Pause.
His voice dropped into a low growl. “What do you mean they can’t fix it?”
Whatever he heard hit hard.
He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand why this is so difficult. No! We can’t risk contamination. The losses would be huge, and we’ve already lost enough money.”
He listened a few seconds more, then said, “Call whoever you need to call. I don’t care what it costs. Just get it handled.”
He hung up and stood there, staring into nothing.
The boy asked, “What happened?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he said quickly. “Just work. We’ll have to stop at the factory before we head home.”
The boy brightened. “Sure.”
I paid for my food, grabbed my bag, and stepped aside.
I had just gotten into my truck when my phone rang. It was Curtis, a guy I’d worked with on and off for years.
He got straight to it.
“Where are you? We’ve got a big problem with a food processing line,” he said. “The main pipe joint blew. They tried to patch it, but it won’t hold. Every time they start it up, it leaks again.”
The man’s words from the phone replayed in my head: patch it… need that line running… contamination.
Karma didn’t usually move that fast, did it?
