My voice sounds like gravel.
"No." Alessandro is standing three feet away. I can’t see his face, but I can hear the effort it takes for him to steady his voice. He’s wrestling his composure back into place, forcing the tremors out of his hands through sheer will. "One hostile down in the alley behind the south loading bay. I took his weapon."
He killed a man. And then he came in here and wrecked himself in the dark. The Prince. The Strategist.
"How many on your side?" he asks.
"Three engaged. Two down. The third pulled back toward the main road." I touch the cut above my eyebrow. It’s throbbing, a hot, rhythmic pulse against the bone. "The sniper moved. I lost the sight line. He’s in the elevated structures east of the target building. If we stay here, he’ll find an angle."
"Then we can't go back to the car."
"No. The Volvo is burned."
Silence settles in the container. The steel walls tick as they contract in the cooling night air. I can feel him in the dark—not just his presence, but the heat radiating off him. He is a live wire, buzzing with adrenaline and the residue of whatever he just did to himself.
"South," I say, forcing my brain back to the map. "There's a rail yard two blocks past the fence line. Maintenance vehicles are parked overnight. Older models. Easy to steal."
"You want to hotwire a car."
"I want to leave this metal coffin before they start putting holes in it."
I crack the door. Just an inch. The security light outside has cycled off, leaving the gravel lot in a wash of grey shadows. No movement. The only sound is the distant, mechanical hum of the treatment plant and the wind rattling the chain-link fence.
"On me," I say. "Stay tight. If you see a shadow move, you shoot it."
"I don't need instructions, Killian."
"Then stop talking and move."
I push the door open. The cold air hits us, biting through my sweat-soaked shirt. I step out, the Glock raised, sweeping the roofline. Alessandro is right behind me. I can hear his breathing, shallow but steady. He moves quietly for a man who spends his life in boardrooms.
We move along the row of containers. I keep my profile low, knees bent, boots rolling heel-to-toe to minimize the sound on the gravel. We reach the fence line. There’s a gap in the chain-link where the wire has curled back like a lip.
I go through first. The metal snags my leather jacket, tearing the shoulder. I ignore it. I scan the drainage ditch on the other side—concrete-lined, dry, full of trash.
"Clear," I whisper.
Alessandro follows. He slips through the gap without a sound.
The rail yard is a graveyard of rusted iron and weeds. We cross the ditch and jog toward the maintenance lot. It’s fenced in cyclone wire, but the gate is held shut by a padlock that looks like it hasn't been oiled since the Reagan administration.
I holster the Glock. I grip the gate where the hinge meets the post. I brace my boot against the concrete and pull. The metal groans, a high-pitched shriek that sounds like a scream in the quiet night. The weld snaps.
I shove the gate open.
"Inside," I say.
There are four vehicles. A white panel van with two flat tires. Two flatbed trucks that look like they’ve been stripped for parts. And a grey sedan—a Ford, maybe late nineties—that looks heavy, ugly, and functional.
I go for the sedan.
I wrap my jacket around my elbow and punch the driver’s side window. The glass shatters, crumbling inward. I reach through, unlocking the door.
I slide into the driver’s seat. It smells of stale cigarettes and old vinyl. I jam a screwdriver from my multitool into the ignition housing, twisting until the plastic cracks. I find the wires. Strip them. Spark them.
The engine catches with a roar, coughing a cloud of blue smoke before settling into a rough idle.
Alessandro is already in the passenger seat. The Škorpion submachine gun is across his lap. The Beretta is on his hip. He looks pale in the dashboard lights, his hair messy, his eyes dark holes in his face.
