I end the call and look at Karp.
“Keep him conscious. We’re taking him.”
Karp’s mouth twitches slightly, the closest he comes to acknowledgment. He eases the pressure just enough to keep the man breathing, then hooks a hand into the back of his collar and forces him up onto his knees. The attacker coughs, blood hitting the pavement in uneven drops.
Karp hauls him to his feet. The officers at the perimeter don’t intervene. One of them steps aside, clearing space as Karp drags the man a few yards off the center of the street and forces himdown beside the curb, his grip fixed at the back of the collar while the attacker struggles to stay upright.
I step to the SUV and look at the rear passenger side. The door is still open, the interior light spilling onto the street. There’s blood on the door frame, not enough to suggest injury, more likely from the violence of contact. Rowan’s glove lies on the floorboard, the fingers curled in on themselves, and the sight of it does more to me than I allow to show.
Rowan is gone.
Headlights move across the street, and Mikel pulls in with two vehicles behind him. He gets out of the lead car, his collar turned up against the cold, and takes in the street in one sweep before his attention comes to me. He sees Karp at the curb with the prisoner and gives a short nod.
Karp moves on it immediately, hauling the attacker toward the second vehicle as two of our men open the rear door and pull him inside without ceremony. He won’t be coming with us. The warehouse off Remington still serves its purpose, and he’ll be more useful there than on the street. One of the men climbs in after him. The door shuts, and the engine turns over.
Karp joins Mikel without a word, and within minutes, we’re moving, leaving the blocked intersection and the flashing patrol lights behind as the second vehicle peels off in the opposite direction.
The warehouse district sits on the edge of Charlotte, an industrial sprawl of corrugated metal and fenced lots, where trucks idle at odd hours, and no one cares why another vehicle is moving through the area at night. Winter makes the district quieter, snow dulling the grime and the usual noise, the coldcutting through a coat fast enough to turn every breath into a thin cloud that disappears as quickly as it forms.
We park short of the turnoff and finish it on foot. Tire tracks destroy details, and I want to see the street exactly as they left it.
The asphalt still holds the marks where the van accelerated, the grooves darker where rubber caught against the damp surface. There are no hard skid marks or sudden corrections, which tells me the driver knew what he was doing and kept control even with extra bodies in the back.
Mikel kneels near the curb, his glove brushing a torn piece of fiber caught in the edge of a storm drain.
“Rope,” he notes, and he holds it up between two fingers.
It’s coarse, industrial grade, the kind used in warehouses and boats, not the thin cord found in a hardware store aisle.
“They didn’t waste time,” I reply. “They had restraints ready.”
Karp walks the perimeter of the street, his eyes moving over doorways, dumpsters, and the blind spots between buildings. He doesn’t need to be told what to look for. He’s looking for the absence of normal, the place where a van can stop without being seen.
Polina’s feeds arrive through Mikel’s phone, and he angles the screen toward me. It’s a mosaic of camera angles, traffic intersections, private security cameras from nearby businesses, and a hacked feed from a gas station. The quality varies, but the motion is clear, and the van appears on three separate cameras, heading south and then cutting west at a point where the public cameras stop.
“They planned the camera gap,” Polina’s voice comes through on the speaker. “They chose the corridor with the least municipal coverage.”
“Can you follow the van?” I ask.
“I can try,” she replies. “There’s a private camera network on the train yard, but it’s inconsistent.”
“Patch it,” I tell her. “I want routes and time stamps.”
“I’m on it.”
I end the call and look toward the train tracks. Old Stowe Yard isn’t a single building. It’s a cluster of warehouses and loading bays that used to move freight through the city before newer infrastructure made it redundant. Now it’s rented in pieces by small logistics companies and shell operations that want square footage without questions.
Mikel moves beside me, his shoulders squared against the cold. “Intel,” he tells me, and he hands me a folder pulled from his coat, the papers inside sealed in plastic to protect them from the weather.
“Talk.”
“Arkady’s men were in this district two days ago,” he states. “Two separate sightings. One at a loading dock near the spur, and one at a bar on the edge of the strip that’s known for cash business.”
“Witnesses?” I prompt.
“Two business owners,” Mikel replies. “Both paid to keep their mouths closed, but Polina found them anyway.”
I open the folder and scan the photographs. They’re grainy, but enough.
