CHAPTER 22
Matteo
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I broke the chair leg before I broke the tie, because the chair leg was quieter.
I put my heel on the strut and leaned until the glue let go.
The wood came away and the crack of it went straight into my left side.
I sat down on the concrete with the leg across my knees and waited for the room to stop tilting.
The window was taped over in brown bands and one end had lifted at the corner. When the shutter moved down in the bay below, the air came up the stair to me. The loose end ticked on the glass and then went quiet. That tick was the only clock in the room.
The heater in the corner burned kerosene and the dust on its element cooked the whole time. The broken chair had a split vinyl seat, mended with the same brown tape. There was a bottle of water on the sill and I had not touched it.
Kranz had set it down himself and spoken to me from the stair, through the door. “Drink the water,” he said. “I am not paid to make you thirsty.”
His steps had gone down and the shutter had come up in the bay. I drank it now, because I was going to need my hands steady.
The tie had gone on over the bones of my wrists and it was never coming off over them. I worked my left hand small and pulled slowly, and the plastic took a band off me. The hand came through wet. By the time the loop was off, both wrists wore the same raw ring, and the left one bled.
Something in the sight of that was funny and I laughed at it. The laugh got as far as the ribs and died there, and I went down on one knee. I stayed there until the breath came back shallow and steady. After that I stopped trying to fill my lungs at all.
The monitor on the desk had a crack running corner to corner and it still showed the bay in slices.
I had been reading it sideways since the middle of the night.
Kranz’s men crossed it with the flat patience of paid work.
A vehicle had taken her out of that yard before it was light, and I watched it go.
He had said Water Street on the stair to one of them and he had not lowered his voice for it. That was all I had, and it was enough to be worth a staircase. I put the chair leg down, because it cost breath to carry and would buy me nothing.
The door opened inward and the hinges were on my side, which is a thing men stop seeing. The pins were painted in along the knuckle. I worked them up with the cut end of the tie, stopping whenever my side told me to. Then the door came away on the hinge side and I walked it open with my shoulder.
The stair had a wall on the left and open air on the right. I put my right shoulder against the wall and went down that way, one tread at a time. Every step arrived in the same place under my arm. I stopped on the landing because stopping was cheaper than falling.
Then the shutter came up hard below and the cold came up the stair with it. Voices went out flat across the concrete, and none of them belonged to the men I had been watching. I knew Luca’s before I had a single word of it.
Cassian’s voice came up the stairwell next, level and pitched to carry. “Kestrel on the stair,” he said. “Say something so I know which side of a door you are on.”
“Landing above you, and the office door is off its hinges.” My voice came out thin and I disliked the sound of it. “Come up on the wall side, because the rail is loose along the top.”
“Stay where you are and keep talking to me.” He was already moving. “Tell me what is behind you before I put a man past it.”
“Nothing is behind me,” I said. “The room is empty and the window has been taped since yesterday.”
They came up in a stack and Rian was first, which was wrong and nobody had stopped him. The sling was gone. His left arm hung where the shoulder let it hang and it did not come up when he reached for the rail.
“She is not here. They moved her before it was light.”
Rian stopped on the step below mine. His face did nothing at all, which is the worse of the things it does.
“Tell me which room she is in and then get out of my way.”
“There is no room,” I said. “There is a yard and a vehicle that used it, and the vehicle went before dawn.”
He looked past me at the doorway. Then it came out of him sideways.
“I was late for Fergus.”
Nobody answered that and nobody ever has. Cassian came up past him and took the cut plastic out of my hand, because that is what he does.
“Give me the house before we go down into it.”
“Six of them in the building, and the smallest one carries the keys.” I got my back onto the wall and let it hold some of my weight. “Kranz is here, and he goes out the front the moment you are loud.”
“Luca, take the front door and the yard.” Cassian looked at how I was standing. “Rian, you are with me on the bay.”
“Can you walk down a stair without falling on it?”
“I can still walk,” I said. “I cannot run and I cannot breathe deep, so plan around that.”
“Then carry a radio and tell me what you see.” He put one in my hand and closed my fingers on it. “Sit against the wall until the bay is quiet.”
