She swung back and turned into a gently curving driveway. She found a space in the packed parking lot and spotted a uniformed guard walking a German shepherd. She didn’t like the way the dog tugged toward their car, so she called from her window.

“Excuse me! This is Sirocco Trucking, right?”

He approached with the dog and stopped a dozen feet away. His dark blue uniform housed a running back’s build that had yet to go to seed. His baseball cap with its Septimus Security logo, his big aviator sunglasses, and his thick mustache didn’t leave much of his face visible, but what Hari could see looked surprised.

“You’re looking for Sirocco? Well, I guess you found it.”

She guessed they didn’t get many drop-ins.

“Great. Where’s the office?”

“The office…the office is around the corner but no one’s there.”

“Out to lunch?”

“No one’s ever there. Can I help you?”

Damn. They’d been assuming they could at least get inside the building.

“We’d like to rent a truck.”

“They don’t rent trucks.”

During this scintillating repartee, another guard in identical garb with an identical dog rounded a corner and stopped to watch.

What is this? Hari thought. Do we somehow look threatening?

“I mean,” she said, “we’d like to arrange to ship some things.”

“All their trucks are spoken for.”

“All of them?”

“Every one.”

He sounded coached.

“Do you think we might have a look at them?”

“That’s not an option, ma’am.”

“Are you sure?” she said. “Is there someone I can speak—?”

“The office is empty and I’m afraid you can’t park here.”

Hari gave him a hard stare. He stared back through his shades.

And that was all she wrote. Hari could see she wasn’t going to win here, so she backed out of her space and headed down the drive.

“That went well,” Donny said. “What now?”

“Notice anything?” she said as they hit the industrial park’s common boulevard.

“Besides guys patrolling the grounds of a trucking company with dogs? I mean, seriously—German shepherds? Whoever heard of that? It tells me they’re majorly paranoid about someone glomming onto whatever it is they’re up to. And as for little boy blue back there, he wasn’t giving anything away. I mean, nada.”

“All good points. But I’m more interested in the parking lot.”

A pause, then, “Full. Lots of cars.” Another pause as he rubbed his stubble. “They could belong to drivers arriving to take a haul somewhere.”

“Exactly. The question is: Have they already left, or are they gathering to leave together?”

Donny grinned. “A convoy? Seems unlikely, but only one way to find out. I see a stake-out in our future. Let’s get some food first. We need to stock up on munchies. I saw a strip mall back by the highway with some fast-food joints.”

Hari knew where he meant and headed there.

“Speaking of fast food,” she said, “did you hear how McDonald’s bought the Wendy’s logo and won’t let them use it? So pretty soon, unless you already know where your Wendy’s is, you won’t be able to find one.”