
At half past four, he left the apartment to pick up Nell.
Nell emerged from the Hartwell & Moss entrance with her work bag over her shoulder. She turned toward his truck, opened the door, and climbed in. She fastened her seat belt, and he pulled away from the rideshare space.
“Axel got the registration for the van,” he said, glancing down at the text open on his phone. “Cascadia Equipment Services. The address is 11480 Northeast Commerce Way.”
“That sounds familiar.”
Traffic stopped at the next light. Ryder looked at her. Nell’s brows had drawn together, and her fingers rested motionless on the strap of her work bag.
“I think that address was in that account I got locked out of… Northline.”
The light changed. Ryder moved with traffic.
“You sure?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. It might have been on an equipment invoice or attached to one of the vendors.” Nell stared past the cars ahead. “I can’t say for sure because I can’t check.”
Ryder wanted the address to mean nothing. But Nell didn’t make guesses about numbers. So, if it had caught in her memory, he wanted to know why.
“I’ll ask Axel to check the company and property records and see whether either one connects to Northline,” he said. “We can take a look at the warehouse ourselves.”
Nell glanced at him. “Tonight?”
“I can put the drone up and do a little spy job. If all we see is a regular equipment company, we go home.”
“And if it’s not?”
“We’ll figure it out then.” Ryder was fairly sure it would prove to be an ordinary company.
Even if it was associated with Northline, there wasn’t any reason for them to be following Nell, as far as Ryder knew.
He mostly just wanted her to see that the traffickers weren’t after her so she could relax.
She considered that. “Okay.”
At the apartment, Nell changed into jeans and sneakers while Ryder packed the serviced drone, batteries, and controller into the hard case. Then they took the front stairs back down together.