CHAPTER 18
DAMON
I kick the heavy iron grate open and the screech of rusted hinges echoes like a goddamn gunshot against the damp concrete.
We haul ourselves out of the maintenance shaft and the freezing, needle-like rain of the shipyard hits me right in the face.
The muggy, claustrophobic humidity of the subway tunnels is gone, instantly replaced by a biting Atlantic wind that smells like salt, dead fish, and old machinery.
I fucking hate the open air. Down in the tunnels I was the king of the dark, I knew every blind corner and choke point, but out here in this vast shadowy grid of a shipyard we’re just two massive targets on a flat plane waiting for a cartel sniper to take our heads off.
I wipe a mixture of freezing rain and slick tunnel grime out of my eyes with a knuckle that’s already split to the bone and bleeding from punching out that mercenary back at the platform.
"Keep your head down," I grit out, shoving her forward.
She stumbles, her oversized jacket soaked through, her combat boots slipping on the wet concrete. "I’m down. Where are we going?"
"Don't stop moving, Margarita," I tell her, my voice harsh enough to cut through the wind.
"Christ, it's freezing," she mutters, her teeth chattering as she pulls her arms tight around her chest.
We move fast between towering stacks of cobalt-blue shipping containers, the narrow alleys between them feeling like a maze designed to trap us.
My adrenaline high is crashing hard and fast. I can feel a familiar, sickening warmth blooming at my side, soaking the tactical fabric of my shirt.
The stitches she gave me back at her clinic are shredding under the pressure of all this fucking running and jumping over train tracks.
I try to mask the limp because I don't want her panicking, but the slick, oily ground makes every step a gamble and my body isn't listening to my brain anymore. I press my forearm hard against my ribs, digging my elbow into my side, trying to manually hold the wound together right through my tactical vest. I’m losing blood faster than I can pump it.
Margarita glances back, her clinical eyes dropping straight to my waist. She tracks the way my left shoulder dips with every step.
"I'm fine," I snap before she can open her mouth.
"You're bleeding through the vest."
"Just a tear. Keep walking."
She doesn't buy a second of it. She keeps squelching through the mud in those heavy boots, her head swiveling to check our flanks.
I can smell the copper rising from my own clothes over the scent of the rain, the flickering orange glow of a distant security light casting long, fucked-up shadows across our path.
"How far to the dock?" she demands.
"Close. Shut up and walk."
The ground turns from slick mud to coarse gravel.
We hit the shadow of a massive, rusted gantry crane and the sheer scale of the machinery makes my head spin.
I reach out and grab her upper arm, a heavy grip meant to steer her toward the water, but a wave of dizziness hits me like a freight train and the grip instantly turns into a desperate fucking anchor.
My boots slide on the wet grit and I start dragging her down toward the rusted steel of a crane support.
I want to be the one dragging her, not the other way around, but my body is throwing a total tantrum and she’s the only solid thing left standing in a spinning world.
Her hand snaps up, catching my elbow right before my knees hit the gravel. Her grip is surprisingly strong, her fingers digging into my muscle.
"Locke, you’re gray," she pants, bracing her stance so I don't pull us both into the dirt.
"Get off me," I growl, trying to shake her off.
"Let me take the weight."
"I said I'm fine."
"Shut up and lean on me," she orders, her voice dropping the panic and shifting straight into that cold, bossy surgeon tone. The rough, sandpaper texture of the crane's rust grinds against my shoulder as she wedges herself under my arm. The rain is drumming a chaotic beat on the hollow metal containers around us, but all I can focus on is the sudden warmth of her breath against my neck. It’s the first time in my miserable life I’ve ever felt this small.
This woman, who I dragged out of her clinic at gunpoint, is the only thing standing between me and face-planting in the mud.
We barely make it another twenty yards down the main lane before my bad leg, the one that got clipped by a ricochet during the skirmish, completely gives out.
Catastrophic fucking failure. I stumble, my heavy boots tangling, and my shoulder slams into a corrugated shipping container with a resonant boom that sounds way too loud.
I slide down the wet metal, my vision tunneling down into a pinpoint of white light, my tactical gear screeching against the steel all the way to the ground.
We are completely exposed out here in a main lane.
If a patrol passes right now they’ll spot us immediately and light us up, and I am officially a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound liability.
I taste salt on my lips. I expect her to run.
This is it, this is her golden ticket to sprint into the dark and leave me bleeding out like I deserve, but instead I smell the sharp scent of her damp, earthy hair right in my face.
Margarita digs her heels into the grit. Her small frame strains and shakes as she hauls my thick arm over her shoulders, refusing to let me drop.
"Get up, you bastard," she hisses, her voice a whip cracking in my ear.
"Leave it, Margarita. Go."
"You don't get to die in the rain. I already saved your miserable ass once tonight."
"I can't feel my fucking leg."
"Move your feet, Damon!" she screams at me in a harsh whisper, yanking me forward so hard my shoulder pops.
She doesn't just support me, she takes absolute tactical command.
She weaves us through the labyrinth of metal boxes, her head darting back and forth as she scans for movement.
