Page 7 of Dark King Daddy

The door closed behind him. Arkady ate. Nikita drank his water. Neither of them had heard the question, or neither of them chose to acknowledge it.

To my horror, I realized I could answer it, but wouldn’t.

When I had been twenty, I had wanted love.

We reached Foundry Street at twelve-seventeen on Thursday morning.

The industrial corridor south of Newark’s freight yards was dead at that hour. Streetlights spaced too far apart. Chain-link fencing topped with razor wire running along both sides of the road. The buildings on either side were low, flat-roofed, marked with faded signage for businesses that had closed or operated only in daylight. The air tasted of diesel, standing water, and something chemical I could not identify.

Karpov Auto Export sat at the end of the block. A single-story cinderblock building with a corrugated steel roof, a paved yard enclosed by eight-foot fencing, and four vehicle bays facing the street. The sign above the entrance was unlit. The fence gate stood open.

Karpov had taken the lease before he went to work for the Voronins. A Sokolov company still owned the building. The sign was his; the deed was ours.

I told the driver to kill the headlights. The first vehicle stopped fifty meters short. The second pulled in behind us.

Through the windshield, I studied the yard.

Dark. No floodlights. No work lamps. The four bay doors were open — all of them, rolled up to the ceiling, exposing the interior to the street. At midnight, a functioning chop shop should have been lit and busy. Engines running. Music. Men working. The whole point of running an illegal operation at night was that you worked through the hours when legitimate businesses slept.

Open bays meant the work was done. Or it meant no one had come to work.

Or it meant someone wanted us to see inside.

“Half the team stays outside,” I said into the earpiece. “Perimeter. Nobody approaches the building until I call. Arkady, you’re with me. First group, on me. Second group, hold the gate.”

Arkady was already out of the vehicle. He had his jacket off, his weapon drawn, moving with the low, efficient gait that made him most dangerous — controlled, not reckless. Six men fell in behind us. The remaining six fanned out along the fence line.

We crossed the yard on foot. Gravel and oil stains. No vehicles in the lot. The bays gaped open, showing concrete floors, lift equipment, tool chests against the walls. Empty.

I entered through the second bay. Fluorescent tubes hung dead from the ceiling. The floor was clean — swept recently, too recently for a working garage. The tool chests were closed. No parts. No tires. No evidence that anyone had worked here in days.

“Building is empty,” Arkady said from the first bay. “Cleared.”

“It’s not empty,” I said. “It’s staged.”

The gunshot came from above.

A single round from the metal mezzanine at the back of the building. The round hit the concrete floor three meters to my left and ricocheted with a sound like a cracked bell. I dropped behind a tool chest. Arkady was already moving — not toward cover but toward the mezzanine stairs, taking them two at a time, his weapon up.

Two more shots from the gunman. Both wide. The shooter was firing fast, undisciplined, scared. He reached the top of the stairs as Arkady came through the railing, and Arkady put him down with two rounds to the chest.

The man fell backward onto the mezzanine grating. The metal rang.

I was up and moving toward the stairs. “Arkady, I wanted him alive.”

“He was shooting at you.”

“I wanted to question him.”

“He was shooting at you.” Everything was so simple to Arkady. Black and white. Alive or dead. No nuance, no subtlety.

Nikita’s voice came through the earpiece, steady and precise. “Daniil. The building’s internal camera feeds were looped twenty minutes ago. I’m watching playback, not live. Whoever set this up had access to their security system.”

Twenty minutes. The loop had been activated before we arrived. Someone had known we were coming.

I stopped on the mezzanine stairs.

The gunman lay on the grating. Young. Early twenties. Voronin soldier — the tattoo on his forearm was visible where his sleeve had ridden up. He carried a pistol and nothing else. No phone. No identification. A man left behind to fire a few rounds and die.