Luca’s voice arrived in my ear from somewhere below. “I can hear you breathing from there, Matteo, and I do not care for the sound of it.”
“The ribs on my left side are cracked and the rest of me works.”
“Then stay on your landing and let the loud men earn their money.”
I heard the bay go over in one long scrape of boots and furniture. Nobody fired anything. I gave them the doorways as they came to them.
“One man out the front and moving.” Luca was breathing hard. “He has left his people standing in the bay.”
Sasha came over the top of him, calm as always. “That vehicle is north on the water. It is not slowing down for anything.”
“Tie them and leave them breathing.” Cassian was already on the stair below me. “Nobody stays here to guard an empty room.”
The rain had not stopped since before first light and the yard was running with it. Luca drove. I sat behind him with my right shoulder into the seat, because sitting square cost more than sitting crooked.
Nineteen minutes from Red Hook to Water Street. I knew the road without looking at it and I did not count anything else.
It had been sitting in me since the night before and it went together now.
“She left the medal square on the counter and pushed the next seventy-two-hour pulse after the exchange call, so she went willingly.”
Nobody argued. Luca’s hands stayed where they were on the wheel.
“Then she needs a terminal,” Cassian said. “We are the noise while she gets to it.”
“That is the worst good news anybody has handed me all year.” Luca took the ramp onto the road without slowing. “I would like to be angry with her and I find that I cannot.”
I pressed the radio and asked for the woman who had put us in the vehicle. “Sasha, tell it to me again. How did you find that house?”
“The lease is in the vendor’s name and the water bill is not. Red Hook, brick, loading bay.”
“You are the reason we came through that door.”
“Take the tower instead of thanking me.” A keyboard went under her voice, fast and untidy. “I have the dock plan in front of me.”
“It is Saturday and the building is thin,” she said. “The dock is the only way in without crossing the lobby.”
“What do you have on the sub-level cameras?” Luca asked it without turning his head.
“Sub-level two is dark to me. The cage runs on a loop of its own.”
“That is the point of the cage.” I got my breath and used it. “It is air-gapped, and it is the only place on earth her token reads.”
“Then that is where he has her, and that is where we go.” Luca cut across the lanes and the rain came off the roof in a sheet.
Rian had said nothing since the stair. He sat beside me with his right hand on his knee and his left arm held immobile against his ribs.
“Drive faster and stop talking about cameras.”
“I am driving as fast as the rain allows and the rain is winning.” Luca said it lightly and his knuckles were white.
“Weapons stay holstered until somebody points one at us.” Cassian did not turn around. “That is not a preference and I want it heard.”
“Mine stays holstered.” Rian looked out at the water. “I am not going to need it.”
Sasha again, under the wipers. “Kane, the ramp camera has you as soon as you turn.”
“Copy that,” I said. “I will call the doors from the back of the stack.”
The ramp went down under the building with the rain running ahead of us. There was one roller door, a scale plate in the floor, and a contract team standing on it. Luca was out of the vehicle before it had properly stopped, hands open, a folded page held up in one of them.
“Gentlemen, not one of you is insured for this, and I can prove that in writing.”
“Stop where you are and put the paper on the ground.” The one on the left had his rifle up and his elbow wrong.
“I would rather put it in your hand.” Luca kept walking, slowly, and kept his palms turned out. “Your certificate excludes willful acts, and your employer has known that from the start.”
“You are on private property and this is a lawful post.”
“It is a lawful post carrying an unlawful instruction.” He held the page higher. “The man downstairs has an attorney against her will, and you are standing on his cover.”
“We were told this was a building matter.”
“It stopped being a building matter before you got out of the van.” Luca put the page into the nearest glove and let go of it. “Read the second paragraph. Your indemnity ends where the word willful begins.”
The one on the left came off the plate fast and swung the rifle butt short and flat. It caught Luca above the right eyebrow and opened him from the bone outward. He rocked back on his heels and stayed upright and did not stop talking.
“That is the only assault committed on this dock and it was his.” Blood was already into his right eye and he blinked it clear. “The rest of you can walk out as witnesses instead of defendants.”
“Nobody here needs to be a hero today.”
“Put them on the floor, go home, and let the lawyers ruin somebody else this weekend.”