Chapter 6
Maverick
“Come on, firebird—help us find you.”
I say it to the empty living room because if I don’t say something I’m going to put a hole through the drywall and then Storm will give me that look, the one that says rage is a tool you sharpen or it cuts you first.
The penthouse feels wrong. It’s too quiet, too clean, like the place is holding its breath.
My phone is face down on the coffee table, the screen lighting up every few minutes with a new “call me back,” a new “working on it,” a new “we’ll ask around,” a new number I don’t trust but can’t afford not to.
I’ve called every family we’ve ever done business with from Savannah to Miami.
I’ve called two who hate me and one who owes me and one who promised I’d never hear his voice again.
I’ve called a guy whose yacht has a helipad and another whose tugboats move “things that aren’t fish,” and three port rats who know every dockhand down to the guy who hoses seagull crap off the bollards.
I’m waiting for any of them to tell me something that isn’t a stall.
Atticus is still locked in his office, the door panel slid back, lights down low.
I can’t see him, but I can picture the screens—three monitors and a map with a single blue dot that refuses to blink again.
He hasn’t come up for air since he pulled the last ping off my poker chip and found it at the pier.
If he’s not eating, I’m not eating. And I’m not going to be the guy who knocks and gets an Atticus-sized knife in his eye because I broke his concentration.
Conrad is still at the emergency vet, which might as well be a war room at this point.
He’s got Zeus, who might have more grit than any of us at this point.
Con will sit there and sign every form and stare down every tech until they give him a minute-by-minute update, and then he’ll stare at the wall and blame himself for not keeping a dog from doing what dogs do—protecting their person.
He is not okay. None of us are okay. But Conrad’s not okay in that way that means everything else will burn if we don’t aim the fire where it needs to be pointed.
Storm is—where the hell is Storm? He was with Con but I don’t know where he went after that.
My phone buzzes. I flip it and see a name I haven’t seen in years: AZZURRO. I take the call.
“Mav,” he says, his Neapolitan accent soft, like he’s calling from a café and not some dirty dockside office. “You don’t call unless you want something I can’t sell you.”
“I want the harbor list for last night, midnight to one,” I say without preamble. “Private, commercial, tug. Anything that moved. And I want the people who see things they’re not supposed to. Your price or theirs isn’t an issue.”
He makes a small, approving sound. “You’re late. Your quiet one already asked.”
“Atticus,” I say, only a little exasperated. “He forgets to text and keep me looped in.”
Azzurro laughs. “It’s fine. The list I can get. The people? They got jobs, Maverick. They don’t talk about shadows if they want to keep their hands and dicks attached.”
“Find me someone who likes money and is willing to take the risk.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Azzurro—if you help me and I get her back, I’ll owe you.
If you don’t, and this goes where it’s going, everyone will owe the wrong man.
And when I torch the fucking city, everyone is gonna be without a job.
Because I don’t mean figuratively. If she’s gone?
I’m destroying everything on my way out. ”
That shuts him up. He knows what I mean without me saying it. There are only a handful of “wrong men” at this level, and only one with a taste for leverage that lands on women. My stomach turns just thinking of his nickname.
“I’ll call,” he says finally. “Keep your phone on.”
“It’s staying on,” I say, and end the call.
I text the group thread because my brain is wired and I can’t help myself.
Mav: Meet me in the living room. Now.
Mav: Don’t care what you’re doing. Two minutes.
If I type please, they’ll know I’m losing it. So I don’t.
Con answers first.
Con: Got Zeus and I’m en route. I’ll be ten.
Storm: On my way up.
Atticus doesn’t answer. I don’t take it personally. I go to his office door, lift my fist, then stop and just say through the wood, “Two minutes. I need you.”
Silence. Then the click and there he is. Atticus blinks, adjusting to the light. He looks… contained. That’s the word.
“Two minutes,” he says, and stands. “Then I’m going back.”
“Fine,” I say. “Bring the map.”
Storm is already on the couch when we get back to the living room, hands on his knees, eyes on everything.
He’s in black, hair back, face carved from stone.
He looks at me, then at Atticus, and the smallest muscle in his jaw ticks.
I know what that tick means: say what you need, and we’ll make it happen.
