Chapter Thirty-Four #2
“Shit,” Corwin whispered beside her, and his good hand tightened around the forklift base. “That drive has the direct Ardizzi material.”
Isolde knew.
She also knew exactly what Taddeo would say if she announced that she intended to crawl across an active firefight for it.
The thought did not automatically make him wrong.
Russo moved toward the evidence.
A Bellandi shooter from the hidden rail position forced him behind the concrete divider with two controlled shots, and Isolde saw the opening created by the movement.
The drive remained beneath the table approximately eight feet from Orsino, who had been cut off on the opposite side by debris from an overturned equipment cart.
Corwin followed her eyes and immediately understood.
“No.”
Isolde looked at him. “That's interesting.”
“You are not crawling out there for a fucking USB drive.”
“It's encrypted evidence of the man currently trying to kill us.”
“I am aware of its résumé.”
“The first archive only proves Verri. The second is what ties Lelio directly.”
Corwin's jaw tightened. “I can reconstruct part of it.”
“Part.”
“Enough.”
“You hid it for weeks because it was the strongest leverage you had.”
“That was before somebody started shooting at my sister.”
Isolde nearly laughed despite the terror pressing against her chest. “You do realize you're doing the thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Deciding that because you're frightened, my assessment stops counting.”
Corwin stared at her.
The accusation struck.
Even now.
Especially now.
He looked toward the drive, then toward the line of fire, and swore under his breath. “What is your assessment?”
The question mattered so much that Isolde almost hated him for learning it while blood ran down his sleeve.
She studied the geometry instead of answering emotionally.
Russo was pinned behind the barrier.
Shots from utility continued intermittently toward the south side.
The hidden rail team had a line across most of the apron, but not beneath the steel verification table.
The drive lay close to a concrete support.
“If Russo moves, I stay here,” she said. “If the rail team pins him again and Orsino draws back, I can reach the table without crossing the open center.”
Corwin looked at the path.
He did not like it.
Neither did she.
“Fine,” he said finally. “But I go with you.”
“You're bleeding.”
“I remain capable of crawling eight feet.”
“You're very irritating.”
“I raised you.”
“You are three years older than me.”
“It felt longer.”
A burst of shots cut off the argument.
Russo ducked.
Orsino moved.
Isolde saw the opening.
She went.
The pavement tore at her palms even through the thin gloves she had worn for warmth, and every instinct screamed to move faster while the rational part of her mind insisted that staying low behind the concrete divider mattered more than speed.
Corwin came after her on one arm, using his uninjured side to keep himself down as they reached the verification table.
The second drive lay beneath one of the steel legs.
Isolde stretched for it.
Her fingers closed around the plastic casing.
Something struck the tabletop above her hard enough to ring through the metal.
She jerked back.
Russo had fired again.
Before he could correct his aim, shots from the hidden Bellandi position forced him behind the south warehouse support.
Isolde shoved the drive inside the inner pocket of her coat.
Then she saw the physical ledger lying several feet farther away.
“No,” Corwin said beside her, already reading her face. “You got the drive, and we are not negotiating another object.”
“The ledger is original evidence.”
“I know what it is because I brought it.”
“It connects the intermediary.”
“I am still saying no.”
Isolde looked at the ledger.
A dark liquid was creeping across the pavement toward it from beneath the overturned equipment cart.
Not water.
The smell reached her a second later.
Fuel or solvent.
Someone had prepared to burn the evidence.
The realization arrived simultaneously with movement near the eastern utility structure.
A man stepped through the emergency-red shadow beside Kallis.
Older than the soldiers around him.
Well-cut dark coat.
Silver at the temples.
Lelio Ardizzi.
Isolde had seen him at Cesare's table smiling warmly while asking whether Corwin ever gave her old books or maps.
He had eaten Bellandi food, joked with the people he intended to betray, and looked at Isolde with the casual interest of a man already deciding whether she knew enough to become dangerous.
Now the warmth was gone.
Lelio carried a handgun low beside his thigh and stared toward the evidence scattered across the apron with open fury.
“You had one fucking job,” he snapped toward Russo, his voice carrying because the emergency had stripped away any reason to maintain the pretense. “Get the drives and burn the case before Dacre hands them over.”
Russo shouted something Isolde could not hear.
Lelio moved closer to the utility wall and looked toward Kallis. “The Volkov phones stay with the bodies, and the west car burns here. If Bellandi investigators walk into this yard and it doesn't look like Serevin work, every one of you has wasted months.”
