Chapter 10
Maverick
We don’t sleep. We can’t. Instead, we make a plan and execute.
Storm gets the hull name from his father’s Bureau friend and a breadcrumb trail that doesn’t look like any kind of trail until he draws a line through it.
Atticus locks down the inside of our house—people, comms, gear—while I work the phones that still pick up for me after midnight. Conrad takes the calls that need the Masterson name to open a door and doesn’t waste words on men who mistake breeding for power.
The ship’s name sits in my notes like a beacon leading us to Phoenix.
The Amaranth Star. It has a flag of convenience, which according to the Bureau guy is a major red flag.
Registering the ship in a different country provides a ship with far less oversight, making it anonymous and practically invisible on the waterways.
We see it, though, thanks to the way the puzzle pieces have started clicking into place.
The damn thing has container stacks tall enough to punch a hole in the horizon, a route that left Savannah, went dark, then reappeared southeast like it took a breath under water.
It fits all the parameters.
Atticus overlays pilot logs, tug chatter, AIS hiccups, and the timing of a “maintenance test” on a pier-side crane. The picture that emerges is ugly and clean and obvious enough that you hate yourself for missing it.
We’ve got a ship. We’ve got a corridor. We’ve got a clock for what’s been done and what still needs to be done.
And I know exactly who we need to help us with the biggest part of the puzzle—the actual rescue.
“It sticks in my craw to admit this, but we have to acknowledge that we are not exactly super soldiers who can scale a cargo ship, defeat some unknown enemy who’s probably armed with significant firepower, and then get our girl back across the ocean,” I say.
“I mean, I think we could handle the getting her across the ocean part,” Atticus says.”
Conrad says nothing, eyes narrowed stubbornly. Storm’s gaze flicks to him, and he throws his knife at the wall. The implication is obvious, and I pat his shoulder.
Figuratively. I would never do that in real life.
“Storm, if we had you against a few guys in a single container or whatnot, obviously you could take them. IF they didn’t have semi-automatics.
But let’s think about this for a minute.
Kidnapped…on a cargo ship…middle of the ocean…
guys, she’s being trafficked. That means there’s gonna be some guns.
Even if we took a gun or two, I think we’d be outmatched.
” I pause. “It’s not a weakness to admit we need help.
Getting her back is the most important thing. ”
After a minute Conrad heaves a sigh and rubs his eyes. “Agreed. Who are we thinking about contacting for the job?”
“I’m calling Blackvine,” I say. “I feel like they kind of owe us after the shit with the pharma—how it turned out to not be us—and they’re going to have the connections we need. And they said to call if we ever needed anything.”
Atticus scratches his jaw, stares for a minute, then turns back to his bank of computers.
“That could work,” is all he says. Conrad nods.
Taking a deep breath, I pull the number from my contacts list.
The man who answers is polite in the way expensive knives are—no wasted edge. “Mr. Locke,” he says, as if I’m my grandfather’s ghost. “This is a surprise.”
It is. After the mess just weeks ago with Blackvine thinking we were to blame for their missing pharmaceuticals, we all have ground to cover with each other to mend fences others broke.
Reaching out to them will go a long way toward showing them we trust them, and vice versa.
After all, Phoenix Jones is the most important thing in our lives.
“I’m aware,” I say. “And we’ll owe you, any favor you could ever call in. We need reach and expertise we don’t currently have. Boats with range. Eyes that aren’t ours. Paper that doesn’t say our names.”
“Give me the details,” he says, and I give it to him—ship, time, last ping, the reason this isn’t a police call, the price I am willing to write in, favors I don’t hand out, and a bargain I’ll never regret.
He listens without interrupting. When I’m done, he says, “You’re lucky, Maverick. Our people are in the water for a different problem that I’ve discovered is related to yours. I can give you one retrieval unit, two fast boats, and a medical lead with a SANE nurse.”
“What’s a sane nurse?” I ask.
He hesitates. “A nurse with expertise in sexual assault.”
My throat tightens. “Oh. I hadn’t…” I stop and clear my throat. “Yes. That’s a good idea. And thank you.”
“Hey. Even powerful men need goodwill,” he says. “Maybe more so than regular men, when the occasion calls. This is one of those occasions. Four powerful men owing us a favor is a currency we’ll use later.”
“Put it on my tab,” I say. “And understand that I will absolutely pay with interest.”