Conrad arrives in eight minutes, not ten, which tells me he ignored speed limits.
He looks like he walked out of a fight when he gently lays Zeus on one of the many dog beds that appeared in the penthouse after his arrival.
Shirt half-buttoned, sleeves pushed to the elbow, forearms tight with the kind of strain you carry in the hands when you’re not allowed to hit something.
His knuckles are scraped. He doesn’t sit.
He stands by the balcony door and stares out over the river like he can drag a container ship back with his eyes.
“Leg’s set,” he says without turning. “He’s on the good shit.”
That’s all. No more words will come out of him without a pry bar.
“Where were you?” I ask Storm, not as an accusation but as an accounting.
“Pier,” he says. “Walked every slip. Talked to three crews, one tug, two drunks with good ears. Everyone heard engines in the channel around twelve-thirty. No one admits to seeing any cargo move, though. Not yet.”
He tips his chin at Atticus. “You get anything new?”
Atticus shakes his head. He plugs his laptop into the big TV and the map pops up—the city a smear of light, the river a black ribbon. A dot sits at the end of a gray finger into the water.
“Her chip pinged here at 12:07,” he says, voice clipped. “There have been no more pings since. I widened the net. Nothing. Either she’s inside metal that’s blocking the signal, or the chip is broken, or someone found it and tossed it.”
“She wouldn’t drop it,” I say. “She didn’t really know what it was, but she held on to that thing like it was a piece of jewelry—” My voice thins on the last word. “We should’ve given her fucking jewelry.”
Storm’s eyes cut to me. “You sure she still had it on her?”
“She had it when she…left.” The last two words scrape. “If it’s not pinging, it’s because it can’t.”
“Meaning a solid metal container,” Atticus says. “Meaning a boat. Meaning the ocean.”
Con finally turns from the window, his gaze traveling over all of us. “We don’t have time to sit around and chat about it,” he says. “We need to move.”
“We are moving,” I say. “We just need to stop moving like four separate men, and start acting like the team we are.”
That gets his eyes on me—really on me. He doesn’t like the sound of stopping to organize when there’s our girl to find, and I get that. But I’m not going to watch us spin out because we’re all good at different things and we’re doing those individual things like we’re still single players.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he says, flat. “We’re all doing what we need to do—”
“It means I’m not your glue on a good day for my health,” I say, letting the temper I’ve been holding find the floor.
“It means I’m your glue because if I don’t make us look at each other right now, we’re going to waste hours chasing our own strengths in circles.
Our power isn’t the casino. It’s not the money.
It’s not the guns. It’s that when we move, we move like one fucking being.
Four parts of the same body that work in unison. ”
Storm looks down at his hands. Atticus’s mouth does something that would be a frown on anyone else. Conrad’s shoulders tighten. None of them argue, which is the only reason I keep going.
“Atticus,” I say, “you’re the net. You pull everything digital, every log, every ship manifest, every tug call.
But you also need fresh eyes. You’ve been staring at that dot so hard you’re gonna drill a hole through the screen.
You need one of us on a second screen to say the stupid ideas out loud so the smart ones have somewhere to land when they come from you. ”
He starts to say that he doesn't need a chaperone, and I hold up a hand. “Not a chaperone. A second set of eyes and a spare brain. You get lost in the code and forget the men behind the code. The port isn’t zeros and ones. It’s Jorge who hates his boss and lies on Tuesdays and the night foreman who plays cards at two a.m. You know where my head is?
People. Put me on your shoulder and point at where I can knock.
Because these men aren’t going to open up to you or Storm or fuckin’ Con.
They need to be wooed and offered what they can’t refuse if they’re gonna betray someone they’re afraid of. ”
His eyes flicker. He doesn’t hate it. He won’t say it, but he doesn’t.
“Storm,” I say. “You’re perimeter. You put together go-bags for everyone.
I need you to build our comms. One channel for us, tight and clean.
We need secondary phones for a rotation.
Brief our security team as if you don’t trust a single one of them, because we don’t.
We’ve got a mole. Maybe more than one. We move with an inner circle that knows where we’re going two minutes before we go, because any more time and we’ll lose Phoenix for good. ”
He nods once. This is his air.