The Way Things Are (34 page)

When the container was steady again, Patrick eased the lever forward and lowered the container into the center row on the barge. He watched the lashers scurry around it, marveling at how much they looked like tiny spiders, using their hands and feet to steady themselves on the top of the neighboring containers. When the radio signal came to release the container, he went through the motions in a haze, hoisting the spreader assembly. He heard screaming on the radio behind him, and a spike of adrenaline woke him up enough to realize he hadn’t actually released the container before trying to raise the spreader. The lashers were gesturing frantically, and he lowered the container back into position. He watched the lashers scramble to replace the webbing he’d ripped apart when he’d tried to lift the spreader.

Ethan’s voice growled over the radio. “That’s it. Shut it down and get your ass down here, Connelly.”

Patrick reset the crane, bringing the cab up to the top of the frame, and then he slipped out of the harness and shut down the monitors and control panels. He dug one more energy drink out of his coat and drained the tiny bottle quickly. He checked the time on his phone and cursed. It was four thirty in the morning, and Ken shouldn’t be awake for another few hours, but it was worth a shot.

He tapped out a quick text message, hoping it wouldn’t wake Ken up if he was asleep.
Awake?

He pulled on his jacket and shook his head to try to stop his eyes from closing on their own. The phone ringing in his hand made him jump.

“Uh, hi,” he answered quietly. “I’m sorry I woke you up, I didn’t mean to.”

“Good morning,” Ken said, his tone wide awake. “You didn’t wake me up. I’ve got a hearing first thing this morning that’s going to be a mess, so I got up early to get paperwork done. You on a break?”

Patrick slumped against the ladder. “I’m either being sent home or fired.”

“What?”

“I can’t stay awake for shit. I don’t know what’s wrong. I was fine before my break, but now…. I just about squashed one of the guys on deck.”

“Just about? Is he okay?”

“Yeah. I didn’t actually squish him. But I tore a lot of webbing and freaked every lasher on the crew out.”

“Are you okay?”

Patrick sighed and tried to focus on the ladder. “Just really tired all of a sudden.”

Ken was quiet for a moment. “You sure you’re done for the night?”

“Yeah. Just got told to shut the crane down.”

“Hang tight, okay? If you’re too tired to operate heavy equipment, I think you’re too tired to drive.”

“You’ve got work stuff, though,” Patrick said, dragging his feet up the ladder. He let the cabin door fall shut with a clang and shuffled to the elevator.

“I’ll have time to get it done. Meet you in the parking lot?”

A gust of wind nearly knocked him off his feet, and he reached for the safety rail to steady himself. Below him, the stadium lights that lit the docks and freighter spun, making his stomach churn. “I’m not afraid of heights,” he whispered, confused by his body’s reaction. Usually the rush of being up high was exhilarating. The mild vertigo he did experience was easy to overcome, and it never made him feel sick. “I think… I think I don’t feel good.”

“Wait for me, okay?” Ken said. “I’m on my way.”

He stumbled into the elevator and shut his eyes, hoping to calm his stomach. “Thanks.”

He rode the elevator down to the terminal control room. Ethan was waiting for him right outside the elevator. The shorter man was so angry that the large bald spot he was trying to hide with a comb-over was turning purple in the dim light.

“If you come in here acting like a fucking zombie again, I will fire you, do you understand?”

“I know I was slower than normal out there,” Patrick whispered. “I think I’m coming down with something. I felt fine until midnight. Maybe another cup of coffee, and I’ll be able to finish out the shift….”

“There is no chance in hell I’m letting you back into that cabin right now. Slow I can deal with. You’re not being slow. You’re trying to be fast, and you’re being reckless. You don’t have it right now, Connelly, and if you keep trying to pretend that you do, you could end up crushing one of the guys on the deck or the wharf. Go home and sleep. I’ll have to call somebody in to finish the cargo.”

Patrick wanted to argue, but he could hardly even keep his eyes open to do that. “I don’t know why I’m so tired,” Patrick tried to explain. “I slept, I swear I did, and I grabbed a cup of coffee down here on my last break.”

“I know you did. I poured you the cup. It obviously wasn’t enough. In fact, we’re calling you a fucking taxi. I’d probably be liable for letting you drive.”

