Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
BONES
The SUV was too full of breathing.
Too many small, uneven inhales. Too many soft, strangled sniffles. Too much fear packed into one metal box rattling down a port access road.
And every sound carved itself somewhere under my ribs.
Still, my head stayed clear. It had to.
Voodoo drove like the vehicle was an extension of him. Lunchbox kept watch out the back window, every muscle coiled. Grace sat in the middle row, kids anchored around her and Goblin like gravity.
I watched all of it. I always did.
Alphabet’s voice crackled again in my ear, cool and clipped. “Sending the final pin drop. Maintenance outbuilding behind an old inspection lot. Cameras are down. No foot traffic. You’ve got fifteen minutes before someone with guns and bad intentions realizes those vans aren’t on schedule.”
“Copy,” I said.
Grace didn’t look at me, but she was listening. She always was.
The smallest kid—little girl with the stuffed toy missing an eye—had her face buried in Goblin’s fur. The dog didn’t move except to give a low, steady thrum of protective noise from his chest. Nico sat plastered to Grace’s left, staring out the window like the world was made of monsters.
He wasn’t wrong.
Lunchbox leaned forward between the seats. “If they’re running blackout on that bigger transport, we’re not dealing with an average delivery.”
“Never said we were,” I muttered.
“We need more than the four of us,” Voodoo said. “And maybe a tank.”
Lunchbox snorted. “I can be a tank.”
“You’re shaped like one,” Voodoo added with a laugh.
“Thank you.” Lunchbox grinned. “I’ll take point.”
The kids startled at the laughter, but little Nico proved to be a trooper and he smiled.
The safe building Alphabet found came into view—a squat concrete block at the edge of the old port inspection lot, fenced off and abandoned. Perfect for hiding. Perfect for protecting.
“Voodoo,” I said, “circle once.”
He did, slow. My eyes tracked everything—the sightlines, the blind corners, the possible exits, the two routes that could be used to funnel an ambush. Nothing moved except a gull picking at a paper bag.
“Clear,” I said.
We rolled up to the rear of the building. Lunchbox hopped out first, crowbar in hand, to sweep the perimeter. I took a second sweep of the interior—doorframe sturdy, floor dusty, windows boarded.
Secure enough.
“Grace,” I called softly. “Bring them in.”
She unbuckled, then led the kids out to follow her. Nico’s hand was in hers, the other children linked hands together, a chain of ducklings sticking so close they looked tied together. Goblin herded them with soft nudges, tail down but wagging just enough to say safe safe safe.
I stood in the doorway, a Glock in hand, a pair of clips and a taser. Once they were inside, I passed Grace what she needed. “One is already in the chamber. If anyone comes through that door that isn’t us, you shoot first and ask questions later.”
Grace’s eyes shone even though she was shaking. “We’ll be fine.”
“Yes, you will.” I touched two fingers to her chin, then tapped her comm unit. “You’ll be able to hear us, but I want you to mute your end unless we need something or you do.”
She nodded again. “Goblin and I can do this.”
I pressed a firm kiss to her lips, not stretching this out any longer than we needed to. Voodoo had rolled out a length of chain to wrap around the outer doorhandles, we’d “secure” it so it looked locked from the outside once we were there.
Then Grace’s voice—quiet—found me in the dim.
“Bones?”
I turned.
She swallowed. For a second, she looked small. Not weak—never that—but weighed down by what she’d just carried out of those vans.
“What do I tell them?” she whispered.
The kids watched her with hollow eyes. Nico clung to her sleeve. Goblin sat pressed to her ankle.
I didn’t sugarcoat it. Couldn’t.
“You tell them they’re safe,” I said. “Because right now, they are.”
Her throat worked. She nodded.
“You come back,” she said—soft, not pleading, just truth.
I didn’t promise, but I had no intentions of disobeying the order.
“We burn it down,” I said instead. “Then we come back.”
Alphabet chimed in. “Bones. Clock’s ticking.”
I touched Grace’s shoulder once—deliberate, solid—then stepped back through the door.
She watched me until it shut.
I heard the click as she slid the interior bolt.
Good.
Voodoo did the final touch, then we were back in the SUV. The day had grown longer and longer. Somewhere in here, late afternoon had become evening.
“Movement confirmed.” Alphabet said. “The blackout transport just changed course. Heading straight for the port.”
Voodoo shifted into drive, face going hard.
“Think they are sending a hit squad for the kids or for their men who fucked up?” Lunchbox asked.
“Both,” I said, doublechecking my gun. “Body armor for this.” We didn’t have everything I’d like, but we still had enough. Lunchbox was opening a case in the back.
Voodoo floored it.