She uses the shadows with a surgical precision, choosing the path of least resistance for my flagging strength.
She's not a surgeon right now, she's a fucking ghost, adapting to my world faster than I can process.
A pair of headlights suddenly cuts through the rain.
A cartel patrol SUV sweeps the far end of the alley, the high beams slicing through the fog.
We have exactly three seconds to disappear before the light hits us.
She shoves me hard into a narrow gap between two overlapping containers.
She follows me in, her body slamming against mine, pinning me tight against the cold metal wall to keep me upright and out of sight.
The vibration of the SUV engine rumbles through the wet ground right into the soles of my boots.
"Breathe through your nose," she whispers, her mouth pressed against my jaw.
I try to swallow a ragged cough.
"Stay quiet. Don't let them hear you bleed," she commands.
The heavy smell of diesel exhaust rolls over us.
I can feel her heart thudding frantically against my chest, a rapid, bird-like flutter that tells me exactly how terrified she is even while she plays soldier.
The headlights wash past our gap, illuminating the rain in streaks of white, then fade into the dark.
"Almost there," she breathes.
We drag ourselves to the edge of the pier.
The docks smell like rotting fish, engine oil, and raw sewage.
Out of the heavy fog, the Sea Serpent looms over us.
It’s a massive, rusting freighter that looks more like a derelict than a secure safehouse, groaning and shifting in the tide like a dying beast. Every mooring line creaks.
I raise a trembling hand, pointing a heavy finger toward a specific, unremarkable maintenance hatch near the waterline.
My muscles are turning to water. The pain in my side is fading out into a distant, buzzing hum, which is the worst possible sign.
The only thing tethering me to consciousness is the firm, desperate feel of her hands locked around my waist.
She wipes a sheet of freezing rain from my forehead, her touch entirely clinical but lingering a second longer than necessary.
"That one? The hatch with the red 'X'?" she asks, squinting through the downpour.
"Yeah. The gangplank is slick. Watch your step."
"Don't look down," she says, dragging me toward the narrow, slime-covered timber bridging the dock to the hull. Crossing this piece of shit wood while carrying my dead weight is a suicide mission. Green algae coats the edges of the pier. One slip and we both drown in the freezing black water.
"If I go over, let go of me," I tell her.
"I've got you. I've got you," she repeats like a mantra, her boots inching across the plank.
We hit the metal deck of the freighter but the goddamn locking mechanism on the hatch is completely seized by years of salt spray and neglect.
I reach out and grab the heavy iron lever.
I try to pull it down, but my muscles simply refuse to fire.
There’s nothing left in the tank. I just sag against the metal door.
Margarita looks around frantically, her eyes locking onto a discarded, rusted iron pipe lying near a coil of rope. She scoops it up, jams it into the handle mechanism, and uses it as a makeshift lever while I lean my entire failing body weight against the door to push.
"Push! On three!" she grunts, her boots slipping on the slick metal deck. She almost goes down, tossing a hand out and grabbing my heavy leather belt to keep from falling overboard into the Atlantic.
"One, two, three—"
We shove. The metal screeches in protest, a horrible, grinding wail of metal on metal that sounds loud enough to alert every cartel patrol within a hundred yards.
"It’s moving..." she gasps, putting her back into the pipe. The handle finally gives with a loud crack. The door pops open an inch, the spray of the ocean hitting us in the face.
"Get inside. Now!" she yells, throwing her shoulder against the heavy steel door to widen the gap.
The hatch swings wide and we both tumble over the bulkhead lip, collapsing straight into the pitch-black hold of the ship.
The air inside is completely stagnant, thick with the smell of old diesel, stale dust, and trapped humidity.
I hit the steel floorboards hard. It knocks whatever air I had left right out of my lungs.
My world finally turns into a smear of gray shadows and white noise.
I’m completely incapacitated. I can feel the hot, sticky slickness of my own blood pooling on the grimy floor beneath me. I am entering hypovolemic shock.
Margarita scrambles to her knees. She frantically fumbles in her soaked jacket pocket for her phone.
She clicks the flashlight on, the harsh LED beam cutting through the absolute darkness of the cavernous hold.
She sweeps the light over me, the beam catching the massive, torn-open carnage of my side.
"Locke? Damon! Look at me!" her voice echoes hollowly against the steel walls. She slaps my cheek, hard enough to sting.
"I'm looking," I slur, my eyelids weighing a hundred pounds.
"Don't you dare close your eyes." She presses her cold, bloody hands directly over the shredded wound, applying brutal, necessary pressure.
"It's just blood," I mumble.
"I need light. I need a kit," she says to herself, her eyes wild, her mind already shifting gears from fugitive back to surgeon.
She doesn't look like a victim right now. She looks like the one making the calls. If I bleed out on this floor, it’s because she let it happen.
I’m her problem now. She rips her soaked jacket off, balling the heavy fabric up to pack against my ribs.
She drives her knees into the floorboards and presses her full body weight down on the open wound to stop the bleeding.
It hurts like a motherfucker. I just stare up at the rusted ceiling.