Page 4 of Crown of Ash

"Trip used to run interdiction cases," Marcus said, by way of an introduction neither of them had asked for. "He'll know things about how that port operates that the rest of us don't."

Trip studied the overlay before he spoke. "If Drakov's got the harbor master's office, he's not moving cargo through blind. He's got eyes on every manifest that crosses that dock, which means anything you build against him has to survive someone on his payroll reading it first." He looked at Andre directly for the first time. "Your warrant request goes through the wrong hands, he knows you're coming before you do."

Zain didn't say anything yet. He didn't need to. The set of his jaw was doing enough talking for both of them. Seth gave his man a wry grin, clearly very familiar with his surly attitude and distrust of anyone and everything outside of their team. Somewhere behind them, Nate's phone buzzed with a text only half the room could see, and whatever it said made Nate snort quietly into his coffee before he caught himself and put his professional face back on. Small mercies, on a night that wasn't going to hand out many more of them.

Andre was silent. Whatever was happening behind his eyes stayed there, locked down tight the way Marcus had seen him do back when the job required things neither of them liked to remember.

"How long?" Andre asked finally. It wasn't really a question.

"Once the ships dock, the cargo atomizes." Marcus kept his tone neutral because there was no emotion that fit. "Regional trucks, loaded and gone within hours. Headed in every direction you can drive out of Detroit. After that…" He let the implication hang in the air like smoke. "There's no single point left to hit. No warehouse. No depot. Nothing that sits still long enough to raid. We might get lucky if they use nodes we have already uncovered, but my team isn't big enough to help once they clear the state lines. The Atlanta tip off was luck only because one of my team had business down there at the time." He waited a beat before landing the truth like a hammer. "This isn't cargo. You understand what I'm telling you. Every number on this screen is a person."

Andre's jaw didn't so much as twitch, but something shifted deep behind his eyes, a fracture his expression fought hard to conceal.

"I understand exactly what it is," he said.

Marcus watched him take that in, saw the flash of hurt and anger that were so obvious when you knew how to read them in Andre's face. In that moment, Marcus would have done anything to spare the man he had loves… maybe somewhere still did… the part that would cost him more than the truth already had. But, there were fourty people on three ships who couldn't afford for him to be soft. For any of them to be.

"You could run this," he said. "Officially. Get whatever agency has jurisdiction on the water moving, get a warrant that'll survive somebody actually asking questions about it later. I'll give you everything Ghost pulled, clean enough to source, and step back."

Andre's eyes came off the monitor and found him instead. "You're offering me first crack at this."

Zain made a sound low in his throat, not quite a word, not quite swallowed either. Marcus didn't look at him. Not yet. There would be time for that once Andre was gone, and Zain would make sure of it whether Marcus gave him the time or not.

"I'm not going to be the reason you have to explain to your own people why cargo ships full of trafficking victims got hit by a crew that isn't yours to run." Marcus kept his voice even, though even wasn't the same as easy. Every hour Andre's channels took to get moving was an hour closer to a dock, then trucks, then nothing left anywhere to hit. He knew that better than anyone in the room. Trip's read on the harbor master's office made it worse, not better. He offered it anyway. "You built a career doing this the right way. I'm not going to be the one who takes that choice away from you. Not this time. Not… not when it's him." The offer was Marcus ripping out his still beating heart and handing it to the man he loved… not had loved. Loved still. He knew that as surely as he drew breath. Just being in the same room as Andre was costing him every bit of his restraint because all he wanted to do was erase the last half decade and take back what they'd lost.

Andre didn't answer right away. He looked back at the coastline crawling north on the screen and said nothing for a while, weighing something Marcus couldn't see the shape of, only the weight of it sitting in the room between them.

"How long do I have?" he asked finally, "Before you stop waiting on me?"

"Not long," Marcus said. It was the most honest thing he'd said all day.

Andre didn't move toward the door right away. He looked at Marcus instead, really looked, the kind of looking neither of them had let themselves do since he'd walked in.

He knew what Andre was seeing. A man handing back six years of oath and duty on a platter neither of them had asked to set, because some part of Marcus that never fully shut off still needed Andre to be exactly who he'd always been, even now, even here, even though giving him the choice might cost them the one clean shot they had at this. Andre knew that too. Marcus watched the understanding move behind his eyes like weather crossing open water, slow and total and impossible to look away from.

And underneath the understanding, something else moved too, something Marcus recognized from years of watching for exactly this: the same stillness Andre wore when a place cost him more than he'd admit out loud. Six years hadn't erased the tell. Marcus had asked him to walk back into the one building he'd have avoided for the rest of his life if anyone had given him another choice, and Andre had done it anyway, had stood two feet from a door he could have already walked through, because somewhere on a boat in cold water there were people who didn't have the luxury of anyone's comfort, and Andre would burn every year of pain this place had ever cost him down to nothing if it meant getting them out alive.

That was who he was. That was who he'd always been. It was the exact reason Marcus had never managed to stop loving him, and the exact reason he'd had to let him go.

"Andre," Marcus said, and didn't know what he meant to follow it with.

"I know," Andre said, like he'd heard the whole sentence anyway. Maybe he had. Six years hadn't managed to erase that particular fluency between them, whatever else it had taken.

Then he turned and the door closed behind him. It reduced the room to just a room again.

The door hadn't even fully closed behind Andre before Zain came off the wall he'd been holding up.

"We give the cops first crack. What the actual fuck." Not a question. Zain said it like he was testing how much it would hurt to say out loud, and it clearly hurt plenty. "We've never done that. Not once. Not for anybody."

"He's not anybody," Marcus said.

"That's worse." Zain's jaw worked. "That means you're not even doing the math right now, you're just doing him a favor because-" He stopped himself before he finished it, which was its own kind of mercy, and Marcus didn't thank him for it.

Nate came in then, Jude a half-step behind him with the unhurried quiet of someone who already knew this wasn't his fight. Jude folded himself onto the arm of Nate's chair without being asked, working the loose cuff of his sweater between two fingers, in and out, in and out, watching the room with the stillness of someone who'd learned a long time ago that some conversations you just survive.

"If his people move slow and it costs lives, that's on him," Nate said, quiet, not taking a side so much as putting a fact on the table. "If we move without him and it costs him his career, that's on us. Either way somebody pays for this decision. Marcus is just picking who."

Zain didn't answer that. He looked like he wanted to, though.