CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Liam
The call came just after dawn. I was already awake, sitting in my office with a cold cup of coffee and a stack of reports spread across the desk.
I hadn’t slept properly since Nora found the message at the café, and I’d stopped pretending that rest was possible.
Every lead and phone record had been running through my head in an endless loop.
My phone vibrated once. It was Diggs. I answered before the second vibration.
“Tell me you have something useful.”
His voice came through, sharp and controlled. “We found him. One of our contacts matched the sketch to a fixer operating near the waterfront. He’s been using the name Ian Mercer, not Marcus Reed, but the face matches. He’s moving between short-term rentals and keeping his head down.”
I stood immediately. “Where exactly?”
“Near the old shipping district. We have eyes on him, but he’s careful, Liam. He checks reflections, changes direction without warning, and avoids staying in one place long enough for anyone to get comfortable.”
A slow, cold satisfaction settled in my chest. “Don’t approach him. Keep him in sight and wait for me.”
“I knew you were going to say that.” The line went dead.
I reached for my jacket and headed out of the office. Paddy was already in the hallway, as though he’d sensed the shift in the air before I said a word.
“You found him.”
“Yes,” I said. “Diggs has him near the waterfront. Get Michael and have two cars ready. I want this done quietly, and I don’t want the police anywhere near it.”
Paddy nodded once. Within minutes, we were driving through the city.
The morning traffic was beginning to build, but it barely registered in my mind.
I watched the streets through the window, calculating routes, exits, and blind spots.
Marcus had spent days watching Nora, sitting close enough to study her routine while believing he was invisible.
He was about to learn what it felt like to be hunted.
Diggs called again as we approached the waterfront.
“He just left the building. He’s walking east toward the warehouses, and he’s checked behind him twice in the last minute. I think he knows someone is watching.”
“Keep your distance,” I said. “Don’t give him a reason to run before I get there.”
We stopped two blocks away. I stepped out of the car and adjusted my jacket, ignoring the pull of pain in my shoulder where the old injury still lingered.
The air smelled of salt, oil, and rain-soaked concrete.
Ahead of me, the shipping district stretched toward the water in a maze of abandoned warehouses, narrow alleys, and rusted loading docks.
Perfect terrain for a man who wanted to disappear.
Diggs appeared from the corner of a building and handed me a small photograph.
It was him—the same face from Nora’s sketch, the same eyes that had watched her at the bar and across the café.
“He’s inside Warehouse Twelve,” Diggs said quietly. “He went in three minutes ago. Michael is covering the rear exit, and Paddy has men watching the surrounding streets.” I studied the photograph for a moment before folding it and slipping it into my pocket.
“Good,” I said. “Then there’s nowhere left for him to go.”
Diggs looked toward the warehouse. “What’s the plan?”
“We go in, we take him alive, and we make him tell us why he was sent after Nora.”
Without waiting for another word, I started toward the warehouse.
It was larger than it looked from the outside.
Every sound echoed through the empty space.
Diggs moved to my left while Michael circled toward the rear exit.
Paddy remained outside with the others, ready to close the net if Marcus tried to break through.
I raised a hand, signaling for silence. We stopped behind a stack of containers. From there, I could see him.
He was standing near the far wall, checking the contents of a small duffel bag.
He looked exactly as Nora had described him—average height and the kind of face that could disappear in a crowd.
For a moment, I watched him without moving.
He zipped the bag shut and looked toward the entrance. His body stiffened. He’d sensed us.
“Don’t run,” I said, my voice carrying across the warehouse. “You’ll only make this harder on yourself.”
His eyes locked onto mine. For a fraction of a second, neither of us moved. Then he dropped the bag and bolted.
“Michael, rear exit!” Diggs shouted into his radio.
Marcus sprinted between the containers, knocking over a metal crate as he passed. I followed immediately, the pain in my shoulder flaring with each step, but I ignored it. The warehouse blurred around me as I chased him through narrow aisles and over scattered debris.
He was fast, too fast for an ordinary man.
He knew how to move through tight spaces, how to use obstacles to slow a pursuer, and how to disappear for just long enough to create doubt.
But I had no intention of losing him. He reached a staircase leading to the upper level and took it two steps at a time.
I followed close behind, hearing Diggs and Michael reposition below.
At the top, Marcus kicked open a door and burst onto a narrow metal walkway overlooking the warehouse floor. The railing rattled beneath his weight as I closed the distance. He glanced back once, saw how near I was, and made a desperate decision.
Instead of continuing along the walkway, he vaulted over the railing and dropped onto a lower platform. The impact shook the metal beneath him, and he stumbled. That was the mistake I’d been waiting for.
I jumped down after him, landing hard enough to send pain shooting through my leg, but I didn’t stop. Before he could regain his balance, I drove him against the wall and slammed my forearm across his throat.
He struggled immediately, twisting and striking at my ribs. I tightened my grip.
“Who sent you after Nora?” I asked, my voice low and deadly. He said nothing. His eyes burned with defiance as I pressed harder. “Answer me now, or I’ll make you regret every second of the rest of your life!”
Fear flickered across his face, but vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Marcus drove his elbow into my ribs with enough force to loosen my grip for a fraction of a second. He twisted sharply and slammed his shoulder into my chest.
I staggered back a step, the pain in my shoulder flaring violently, and that single moment was all he needed. He sprinted toward the far end of the platform, knocking over a rusted toolbox as he passed. The metal scattered across the floor with a deafening crash.
