“To keep us all honest,” AB added. “We don’t know if you were meant for this port. We can presuppose you didn’t make it this far and that somehow you ended up more than halfway across the country…” But the way he spread his hands said that was all up for debate.
Goblin nudged my knee, like he was voting too.
I looked between them—four men willing to put themselves in the line of fire for me. For Amorette. For truth.
Whichever choice I made, they’d adjust without hesitation. They weren’t trying to keep me small. They were trying to keep mealive. But they were also letting me choose.
I set my coffee down, fingers tapping lightly against the paper cup while the room waited on my answer—four lethal men and one extremely opinionated dog.
“If you can use me there, then I’d like to be on-site,” I said finally. They were giving me the choice, but they were also the professionals. “If Sarmiento or any of his crew are here, I want to see it. I want to seethem. I need to know…”
I turned it over in my head, I needed to know a lot but what specifically did I need to know there?
“I need to know if I recognize any of them. I may not, it may be nothing.”
“It may be something, too,” Voodoo said. “We get it, Firecracker.”
Bones didn’t smile, but something in his posture eased, subtle as a breath. “Then we tailor it to that. Controlled exposure. You don’t separate from any of us. If we say move, you move. If we say get down, you get down. That’s the whole deal.”
“Copy that,” I said, lifting a shoulder.
Legend’s mouth curved into something warm and crooked. “We’ll run it like a low-key recon circuit. Walking the public-access areas first—tourist edges, lots of traffic, nothing suspicious. Just a couple and their friends checking out the port.”
“Couple?” I echoed.
Voodoo gave a shameless shrug. “Optics. People look twice at four guys in tactical boots casing a commercial dock. They don’t look twice at a woman and her boyfriend walking hand-in-hand with a few friends trailing behind them like overgrown ducklings.”
AB didn’t even glance up. “I’m not a duckling.”
“No,” Legend said solemnly. “You’re the angry mallard who steals French fries.”
AB flicked a pen cap at him.
Despite myself, I smiled.
Bones refocused us before the banter could take off. “We’ll rotate positions. Grace with Lunchbox first, Voodoo second, me third. Alphabet stays here with remote feeds and a line of sight on our exits. Once we get the lay of the land, we escalate to a closer sweep.”
“And if I see someone I recognize?” I asked, heat already creeping up the back of my neck.
Bones didn’t miss a beat. “You tell one of us. Quietly.”
Then, softer, “You donotapproach. Not alone. Not first.”
My throat tightened, because he wasn’t patronizing me. He was worrying in that razor-edged, tactical way of his—silent calculations behind gray eyes.
Legend pushed the sad croissant toward me anyway. “Eat something. Even a bite. Running on fumes only works in movies.”
I tore off a corner, just to satisfy him. It tasted like plastic-wrapped disappointment, but he still looked pleased that I ate it.
“Once we decide to go in,” Voodoo said, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, “we’ll move as a unit—even when we’re split. You track with one of us. Goblin too.”
Goblin huffed like this was obvious.
AB finally turned away from his monitors. “If there’s a smuggling route tied to Sarmiento, I’ll pick it up. If there’s chatter he’s on-site, I’ll hear it. If there's a sudden movement of unregistered containers—hello, red flag.”
“Good,” I murmured, adrenaline beginning a slow simmer under my skin.
The guys shifted subtly, that collective awareness I’d come to recognize—all of them feeling the same invisible turning of gears.
