Page 37 of Crown of Ash

Marcus stood up.

"Keep going," he said. "I know where to find him."

Marcus had barely taken four steps towards the door when Ghost's voice halted him in his tracks. The words hung in the air, a question wrapped in concern. "You okay?"

"I will be." Marcus's response was a promise to himself as much as it was an answer to Ghost. He didn't turn around, his gaze fixed on the door that led out of the room, out of this moment. "Keep me posted."

"Always do." Ghost's voice was steady, a rock amidst the storm that was brewing.

The address had been in Lakefront's records for two years, an emergency contact detail for every crew member. It was a piece of information that had been glanced at twice and promptly forgotten, like a room you weren't ready to enter. Tonight, however, Marcus found himself drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

He slid into his car, the leather seat cool against his back. The drive took nineteen minutes, each second ticking by with agonizing slowness. Marcus spent the entire drive trying not to think about Priya Okafor. It was a difficult task because she should have been the center of his thoughts tonight, but she wasn't even close to being the heaviest burden he carried.

For three years, he'd known that a conversation was looming on his horizon. A conversation he'd never scheduled because there was always a reason to wait. Bad timing. A worse week. The cowardice of a man who'd built an entire life out of doing hard things for others but not himself.

Twenty-two hours from a raid that could go wrong in a hundred different ways was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the right time to finally have that conversation. But Marcus had stopped believing in the right time somewhere around the moment Ghost had dropped the name of Andre's leak.

The building was nondescript, a converted three-flat made of brick. There was nothing about it that would have told Marcus which door was Andre's if he hadn't already known the number. A single light shone from a second-floor window, a beacon in the darkness.

Marcus stood on the sidewalk, the cold seeping through his shoes, staring at the building. He'd never seen the inside of the home Andre had made after him. Whatever lay beyond that door was going to reveal things Andre had never chosen to share.

With a deep breath, he climbed the stairs, his heart pounding in his chest. He raised his hand and knocked on the door before he could talk himself out of it.

Chapter 20

Andre was still awake when the knock came, a sharp, insistent rap that echoed through the quiet apartment. It was late, far too late for casual visitors, and the unexpected sound sent a jolt of adrenaline through his veins. He was on his feet before he'd fully registered the sound, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. It was the only reason he answered it without checking first.

Marcus. Standing on the landing in the same clothes he'd had on that morning, looking like a man who'd forgotten he was capable of getting tired. His eyes were shadowed and his jaw set in a grim line, his usual air of calm control replaced by a palpable tension that seemed to radiate off him in waves.

"Is everyone okay?" The words tumbled out of Andre's mouth before he could stop them, his mind already racing to the worst possible scenarios. "Elijah. Jack. Is it them?"

"Everyone's fine." Marcus's response was immediate, his words sharp and precise as if he'd anticipated Andre's fear and was ready to quell it. "Nobody's hurt. I need five minutes. Maybe less."

Andre stepped back to let him in, because there wasn't a version of tonight where he didn't, and only understood what he'd just done once Marcus was actually standing in his kitchen. The sight of him there, in this space that was so distinctly Andre's, felt surreal after all this time.

Six years. Marcus Whitfield had never once been inside anywhere Andre had lived since the apartment on Alter Road. Now here he was, filling up the doorway to a kitchen Andre had never once pictured him in, taking it in carefully, trying not to look like he was looking.

There wasn't much to see. Andre knew that. A couch that had come with the place. A shelf with more case files on it than books. The kind of apartment a man kept when some part of him had never fully unpacked, six years running.

"We found her," Marcus said, before Andre could ask, before the silence could do anything worse. "The leak. Ghost and one of Bell's people tore the whole network open tonight."

Andre's whole body went still around one question. "Who?"

"Priya Okafor." The name fell from Marcus's lips like a verdict, heavy with implications Andre was still struggling to comprehend.

The name hit Andre like a punch to the gut, and then kept hitting, wave after wave of shock rolling over him. Priya Okafor. The Coast Guard liaison. The woman who'd called him days ago, her voice a mask of professionalism as she questioned everything he'd said about the shipment. She had seemed competent, trustworthy. He'd handed her the truth, and she'd betrayed him. Forty people moved out of a warehouse before a raid that should have worked.

"She's done," Marcus said, his voice hard and unyielding. "Ghost has everything. Everyone she's ever touched is coming down with her."

"Okay." Andre's voice sounded distant to his own ears, as if he was hearing it from far away. "Okay."

Marcus didn't move from where he stood, just inside the door, as if he was unsure whether he'd earned the right to come any further into the room. Andre watched him, his heart pounding in his chest, and understood that the leak wasn't actually what had put that haunted look on Marcus's face. Or at least, it wasn't all of it.

"That's not why you drove out here at two in the morning," Andre said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Marcus didn't answer right away. When he did, his eyes weren't on Andre anymore; they'd gone somewhere distant, somewhere that had nothing to do with Okafor or the warehouse or any of it.

"I need to tell you something." His jaw clenched and unclenched once. "I should have told you a long time ago. I kept not doing it. I don't have a good reason for that anymore, so I'm just going to say it."