Isolde went cold.
There it was.
Not implication.
Not financial overlap.
A deliberate frame.
Corwin heard it too.
His expression hardened in a way she had never seen.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, keeping his voice low as Lelio moved through the red-lit yard. “He was building the Serevin story before I even disappeared.”
Lelio looked toward the verification table.
Isolde ducked.
“Corwin Dacre does not leave this terminal,” Lelio called toward Russo and the remaining men. “Neither does the sister, and if Malfatti gives you the shot, take it before his hidden team closes the east side.”
The words hit Isolde harder than the gunfire.
Lelio knew about the hidden team now.
Which meant the trap was collapsing from both directions.
Corwin reached for the ledger.
Isolde caught his sleeve. “You just told me not to.”
“That was before he announced he intends to burn everything.”
“You're shot.”
“Yes, which means I have finally acquired a legitimate reason to ignore good advice.”
Despite herself, she almost laughed.
Corwin used the concrete leg of the table to pull himself farther forward, reached into the creeping fuel, and caught the ledger by its edge. A shot struck the pavement inches from his hand before he dragged it back.
Isolde grabbed the ledger from him and immediately slipped it beneath her coat beside the drive.
The absurd familiarity of protecting fragile paper under terrible conditions flickered through her mind, and she thought of the conservation lab, Japanese tissue, humidity charts, and all the small methods people used to preserve damaged things because survival often came down to protecting what remained rather than pretending nothing had happened.
“We have both,” she said. “Now we move.”
Corwin nodded through clenched teeth.
A sharp explosion came from the western side.
Not large enough to be a bomb.
A vehicle tire or fuel ignition.
Corwin twisted toward the sound.
His van's front quarter panel flared orange beneath the emergency lighting.
His driver was no longer beside it.
For one horrible second Isolde thought the man had been killed, then she saw him moving low behind a container farther west, firing toward someone near the access road.
The escape route was gone.
Corwin looked at the burning van, then at Isolde.
Something in his expression changed.
Not regret.
Acceptance.
He had already made the choice before the route disappeared.
That mattered.
“Scale housing,” Isolde said, remembering the map. “From there we can get north without crossing the full apron.”
Corwin pressed his injured arm close to his body. “You lead.”
They moved when the next volley shifted toward utility.
Isolde stayed low and used the old forklift base, a concrete wheel stop, and the shadow of an abandoned container chassis as stepping points rather than running straight across open ground.
Corwin followed more slowly than before, and twice she had to force herself not to stop in exposed space when his breathing changed behind her.
They reached the scale housing.
A Bellandi man appeared from the north side.
Isolde froze.
Dark jacket.
Weapon.
Wrong angle.
He called her name.
“Ms. Dacre, Malfatti sent me. Come north with me now.”
Corwin started to move.
Isolde caught him.
“No.”
The man took another step. “We don't have time for this. Taddeo said—”
“I don't know you.”
His face changed.
Barely.
Enough.
Isolde dropped behind the scale housing as the man's gun came up.
Corwin pulled her the rest of the way down.
Gunfire cracked from the north warehouse.
The false rescuer jerked sideways and collapsed behind the rail equipment.
Isolde stared at the place he had been standing.
Taddeo's warning came back again.
Do not follow a voice simply because somebody says Bellandi security or uses my name.
“Fuck,” Corwin breathed.
Isolde looked at him. “That was eloquent.”
“I was about to follow him.”
“I know.”
“He knew Malfatti's name.”
“That was rather the point of the warning.”
Corwin pressed his head briefly against the concrete. “I hate that he was right.”
“You and I can discuss that later.”
A different voice came from the north warehouse.
“Isolde.”
Marco.
She knew it immediately.
Not only the voice.
The position.
Exactly where Taddeo had said the hidden layer would be.
Isolde leaned just enough to look.
Marco was behind the corner of the warehouse with another loyal man, weapon raised toward the utility side.
“Can you move?” he called.
“Yes.” Isolde looked toward Corwin. “He's hit in the upper arm.”
“I heard that,” Corwin muttered.
Marco's expression tightened when he saw the blood but he did not attempt to cross the open ground. “North route is not clear yet. Stay behind the scale housing until I tell you otherwise.”
Isolde almost objected to the phrasing.
Then another round struck the pavement between them.
She decided the criticism could wait.