CHAPTER 5: Caleb Mercer Steps Down

The center truck stopped first.
Air brakes sighed into the desert. The two trucks beside it angled just enough to block both lanes without touching the sedan. It was precise, professional, and terrifying because nobody shouted.
A man in a black suit stepped down from the center cab. He was forty-two, broad-shouldered, windburned from years no boardroom could polish out of him.
Caleb Mercer had not entered the family house in eleven years.
Preston used to call him the runaway son. Elias called him the only child who ever understood freight was not about trucks. It was about trust moving through darkness without breaking.
Caleb looked once at the suitcase. Then at his father on the yellow line.