The Fugitive Grandma

Chapter 50 - The Open Road

Nick Lowry was particularly proud of the fact that he’d always been a sound sleeper, no matter what pressure he was facing during waking hours.

So it was deeply unsettling to find that each night following the Great American robbery, he woke in a sweat, nervous and panicked beyond reason. Stella and Johnny Valentine continued to spook him. It wasn’t the damage they’d already done. It was the damage they could still do if the real story got out. He kept thinking back on Jenkins’s warning. The only thing strong enough to hurt the company was public opinion.

Lowry was lying awake, flicking the remote from channel to channel, when he got the call from Riggs at 3:00 a.m.

“Boss, we need you to come here quick. There’s a situation with one of the trucks.”

Twenty minutes later, Lowry arrived at the Great American distribution center in Norco. It was in the center of a vast industrial flatland, home to miles of warehouses full of every imaginable type of merchandise and material. Most of the goods were midway between point of origination and final destination, soon to be consumed in homes throughout every corner of the mainland United States.

It was the size of an airplane hangar, dwarfing surrounding warehouses. Lowry had to drive through layers of gates and checkpoints, using an infrared tag on his dashboard to secure access and then punching in a numeric code to pass through the final entrance.

Lowry jogged the stairs to the second floor of the distribution center. A series of rooms and balcony structures lined the sides of the building. In the center, an atrium opened to the vast football-field-size storage area on the ground floor.

A central office with paneled windows overlooked the sea of containers, shelves, and loading crates below. Connected to the second-floor balconies, a web of catwalks stretched out across the storage area below.

In the office where Riggs and Perez based their security operations, a wall of video screens monitored sections of the warehouse and store interiors. Another giant colored screen displayed an electronic map of the county, with the city of Santa Ramona in the center. Yellow dots on the screen marked the locations of the distribution center and stores spread throughout the county. The map also contained two red dots, slowly moving across the screen in real time along major freeways.

One red dot was moving south along Interstate Route 15 from the warehouse toward a store in central Santa Ramona. The other dot was moving along the , headed east in the direction of Palm Springs.

“What’s this about someone hijacking a truck?” Lowry said, rushing into the room and to the screens.

“Now it’s two trucks,” Riggs replied, his fleshy face contorted with panic. He pointed to the red dot continuing to inch west until it disappeared off the screen.

“Where did it go?” Lowry said, his finger pointing to the section of the screen where the red dot had just vanished.

“Can’t tell. We can’t get GPS coverage in the mountains off the freeway.”

“What the hell is going on?” Lowry screamed. “You mean to tell me someone just took two trucks loaded with pharmaceuticals right from under our nose? Have we heard from the drivers?”

“We talked to them both. They’re with the cops.”

Lowry grabbed Riggs by the collar of his shirt and yanked the larger man forward until their faces were inches apart. “It was them, wasn’t it?”

Riggs didn’t have to answer. His look of defeat said it all.

Lowry let out the cry of a wounded animal. He pushed Riggs away and kicked the walls of the room, cursing in frustration.

“She knew the routes. She knew tonight was when we move drugs for the resupply run. She knew exactly when to hit the trucks. How the hell does she know this stuff?” Lowry said.

Riggs just shook his head.

“What about the third truck?”

“So far, that one is fine,” Perez said, his eye on the map. “I’ve tried to call the driver to confirm, but I can’t get his cell phone.”

“We’ve got to get a hold of him. Don’t just keep calling him. I want you out on the road. Leave now and you can catch him before he reaches his first stop in Santa Ramona. Go! You got to catch that truck.”

“Should we call the police?” Perez asked.

Lowry clenched his teeth.

“You know we’re not calling the police, you idiot. We’re taking care of this ourselves,” Riggs said to his partner. “Now hit the road.”

Perez jogged out of the room with car keys in his hand.

Lowry and Riggs sat frozen in front of the map, watching the third truck’s red dot crawling along the surface streets in the central part of the city, where Great American had three store locations within a three-mile radius.

“You know how much merchandise we just lost?” Lowry said. “Why the hell didn’t we have guards on those trucks?”

“You told us to concentrate on the stores.”

“I didn’t tell you to ignore the trucks. What, I have to do all the thinking for you?”

Suddenly, the last remaining red dot accelerated quickly to the west. It was on the freeway, heading away from the city toward the mountains at the edge of the map.

“No!” Lowry wailed.

Within another fifteen minutes it vanished from the screen, just like the others. Lowry started screaming again and kicked in frustration until he had cracked the drywall.