“You’rein all of their ears, yes?” Royce said without preamble, upon entering the conference room.
“Of course,” I told him, projecting video of each agent onto its own screen, along with a map pinpointing each of their respective locations.
I was even in the ear of the agent who didn’t want to hear from me anymore.
“And our alibi is solid?” he asked.
I was tempted not to dignify that with a response. “Of course.”
Royce’s mouth twitched like a man choosing which worry to feed. “Legal?”
“Pre-briefed. They’ve asked that if we open anything, it’s in good-faith exigency with the shipper present.”
“And cameras?”
“Borrowed, not edited. If we win, it should be reviewable.”
He grunted. “Anything else I should know before my heart rate gets interesting?”
I knew that Lung had missed his usual feeding window by forty-seven minutes and had compensated with two thermoses of indeterminate biologicals.
I knew that Ellum’s daughter had a piano recital at seven and that his calendar reminder kept nudging the corner of his vision.
I knew that Aceon had painted his hooves with a sound-damping gel the night before; the lingering volatiles had left a faint chemical hush in his wake.
And I knew that Royce’s pulse had climbed nine beats per minute the moment he said “Legal,” and hadn’t dropped since.
But none of that rose to the level of sharing with him.
“Nothing currently,” I said. All we could do now was bide our time.
I pinned the clock on the wall beneath the map: 11:42.
12 /SIRENA
“Okay, so,”I muttered, shrugging into the orange vest and fitting a hard hat over my bun. My paperwork was on a clipboard in my lap, and Kelly was pulling me right up to the end of the dock.
“Comms check,” Nex announced in my ear.
Everyone chimed in “green” one by one, until I was the only one who was left.
“Green,” I said, adding to the chorus, and then stepped out of the car, picking up my clipboard and workbag with a few implements in it to help keep my cover.
I knew the Dullahan was angling his head on the dash to keep eyes on me, while his body paced outside the door—Kelly’s body was incredibly strong, with or without him—which was why he was my porter to the dock.
I walked up to the dock office and presented my paperwork. The owl-like Avian woman behind the counter seemed to utterly not care—and behind her, there were two portly men stalking around, using walkie-talkies to shout instructions.
She pushed her glasses up her beak, inspected her computer screen, then tapped a gloriously pink talon on its glass.
“The box you’re looking for is in section D5. I’ll get one of these guys to take you,” she said, and then swiveled her head to look behind her, without moving her shoulders in the least. “Allen—Al!” she shouted, before whipping her head back around. “He’ll take you?—”
“We’re in the middle of a live unload!” Allen complained.
“Can you not see?” the secretary hollered back, gesturing at me, and my very orange vest. “She’s port authority! Sooner you get it over with, the sooner you can get back to your day!”
“Marge—”
“I can’t leave the front desk! I’m on modified!” she said, kicking a braced leg his direction, before whispering loudly to me. “I’m union.”
