Page 83 of Dreadful
“I said I found an opportunity,” he counters quickly, leaning forward on both elbows. “I didn’t say I had it all planned.”
Cruz shifts beside me.
“And you came to us.”
Something about his voice makes Ryder’s knee start bouncing beneath the table.
His eyes meet Cruz’s. “Calloways run Hollow Beach, don’t they?”
Cruz hums a little under his breath.
“You aren’t worried about burning your military career with this?” I ask, swirling my index finger through the air to gesture to everything we’re talking about.
Ryder leans back against the cracked vinyl with a shrug, arms loose at his sides like he’s already decided how this part goes. “No one else has before. And before you ask: no, no one goes looking for it. Not that anyone has ever heard.” He tilts his head toward the window, toward where Westhaven sits somewhere beyond the highway. “It’s like this fucking unspoken rule thing passed around the base.”
Cruz settles farther into the booth beside me, his knee pressing against mine. “And you know when the next one moves?”
“Yeah.” Ryder nods quickly. “Couple weeks. They don’t give us a firm time until a few days before. That’s when an escort crew is assigned to it.”
“So it’s leaving Westhaven?”
“Right.”
“And arriving… where?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet.”
I tap one finger against my cup. “And you don’t know if you’ll be assigned to escort duty, or exactly how much we’re talking about, or how we would even access the money.”
Lola lets out a quiet breath across from me. “You really came prepared.”
My sister and I share a loaded look.
Ryder cuts her a look. “Again, opportunity. Not plan.”
“What about security?” Cruz asks. “Trackers, transmitters, or something buried in a case that leads half the federal government straight to wherever we take it?”
“No. It would jeopardize an op.”
Cruz goes quiet beside me.
“And if we somehow get our hands on it,” he says, “can we actually spend it?”
Ryder is already nodding before Cruz finishes the question. “They’re unmarked bills, used specifically so it’s untraceable.”
Cruz lets the silence hang for a beat before tilting his head. “Again—why do you need us?”
“I know the transfer is happening and when. I know there’s a weak point somewhere in the middle that looks a hell of a lot like something people have exploited before.” Ryder pauses, gaze moving between us. “I’ll get better timing, and maybe even the destination.”
“And everything you can’t get?” I ask.
“That’s where you guys come in.”
My thumb traces through the condensation on my cup. “So you found the opening. You want us to figure out whether there’s actually a way through it.”
“Exactly.”
Five million. Maybe more. The number hangs in the air, bright and impossible, while the holes in his story yawn wide enough to swallow us all. No route, no crew assignment, no guarantee—just a window of time and an obscene amount of untraceable cash.
