“I’m not seeing any active bodies on the boardwalk entrance right now,” Miami went on. “Nothing obvious at least. Street side, there’s a van parked two blocks back from the main delivery gate. Could be something. Could be theirs. Hard to tell. Windows are tinted. Nobody’s getting out.”
“Roman’s men?” Turnpike asked.
“If they are, they’re sitting still,” Miami said. “And off comms like he said. No movement. No smoking. No heads popping out for air. Just an SUV that looks like it should be somewhere else.”
The ocean roared steadily behind us. Gulls cried overhead. Somewhere down the line, a casino playlist switched tracks, the bass thump changing tempo.
Jersey looked at me.
“Feels wrong,” he said softly.
“It is wrong,” I replied. “Let’s go seehowwrong.”
We dismounted, boots hitting boardwalk planks in near unison.
Guns were drawn but held low. Cuts closed. Helmets left on bikes.
Snake Eyes took point to the gate, nudged the loose chain aside with his boot, and pushed it open further. It squealed onits hinges, as loud as a scream in the relative quiet.
Inside the fenced zone, the ground shifted from weathered wood to packed dirt and poured concrete. Temporary work lights on stands threw uneven yellow pools across stacks of materials—pallets of drywall, bundles of rebar, wrapped bathroom fixtures still in cardboard.
The main boardwalk entrance was a set of wide glass double doors framed in temporary metal barricades that had been pulled aside. One of the doors sat slightly ajar.
My hand went to my pocket automatically, fingers brushing the shape of my phone. Liberty’s name sat just under my thumb in the contact list.
I thumbed it open, tapped out a quick message with my free hand as we moved.
I hit send.
The tiny “delivered” popped up almost instantly under the text.
I watched. One heartbeat. Two. Three.
No “read,” receipt.
Liberty almost always opened my messages within seconds. Even if she didn’t answer right away, that little word would show up. It was a stupid detail to cling to in the middle of somebody else’s family crisis, but itsnagged sharp in my ribs anyway.
Maybe she was in the shower. Maybe she had her hands in engine grease. Maybe she was halfway through yelling at someone about something.
Maybe.
I slid the phone back into my pocket and met Jersey’s gaze.
He’d been watching me again. He saw something in my face that made his own harden.
Jersey then glanced up at the face of the building. Dark windows stared back. A few glowed faintly up top, emergency lights or half-finished systems running tests perhaps.
“Miami?” he said.
“Nothing at the entrance,” Miami answered. “No heat signatures near ground level on Roman’s thermal either. Whatever happened, it’s not happening right where you are. Or it’s already finished.”
I pushed down the instinct to look over my shoulder. The boardwalk behind us felt too open now. Too exposed. People were still walking past, giving us a wide berth, eyes flicking between our patches and the half-built hotel.
“Tell us everything,” Blackjack’s voice came across the channel in my ear, rougher with distance. “You see something, you give it to us.”
“Copy,” Jersey said.
We went in.
