[Jake's POV]
My second day on logistics. The warehouse at 6 AM, the loading bays open to the Florida heat, the delivery trucks backing in with their payloads of flour and oil and whatever was behind the flour and oil.
Ramirez handed me the manifest clipboard and the cold storage key and a look that said nothing and meant everything. He was watching me. He'd been watching me since the first day. That was fine. I'd been watched by better.
I counted pallets. I checked manifests. I verified pickup schedules against delivery logs. The work was tedious and precise and I did it the way I did everything now — carefully, without urgency, the way a man moves who has nowhere to be and nothing to prove. Mateo Cruz was invisible because Mateo Cruz was boring. Boring was safe.
[Observe]