“Diggs, cut him off at the east corridor. Don’t let him reach the outer loading docks.”
“I’m already moving,” Diggs answered through the radio, his voice tight with concentration.
Marcus reached the end of the platform and kicked open another door, sending a rush of cold air through the warehouse. He disappeared into a narrow service corridor lined with dripping pipes and weak emergency lights, and I followed him without hesitation.
The corridor was barely wide enough for two men to pass each other comfortably.
Water dripped steadily onto the concrete floor, and the dim lights cast long shadows that made the space feel even tighter.
Ahead of me, I could hear his footsteps pounding against the ground, fast and uneven.
The corridor opened into a stairwell leading down toward the loading docks.
He took the stairs two at a time, gripping the railing as he turned the corner.
At the bottom of the stairs, he burst through a metal door and into the open dockyard.
Morning fog had rolled in from the water, covering the ground in a thin gray haze that swallowed shapes and muffled every sound.
For a second, he disappeared into it completely.
Then I saw his silhouette moving between the abandoned trucks.
“Michael, he’s heading toward the loading docks. Move to intercept him before he reaches the outer wall.”
“I’m already there,” Michael replied.
Marcus must have heard the urgency in my voice, because he changed direction immediately.
Instead of running toward the main gate, he cut between two rusted trucks and climbed onto the back of an abandoned trailer, using the height to try to reach the outer wall of the dockyard. I closed the distance.
He jumped from the trailer onto a stack of wooden crates, but the wood shifted beneath his weight.
One of the crates cracked loudly, and his balance gave way.
His body lurched sideways as he tried to recover, and in that instant, I caught his ankle and pulled him down with all the force I had left.
He hit the concrete hard, the impact knocking the breath from him, but he was still fighting.
He rolled onto his back and reached inside his jacket, his movements frantic now.
I grabbed his wrist before he could pull his hand free and slammed it against the ground.
A knife slipped from his fingers and clattered across the dockyard, disappearing beneath one of the trucks.
I pinned him there, my forearm pressed against his throat while the fog curled around us.
Diggs and Michael appeared from opposite sides of the yard, closing in silently until they formed a wall around him.
Marcus looked from one man to the other, then back at me, and I watched the realization settle slowly into his eyes.
He understood that the chase was over. And he also understood that I wasn’t going to let him leave that dockyard until he told me everything I wanted to know.
I tightened my grip on the fixer’s throat for a moment longer, watching the panic spread across his face as Diggs and Michael closed in from either side.
“Get him inside,” I said quietly. They hauled him to his feet before he could regain his strength.
He tried to pull away once, twisting violently enough to make Michael curse under his breath, but Diggs drove him forward with a hard shove between his shoulderblades.
Marcus stumbled through the fog-covered dockyard, his boots scraping against the concrete as we dragged him back toward Warehouse Twelve.
The small service room near the loading docks was empty except for a rusted table, two metal chairs, and a flickering lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Michael forced him into one of the chairs while Diggs secured his wrists behind him with plastic restraints.
I closed the door behind us, and the room fell silent.
Marcus lifted his head slowly, blood running from the corner of his mouth where he’d bitten down during the chase.
He tried to straighten his posture and recover some of the confidence he’d lost in the dockyard, but the fear in his eyes betrayed him.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said, his voice rough. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
I pulled the second chair across the floor and sat directly opposite him.
“No,” I replied calmly. “The mistake was yours. You walked into my bar, you followed Nora through my city, and you left a threat believing you would disappear before anyone found you. Now you’re going to tell me who sent you. ”
He looked away. I reached forward and grabbed his jaw, forcing him to face me again.
“Look at me when I speak to you. I don’t have the patience for lies or silence. Tell me the name of the man who hired you.”
His breathing quickened, but he said nothing. I released his jaw and stood slowly.
“Diggs,” I said without taking my eyes off Marcus, “close the blinds. Michael, make sure nobody comes near this room until I say otherwise.”
The blinds snapped shut, cutting off the weak daylight. Marcus swallowed hard.
“What do you want to know?” he asked finally.
I leaned forward, resting my hands on the table. “I want the truth. I want to know who hired you, how long you’ve been following Nora, and what your instructions were. If you lie to me, I’ll know, and you’ll regret it.”
He stared at me for several seconds, as though weighing whether silence was worth the pain that would follow. Then his shoulders sagged.
“Victor Hale,” he whispered. “He was the one who hired me.”
Nora’s stepfather. I kept my expression cold.
“How long?”
“Three weeks,” he admitted. “He paid me to track her movements, report back to him, and help coordinate her retrieval when he gave the order.”
“Retrieval?” I repeated, my voice dangerously soft.
“He wanted her brought back to him,” Marcus said quickly. “That was the job. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
I stared at him for a long moment, letting the words sink in.
Victor Hale hadn’t merely been watching Nora from a distance.
He’d sent people to bring her back to him.
And now, finally, I had the confirmation I needed.
I rose from the chair slowly. Marcus looked up at me, something desperate flickering in his eyes.
“I told you the truth,” he said. “I gave you Victor’s name. I gave you everything you wanted.”
“Yes,” I said calmly. “You did.”
For a brief second, relief crossed his face. He thought the truth had bought him something. He thought his confession had created a path out of this room. I reached into my jacket.
The sound of the gun leaving its holster was soft in the cramped room, almost gentle.
The color drained from Marcus’s face.
“Please.”