The problem with the Wexford Creek route wasn't just the 14\% traffic stop risk; it was the 100\% visibility from the new Sheriff's drone tower. Elias had accounted for the heat, the surveillance, and the timing, but he hadn't accounted for the sheer, brutal boredom of local law enforcement looking for a tax-funded reason to fly their expensive new toy.
The air in the office was thick with the faint, sweet scent of despair and burnt sugar. Elias felt the familiar twitch in his jaw.
"The drop is tonight," Marta said, her voice low and tight as she watched him trace the new route on the map. She had replaced the worn nautical chart with a fresh topographical survey, its contour lines a dizzying maze of green and brown.
"Tonight's off," Elias replied, not looking up. He spoke with the quiet finality of a judge reading a death sentence. "If we move through the Creek, we lose the shipment. Worse, we lose Sato's trust."
Losing the shipment was money. Losing Sato was a much more permanent problem.
Elias's pen traced the elegant, brutal line he had drawn yesterday. It cut directly off the highway, through the dense woods, and onto the property of Mrs. Albright.
"The Albright route adds twenty minutes, but it's shielded on all sides by mature Douglas firs and the embankment of the old rail spur," he explained, less to Marta and more to the numbers in his head. "We use the wall for cover, the uneven ground to deter a pursuit, and the rail bed for the transfer. It's a six-minute window, maximum, on her property."
Marta slid a worn photograph across the table. It was a sun-bleached picture of a small, neat woman with kind eyes, standing next to a weathered garden shed and a cluster of woolly, indifferent goats.
"That's her," Marta said. "Eighty-two years old. Widowed last fall. She doesn't have a phone, doesn't watch the news, and her only company is those ridiculous animals."
Elias stared at the photograph. The woman wasn't a variable; she was a face. He had designed a perfect geometric line, but the line ended in a garden where someone watered prize-winning petunias.
"We have to go around her," he muttered, picking up the pen again.
Marta placed a heavy hand over the map, covering the precious lines. "There is no 'around,' Elias. You spent two weeks calculating the routes. Every other line leads to a dead end, a checkpoint, or a crew that will kill us to take the cargo. This is the only line that doesn't collapse."
Elias leaned back, running a tired hand over his face. "I'm supposed to be the Architect. I design solutions. I don't create problems for innocent people."
"The problem was created the second the drugs became too expensive to buy legally," Marta countered. "You are just deciding who gets to pay the toll. Sato's clients need that insulin. Mrs. Albright needs to sleep through the night. You choose."
He looked from the picture of the kind, unsuspecting face to the elegant, ruthless red line drawn across the map.
"We move tonight," Elias said finally, his voice hoarse. "But we leave nothing behind. We don't touch her fence. We don't disturb the ground. And before dawn, you put an envelope through her mailbox—cash. Enough to fix whatever we break and then some. Call it an unsolicited land use consultation fee."
Marta nodded, her expression grim but resolute. She knew the money wouldn't fix the trespass.
Elias picked up his straightedge, a heavy piece of aluminum he'd used since university. He bent over the map one last time, measuring the distance from the old oak tree to the shed. He was looking at the route from the perspective of the goats—a low, slow-moving creature with a wide field of vision.
"Wait," he said, tapping a point near the shed. "The ground here slopes toward the shed. If the crew approaches from the west, the goats will see them long before they reach the wall."
He took the technical pen and drew a small, quick circle around the shed.
"We approach from the east, across the rail bed," he dictated, his mind now fully engaged in the cold calculus of logistics. "The shed blocks the sightlines from the house. The sound of the wind through the pines on the embankment will mask the engine noise. The transfer happens on the rail spur, behind the goat pen. Total time on property: three minutes and fifty-two seconds."
He had reduced the moral hazard and the physical risk. The line was cleaner, faster, and less likely to disturb the old woman. It was a compromise, a perfectly engineered lie.
As he finished the adjustments, he glanced back at the photo of Mrs. Albright. He had built a flawless, invisible structure. But he knew, with a sinking certainty, that the most dangerous structural flaw in his design was not the wall's height or the ground's slope, but the simple fact that there was a person on the other side.