"You just shut down a business on suspicion."
"No. I suspended the use of government payment credentials under the contracting authority's control. It's an emergency financial safeguard, not a closure order."
He stared toward the office. His nostrils flared, and for a moment his face displayed an emotion Danielle had not seen before: the fear of an interrupted routine.
Voss marched toward them. "There are deliveries booked against those accounts. You can't just stop everything."
"Deliveries to whom?" Danielle asked.
"Customers. Contractors. People who depend on scheduled transactions."
"Which contractor?"
Voss looked at Shaw. The captain answered before his subordinate could.
"Officer Voss doesn't manage the station's accounts. He's concerned about the disruption. Like anyone would be."
Danielle made a mental note of the exchange. The contracts under review involved Army fleet purchases, not ordinary wholesale fuel shipments. If Voss knew which private businesses were affected by the temporary restrictions, he knew more about the billing system than his patrol assignment required.
Inside the store, Leah watched the men arguing through the glass. Her telephone was ringing continuously. A message from the regional operator blinked on the station computer, asking why government fuel transactions had suddenly stopped. An incoming call identified as CAPTAIN SHAW appeared on her personal phone even though he was only yards away. Leah let it ring. When it stopped, another message appeared: DO NOT GIVE THEM ACCESS TO THE OFFICE. WE'LL HANDLE IT.
She had received versions of that message before. Each time she obeyed, the problem grew. Last February she had found the night register short by a figure too large to dismiss. A fuel delivery report showed a commercial tanker collecting eight hundred gallons, yet the computerized station total showed the quantity as a purchase by an Army fleet card. When she called the supplier, the employee on the line said the tanker was not on their dispatch schedule.
Leah had confronted Voss during his next visit. She remembered it because Sophie had been home sick from school and Leah had spent the night worrying about her daughter while trying to reconcile the register. Voss had listened with a bored expression, then asked if Leah enjoyed working the night shift alone.
"Lots of strange people come through highway stations," he had said. "You never know how fast help will get here when you call."
"Are you threatening me?" she had asked.
"I'm reminding you to keep things in perspective. The computers get confused. People get confused. It's not smart to accuse your own customers of theft."
Two days later, Shaw appeared and described her complaint as potentially damaging to the station's reputation. After he left, Leah discovered that a request for a police welfare check at her apartment had been entered and canceled. Nobody contacted her about the request. Voss merely drove past her building late that evening, so slowly that Sophie looked up from the kitchen table and asked whether the police were watching the house.
"No," Leah had said. "Probably just traffic."
She could still remember how small that lie had made her feel.