“We do,” he says, and the line goes quiet long enough to feel like a handshake. “Text comes in five. Be ready in thirty.”
I end the call and look up. Storm is in the doorway, phone in one hand, a black duffel in the other. He’s been moving since the second I asked about possible safe house locations earlier, figuring out the best possible place to bring Phoenix back to.
The only thing that’s certain is that we’re not bringing her back to the hotel.
He reads my face.
“Blackvine’s in,” I tell him.
“What else? You have a look…”
I can’t hide anything from him. “He’s sending a sexual assault nurse with his crew. Just in case.”
Storm’s jaw works, then he turns and walks out of the room.
“Wait.”
Storm pauses. “Dude…I can’t.”
“I know. But we can’t fix on that right now. Can’t stop moving on the chance that she—” I break off, re-center. “We keep moving. Keep preparing for her. Did you get a line on a safe house?”
He gives a jerky nod. “A property my father owns, actually, on the marsh side of Tybee Island. My mother doesn’t know about it, which means no one in our circle will know about it, either. He’s already arranged for a security team, and it’ll be ready by the time we get there.”
I reach out, squeeze his shoulder. “That sounds perfect.”
I drive; Storm rides shotgun; Atticus rides in the back with a case that looks like an instrument and apparently contains every way there is to talk to a satellite.
Conrad sits next to him and not in the front because he’s too on edge for me to focus on driving. He stares straight ahead and talks to the vet, hangs up, calls the harbor master, hangs up, calls someone I don’t like and says please.
We peel off the highway and into a world that looks the same as it did fifty years ago.
Tybee at night glows soft—porch lights, sea air, live oaks that move like they know you.
The house that belongs to Storm’s father exists off a road that doesn’t announce itself on a double lot behind a gate with a guard who doesn’t look at our faces so much as the shape of our bone structure on some kind of monitor.
He looks at us, looks at his list, and opens the gate.
The place is modern lowcountry coastal without the pretension—long low lines, sandy paths and weather-worn decking, steps that float over a shallow reflection pool.
The porch wraps around the multi-story structure like an arm, and the front door is a plane of cypress with a handle you could row a boat with.
If a magazine wanted to shoot “wealth, relaxed,” they’d stand out here and tell a couple to laugh into each other’s necks.
Tonight it’s a fortress with exquisite manners.
“Your father seems to have done all right for himself,” I say, because someone needs to address it.
“He never needed her money,” Storm says, and unlocks the panel behind the lock with something that’s not a key.
Inside, the place smells like cedar and salt.
Atticus kills the Wi-Fi the second our phones recognize the network, then replaces it with some sort of shadow platform that belongs to him.
He moves through rooms like he’s drawing a circle of salt.
I count bedrooms—four up, two down—and mark sight lines.
Storm moves faster than both of us, opening cabinets, counting plates without looking at them, checking window locks by touch, mapping the route from bed to bathroom to kitchen to door by steps, not feet.
I take the job no one asks me to take: make it feel like a place a woman will want to stand and live in, and recover from the pain of what she’s going to go through.
It’s not decorating, exactly. It’s triage for a different kind of wound.
I find the room with a pretty view of the marsh and a comfy armchair. The bedding is too white, though, too pristine. I pull the comforter off and fold it into a chest by the windows because white reads “hotel” and I want “home” instead.
I trade pillows for the soft-firm ones in the hall closet—no laundry smells, no coastal perfume that says vacation.
I pull a spare rug out from under the bed and lay it on the bathroom floor, because tile at midnight will be cold on her feet.
On her spirit. And I don’t know what kind of hell she’s been through on the boat, but I want warmth, not coldness.
Storm sticks his head in, holds up a paper bag. “Toiletries—sealed,” he says. “Extras in the hall. Clothes?”
“On it,” I say, and I’m already on the phone with the one boutique owner who owes me for turning down her ex’s “investment.” “I need something soft,” I tell her.
“Tagless. Cotton, modal. Boyshorts, not lace. Sweatpants…stuff like that.’ Small sizes.
Yes, now. I’ll pay triple. Yes, deliver to the security gate. ”
Atticus comes in with a tablet in hand. “Perimeter is good,” he says, “but assume microphones and anything else are off the table inside. If she doesn’t want eyes, there will be no eyes. Whatever helps her heal.”
“Good,” Storm says. “Food?”
“I’ll cook for us,” I tell him.