“Give us an overview of the pier and the port,” I said as I pulled the vest on that Lunchbox passed up.
Alphabet didn’t waste a second.
“Copy. Overview coming up. Pulling satellite and traffic feeds… hold—” A pause, then the shift in his voice that always meant he saw something he really didn’t like.
“Okay. Listen close. Pier C is locked down tighter than usual. Almost no forklift traffic. Yard workers moved off main lanes. Either someone knows they’ve got company coming…
or someone cleared the board to make room for this transport. ”
“That’s deliberate,” Voodoo muttered.
“Every bit of it,” Alphabet confirmed. “Truck’s about a mile out. Long-bed hauler. Heavy suspension. No plates. Running cold—no transponder, no scanner ping, nothing to give me a digital fingerprint. That alone pisses me off.”
“Tell us about their route,” I said.
“You’re going to intercept near the west access lane,” he answered. “Transport’s coming up the outer road, hugging the fence line. If they keep pace, they’ll hit Dock 22 in four minutes.”
Legend scoffed. “That’s one of the loading docks for personal imports?”
“Yes, and from what I can see, it’s been used a lot recently.” Alphabet said, voice grim. “Means they are comfortable here.”
Voodoo pushed us into the outer lane, weaving between warehouse trucks with surgical precision. We merged onto the service road, keeping speed without drawing eyes. The port lights threw long golden streaks across the asphalt—barren, eerie, wrong.
The kind of wrong that made the hair at my nape rise.
Lunchbox leaned forward. “You want us tight on the tail or hanging back?”
“Hanging back,” I said. “Two hundred feet. I want a buffer if they’ve got shooters in the cab or someone in the rear compartment.”
Legend rolled down his window an inch, eyes narrowed. “Think they’re expecting company?”
“They’re expecting someone,” I said. “Maybe not us.”
Voodoo’s jaw flexed. “But they’ll get us anyway.”
The road curved, revealing the silhouette of the truck—a hulking shadow moving slow and steady, too heavy to be legal, too intentional to be innocent.
There it was.
The blackout transport.
Not a standard freight hauler. Taller. Reinforced. The kind of truck used to move something that wasn’t supposed to exist.
“Alphabet,” I murmured, “scan for escort vehicles.”
“Two cars behind it—unmarked.” He was already ahead of me. “One pickup ahead of you. None of them have plates. All three are maintaining a perfect triangle around the truck.”
“So a convoy,” Lunchbox said. “Love that.”
“No,” I corrected. “We’ve got a cage.”
Legend cursed under his breath. “They’re guarding it. Hard.”
“And we’re behind their cage of three vehicles,” Voodoo said. “Means if we get closer, they’ll box us out.”
“And if we stay back too far?” Lunchbox asked.
“They’ll know we’re tailing,” I said.
So we kept that perfect two-hundred-foot distance. Close enough to see everything, far enough not to spook the whole parade.
The truck’s brake lights flashed once—too sharp, too quick.
“That was a signal.” Voodoo blew out a breath.
“Yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Calling a check.”
The vehicles in the cage tightened half a lane inward.
Alphabet hissed. “Shit. They’re checking for tails. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Define stupid,” Voodoo muttered, but he kept us steady and we didn’t try to close the distance or shift lanes.
The transport rumbled past a row of idle cranes, then made a wide, sweeping turn deeper into the heart of the port—toward the restricted loading zones.
Alphabet’s voice returned. “You’re heading toward the decommissioned section of Pier C. You’ll lose public coverage soon. All cameras past this point feed to internal servers.”
“Already handled that?” Voodoo asked.
Alphabet snorted. “Please. They won’t be watching anything but black screens for the next hour.”
Good.
The convoy approached a steel checkpoint gate—one that should’ve been guarded.
It wasn’t.
Instead, one man in a reflective vest stepped out, waved the truck through with zero ID check, and never once looked at the trailing vehicles.
Inside job. Completely.
The transport rolled into the restricted pier.
Voodoo slowed at the gate, just enough to look like we weren’t following them. The gate guard glanced at us, hand drifting toward his radio.
Lunchbox reached across the seat and brandished his dock badge—one of the good fakes, the kind we tried to avoid using but came in handy in situations like this.
The guard flicked his eyes over it before waving us through. Yeah, he wasn’t all that interested in this, so move us along.
Lazy.
Complicit.
Dead in a few minutes if he kept working with the wrong people.
We moved deeper, the warehouse shadows growing long and the sea breeze turning metallic. Voodoo killed our headlights. We glided down another lane of containers, tracking the convoy on the other side.
The convoy turned again—this time toward a row of sealed containers staged at the waterline. The same place we’d found the kids.
My pulse ticked once.