“I don’t need a taxi,” Patrick insisted. He was about to explain he already had a ride, but the world blurred in a nauseating swirl of color. He was having more trouble focusing than he usually did after a half-dozen drinks.

“Ha. You’re a funny guy. Hilarious, even.” Ethan shoved an office chair over and pointed to it. “Sit your ass down before you fall over.”

Patrick sat down in the tiny officer chair, rolled it over to the small card table that held a coffee pot and a basket of dust-covered tea packets, and began to start a fresh pot of coffee. He rested his head on the table while the coffee bubbled and churned beside him, and in what seemed like less than an instant, his supervisor was shaking him awake.

“Connelly, wake up, man.”

“Huh? Is the coffee done?”

Ethan laughed at him. “You don’t need coffee, you need sleep. Come on, you’ve got to meet the cab at the gate.”

“But the tower….”

“Those two can handle it for a few minutes,” Ethan assured him, nodding at the terminal assistants. Ethan hoisted him out of the seat and steered him toward the door. “Did you sleep at all last weekend?” he asked.

Patrick stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “I got a solid eight hours of sleep.” Patrick smiled, remembering his morning. It hadn’t been restful, but it had been worth it. “I’ve been up the last couple of days and nights, trying to get my apartment cleaned up, but I slept before I came in to work.” He turned the latch and stepped out onto the stairs, reaching for the handrail to steady himself. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Yeah, no shit. Come on, the cab should be here any minute.”

Patrick stumbled along the catwalk and took a deep breath, hoping the cold would wake him up. “I don’t need a cab.” He stared at the rhythmic activity on the freighter and the docks below. The straddle carriers were backed up. A dozen cargo containers were lined up, waiting to be loaded onto the ship. He didn’t know how much time they’d lost because of him, but he was too tired and overwhelmed to feel guilty about the dozen men standing around with nothing to do. “I can make it downstairs on my own. Heaven knows I’ve cost you enough time tonight.”

Ethan clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. “Connelly, you’ve got no idea how much you’ve cost me. It’s fine. Come on. The way you’re walking, you’re likely to break your neck on the stairs.”

Patrick did stumble, but the death grip he had on the handrail kept him from falling. “I’m okay. I can get a ride,” Patrick muttered.

“I already called the cab,” Ethan insisted. “Come on, they’ll be down by the gate in the yard.”

He dragged his feet as Ethan led him into the gravel parking lot, past the employee vehicles and past the security gate that led out to the road. He followed Ethan through the gravel yard along the fence for nearly a minute, until they left the bright lights of the terminal behind them.

He thought he saw Ken’s car turn into the employee parking lot. Patrick tried to turn back, but Ethan stopped him and spun him around. “The other gate.”

It took a dozen slow seconds for common sense to invade the fog his brain had become. “There’s no gate this way,” Patrick said quietly.

He shuffled back toward the gate again when Ethan tugged on his arm. His head was spinning so bad he nearly fell over. He heard the gravel shift behind him. He felt the air move and then felt a sharp crack against the base of his skull. The world kept spinning, yellow lights and the dark city churning together like a whirlpool before his eyes. When his head cleared a little, he tried to open his eyes, but his face was pressed into the gravel. He tried to move, but even trying to shift his face so the rocks weren’t biting into his cheek flooded his head with a wave of pain and pressure.

“You are the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever seen.” Ethan’s voice came from above him somewhere in the darkness. It laughed. “Most guys would take the hint, especially with a kid to look out for. But you just had to keep bringing that fucking cop around.”

Patrick shifted his arm under him and closed his fingers around his phone. He tried to open his eyes again, tried to focus on anything, but every time he tried to think, the pain blossomed across the back of his head and radiated around his eye sockets. He managed to shove the phone into the waistband of his pants and lift his head a fraction of an inch. A cold, dusty boot hit his temple hard enough to send him rolling onto his side. He tried to roll onto his hands and knees so he could push himself up off of the ground. He made it an inch before the world went black.

