He starts to say that he doesn't need a chaperone, and I hold up a hand. “Not a chaperone. A second set of eyes and a spare brain. You get lost in the code and forget the men behind the code. The port isn’t zeros and ones. It’s Jorge who hates his boss and lies on Tuesdays and the night foreman who plays cards at two a.m. You know where my head is? People. Put me on your shoulderand point at where I can knock. Because these men aren’t going to open up to you or Storm or fuckin’ Con. They need to be wooed and offered what they can’t refuse if they’re gonna betray someone they’re afraid of.”
His eyes flicker. He doesn’t hate it. He won’t say it, but he doesn’t.
“Storm,” I say. “You’re perimeter. You put together go-bags for everyone. I need you to build our comms. One channel for us, tight and clean. We need secondary phones for a rotation. Brief our security team as if you don’t trust a single one of them, because we don’t. We’ve got a mole. Maybe more than one. We move with an inner circle that knows where we’re going two minutes before we go, because any more time and we’ll lose Phoenix for good.”
He nods once. This is his air.
“Conrad,” I say, softer because I can see the way his jaw is set to keep him upright. “You’re our hammer. You’re also the only person who can knock on certain doors without getting shot on sight. You talk to the harbor master. You talk to the Coast Guard. You talk to all of your father’s dickhole friends who hate you but love the Masterson name on their sponsorship plaques.”
His lip curls. He hates that sentence, and I hate that I had to say it, but he doesn’t tell me to stop. He just says, “Fine,” like a man agreeing to a surgery without anesthesia.
“And me,” I say, “I’m the guy people pick up when they don’t want to feel like they’re making deals, but friends. I’m already on with Azzurro. I’ll call the Morettis, the Wren outfit, the dock unions, the crabbers. I’ll call the guy who brought us caviar last New Year’s and hates us a little less than he should because Itipped his mother ten grand for luck. I will call every person who owes us or owes me or wants to have a favor to call in at an opportune moment. And when I shake something loose, it goes to Atticus first to verify, then to Storm for method, then to Conrad for authorization and threat.”
Atticus sits on the arm of the couch, fingers steepled, thinking. Storm watches him think. Conrad watches me like I’m either insane or the only sane person left in this building.
“This isn’t a democracy,” Conrad says finally. “We don’t vote on what to do. We move.”
“Then we move,” I say. “Together.”
He flinches but he doesn’t argue. “As long as we don’t have to circle ‘round and sing fucking Kum-Ba-Yah. What’s this shit about a mole?”
“Mav and I figure we’ve got a mole in-house,” Atticus says, simple. “You don’t cut cameras at panels in blind spots unless someone lets you. You don’t usher a woman through our corridors past three patrols and four eyes unless someone’s running soft hands on every door.”
“So we run an inside play to smoke out the bullshit while we run the water for any sign of our girl,” I say.
Storm’s mouth does the thing it does when he approves. It’s not a smile. It’s an acknowledgement. “I’ll take lead on the inside. Quiet. One-on-ones. Make them think the danger is outside. The talkers will talk.”
Atticus pulls up a second screen. “I’ve got navigation data from the Automated Identification System,” he says. “Traffic control logs. Two cargo carriers, three tugs, a chemical barge. Onecargo carrier cut to ‘restricted’ at midnight and didn’t log a destination.”
“In English,” I say.
“They turned off the part of their log that tells the world where they’re going,” he says, gentler than usual. “It’s not necessarily illegal if you’ve got a reason. They didn’t provide a reason.”
“Name,” Storm says.
Atticus reads it off, and I text it to Azzurro. I text it to a longshoreman in Charleston who owes me for a wedding. I text it to a private tracker in Jacksonville who likes me enough to pick up when I call after midnight.
Conrad’s phone buzzes, but he doesn’t look. His eyes are on the map, on the dot that isn’t there. He is making vows in his head that would horrify all of us. He needs to. But he also needs me to make him sit down and drink water and not bleed out through his fingers while he imagines all the ways this ends. Because I know him well enough to know exactly what he’s imagining. And the toll it’s taking on his sanity.
“Hey,” I say, softer. “You know she didn’t run.”
He looks at me like he wants to break my nose for even shaping the idea. “I know that,” he says, ragged. “I know she wouldn’t. Not without her dog, at least.”
“Then we work like we trust that,” I say. “No blame games. No ‘if only’ and ‘I should have.’ We put our faces in the wind, and we go get her back. Then, you can punish her with your dick if you need to make sure she’s still ours.”
He breathes once—deliberate—and nods.
Storm stands. “I’ll brief the security team. I’ll be ten minutes, and I want a burner in each of your pockets. Use code names, not hers. We don’t speak her name out loud unless we’re in this room or in a room we own because we don’t want anyone to know exactly what we’re up to.”
He starts for the hall.
“Storm,” I say.
He stops.
“Thank you,” I say again. For being there with Con. For taking care of the bags. For the water. For the way he always seems to know what we’d need before we said it.
He nods, eyes softer for a second, then back to the same dark expression I’m sure we’re all wearing.
