Chapter 6 #2
“Conrad,” I say, softer because I can see the way his jaw is set to keep him upright.
“You’re our hammer. You’re also the only person who can knock on certain doors without getting shot on sight.
You talk to the harbor master. You talk to the Coast Guard.
You talk to all of your father’s dickhole friends who hate you but love the Masterson name on their sponsorship plaques. ”
His lip curls. He hates that sentence, and I hate that I had to say it, but he doesn’t tell me to stop. He just says, “Fine,” like a man agreeing to a surgery without anesthesia.
“And me,” I say, “I’m the guy people pick up when they don’t want to feel like they’re making deals, but friends.
I’m already on with Azzurro. I’ll call the Morettis, the Wren outfit, the dock unions, the crabbers.
I’ll call the guy who brought us caviar last New Year’s and hates us a little less than he should because I tipped his mother ten grand for luck.
I will call every person who owes us or owes me or wants to have a favor to call in at an opportune moment.
And when I shake something loose, it goes to Atticus first to verify, then to Storm for method, then to Conrad for authorization and threat. ”
Atticus sits on the arm of the couch, fingers steepled, thinking. Storm watches him think. Conrad watches me like I’m either insane or the only sane person left in this building.
“This isn’t a democracy,” Conrad says finally. “We don’t vote on what to do. We move.”
“Then we move,” I say. “Together.”
He flinches but he doesn’t argue. “As long as we don’t have to circle ‘round and sing fucking Kum-Ba-Yah. What’s this shit about a mole?”
“Mav and I figure we’ve got a mole in-house,” Atticus says, simple. “You don’t cut cameras at panels in blind spots unless someone lets you. You don’t usher a woman through our corridors past three patrols and four eyes unless someone’s running soft hands on every door.”
“So we run an inside play to smoke out the bullshit while we run the water for any sign of our girl,” I say.
Storm’s mouth does the thing it does when he approves. It’s not a smile. It’s an acknowledgement. “I’ll take lead on the inside. Quiet. One-on-ones. Make them think the danger is outside. The talkers will talk.”
Atticus pulls up a second screen. “I’ve got navigation data from the Automated Identification System,” he says. “Traffic control logs. Two cargo carriers, three tugs, a chemical barge. One cargo carrier cut to ‘restricted’ at midnight and didn’t log a destination.”
“In English,” I say.
“They turned off the part of their log that tells the world where they’re going,” he says, gentler than usual. “It’s not necessarily illegal if you’ve got a reason. They didn’t provide a reason.”
“Name,” Storm says.
Atticus reads it off, and I text it to Azzurro. I text it to a longshoreman in Charleston who owes me for a wedding. I text it to a private tracker in Jacksonville who likes me enough to pick up when I call after midnight.
Conrad’s phone buzzes, but he doesn’t look.
His eyes are on the map, on the dot that isn’t there.
He is making vows in his head that would horrify all of us.
He needs to. But he also needs me to make him sit down and drink water and not bleed out through his fingers while he imagines all the ways this ends.
Because I know him well enough to know exactly what he’s imagining. And the toll it’s taking on his sanity.
“Hey,” I say, softer. “You know she didn’t run.”
He looks at me like he wants to break my nose for even shaping the idea. “I know that,” he says, ragged. “I know she wouldn’t. Not without her dog, at least.”
“Then we work like we trust that,” I say. “No blame games. No ‘if only’ and ‘I should have.’ We put our faces in the wind, and we go get her back. Then, you can punish her with your dick if you need to make sure she’s still ours.”
He breathes once—deliberate—and nods.
Storm stands. “I’ll brief the security team. I’ll be ten minutes, and I want a burner in each of your pockets. Use code names, not hers. We don’t speak her name out loud unless we’re in this room or in a room we own because we don’t want anyone to know exactly what we’re up to.”
He starts for the hall.
“Storm,” I say.
He stops.
“Thank you,” I say again. For being there with Con. For taking care of the bags. For the water. For the way he always seems to know what we’d need before we said it.
He nods, eyes softer for a second, then back to the same dark expression I’m sure we’re all wearing.
Atticus drags a chair beside the coffee table and drops his laptop to knee height. “You said you’d sit on my shoulder. Sit.”
I drop in beside him. “I’ll make calls while you draw the map.”
He gives me that flat Atticus look. “That’s your entire personality.”
“Correct,” I say, already dialing.
For a little while, the room becomes what it’s supposed to be—us. A machine that only runs right when all four gears catch.
I talk to the docks. Atticus tracks time windows and camera scraps. Storm moves through the hallway like a shadow, talking low, quieter, gone. Conrad steps onto the balcony to strong-arm someone important enough to answer on the first ring.
No clutter. No chaos. Just the work.
Atticus mutters when he spots a pattern in the river logs. I follow it with a phone call, get the lie, push once, and get the truth. Storm sends a photo—someone in a maintenance uniform passing off a key ring to a woman we’ve walked past a hundred times without seeing.
The pieces begin to move. Then they begin to align.
And for the first time since this nightmare started, we feel like ourselves again.
Conrad comes back in with his phone white-knuckled in his hand and a look on his face that turns the air thin.
“What,” I say.
He stares at me and then at Atticus, and then the phone rings again and he answers it on speaker with a tight voice that makes me want to take the phone out of his hand and throw it off the balcony. “Hello.”
“Conrad.” The voice fills the room like old whiskey—smooth, expensive, familiar in the way of something that burned you once and laughed about it. “I heard you’ve misplaced that girl. Your minder.”
Masterson. Senior.
Air leaves my lungs. How did Masterson hear about Phoenix? And why would he even care?
Atticus’s fingers freeze over the keys. Storm is there again in the doorway without me hearing him return. He locks eyes with me, and in that split second all of us are on the same page: tread carefully.
Conrad’s mouth is a straight line. “Father.”
“You’ve got enemies who collect leverage the way other men collect wine,” Masterson says, conversational, like he’s commenting on the weather over canapés. “Find her before someone uses her against you and by default, through you, against me.”
There’s no “how are you” or “do you need anything.” Just strategy dressed as fatherly advice. Threat disguised as concern.
Conrad’s jaw ticks. “We’re working every angle that we possibly can.”
“I’m sure you are,” Masterson says. “But you don’t have as many angles as you think. Do hurry before it’s too late.”
The line clicks dead.
No one speaks.
Conrad stares at the phone like it might grow teeth or start to walk on its own. Then he puts it down very gently, like anything else would be violence he can’t take back, and looks at us.
“Is it just me, or was that a weird conversation?” I ask.
Con inhales. “He’s an asshole. If he thinks there’s the slightest chance I care about something—” He breaks off. “We’re going to find her and bring her back. Together,” he finishes after a moment.
“Together,” I answer, and suddenly that’s a vow, not a word.
Atticus nods, eyes back on the map. Storm slides a burner across the coffee table to each of us. I dial Azzurro back and tell him we’re past the point where my charm will carry it—we’re in the place where favors are debts, and debts come with interest. He laughs and says he’s already there.
We move.
For the first time since the hallway and the blood and the empty frame where a girl should be, I feel that thing I only ever feel with them when it matters most: the click.
The alignment. The sense that the four of us, ugly and sharp and wrong as we can be, become one long, relentless line when we remember who the hell we are.
And that’s exactly how we’re gonna get our girl back.