When he came back to his senses, he was being dragged by his feet. His shirt had come untucked from his pants, and bits of gravel and rock were shredding the skin on his chest and stomach like a cheese grater. The gravel gave way to concrete, and then the coarse nonskid coating on all of the metal walking surfaces around the terminal. The coating burned and scratched like sandpaper. Patrick had to grind his teeth to keep from screaming. When the nonskid coating vanished and he found himself being dragged over cold metal instead, he was almost grateful for the change.

He would have been grateful if his brain hadn’t cut through the searing pain and lingering mental fog. The metal was rusted, dirty, and coved with deep ridges. Most of the ambient light from the shipping terminal and the city beyond had vanished. Patrick tried to pick up his head and look around, but it hurt to move. He was surrounded by darkness and the smell of salt, wood, and cardboard. He bit back his panic as he realized he was in a shipping container.

The man dragging him dropped his feet with a huff. “Damn, you’re heavy. Figures I’d have to drag your ass in here on my own.”

Patrick turned his head toward the light streaming in through the open container door. The light shrank into a slim column of light as the door swung closed a little. Ethan strolled out, whistling calmly. The door slammed shut, and Patrick was enveloped in utter darkness.

He listened to the metallic scrape of the hinges and wanted to curse. If he was trapped inside one of the outbound shipping containers, he would never be able to break out. He would be trapped in one container out of five thousand, stacked somewhere in the middle of the open hull of the freighter, where no one on the ship’s minimal crew would hear him. No one would rescue him. No one would even know he was there until the ship docked in Hong Kong and they unpacked his body.

Patrick gritted his teeth against the pain radiating through his head and pushed himself up onto his knees. There was no chance in hell he was going to be left to die inside one of these damn boxes. But if he didn’t move now, he would never escape.

He got his feet under him and surged forward, using the ridges in the floor of the shipping container to propel himself toward the door hard and fast. He threw all of his weight against the door. When the door hit resistance, Patrick dug his toes in and shoved harder.

Patrick heard Ethan stumble and forced his way through the container door.

Ethan was holding his own head and glaring at him. He pulled out a small, dark pistol. “You fucker! I should have just shot you the first time!”

“What the hell, Ethan?”

“You need to ask? That cop’s been hanging around more often than the guys on our crew! A run of shitty luck I can understand. You stumbling on Nate, I can chock that up to coincidence. But that fucking cop being at your apartment and then hanging around here? Don’t you understand we’re supposed to have each other’s backs? I should have known you were going to be more trouble than you were worth when you got Nate busted.”

Patrick grabbed his head as the pain radiated through him. “What? The guy who was attacking that kid?”

Ethan laughed. “Do you have idea how much that kid was worth?”

“They were going to kill him!”

“Nah. They might have had some fun with him, but they wouldn’t have damaged him. But you just had to go and play hero!” Ethan twitched the barrel of the gun toward the container. “Get in. I’m too old to drag your ass back in there.”

Patrick shook his head frantically.

“Nate was one of my best guys,” Ethan complained, looking sincerely disappointed. “But he lost his position because of you. He made things messy, so I had to deal with him. Don’t be like him, Pat. Get inside.”

“You don’t have to do this, Ethan.”

His supervisor rolled his eyes and extended the gun. Patrick charged toward him as the gun fired. He heard the ping of the bullet hitting the shipping container. Patrick reached for the gun, but the world was still spinning, and the best he could do was to try to knock the weapon out of Ethan’s hands. It clattered to the ground and Patrick tried to dive for it, but his reflexes were too slow. Ethan got a grip around Patrick’s wrist and twisted his arm back. Patrick tried to lean forward to get out of the hold, but Ethan grabbed his collar, pulling his shirt tight against his neck.

“Seriously, Connelly? You think I’d be stupid enough to take on a guy your size if I thought there was any chance of having to actually fight you? Christ, you’re a damn good crane operator, but you’re kind of slow. Slower than usual tonight.”

“What did you do?”

“Me?” Ethan chuckled behind him. “I didn’t do anything. You came into work drugged up. Turns out you OD’d on GHB before you came into work. When I told you to go home, you wandered into the yard and fell down and hit your head. Probably for the best, though, since you were so messed up you’d probably have gotten people killed driving home.”