So we changed the question.
Not where would Maurice hide Van?
Where would Enrique feel safe enough to keep him?
The answer came from Charlie, of all people. He sat in the office with a bandage on his head, refusing to go home.
“Enrique used to drink at Delgado’s,” he said. “Years ago. Always talked about his uncle’s boat repair place. Green walls. Smelled like diesel.”
Delgado’s Boat Repair sat two blocks from Pier 6.
At dusk, rain returned. Good rain. Loud rain. Rain that covered footsteps and made men stay under roofs instead of watching alleys.
Micah went high with binoculars. I went low through the back fence.
The repair yard smelled like diesel, fish rot, and old rope. A radio played somewhere inside, low Spanish ballads under the drumming rain. Through a cracked window, I saw two men playing cards. Neither Maurice. Neither Enrique.
Van was in the second room, zip-tied to a pipe, head down.
Alive.
I moved without drama. A padlock opened with bolt cutters wrapped in cloth. One guard went down when he stepped outside to smoke. The other reached for a gun and woke up later with a broken wrist he would recover from if he made better life choices.
Van stared when I cut him loose.
“You came?”
“Looks that way.”
“Why?”
“You told Maurice to leave Josie’s house. That probably saved lives.”
His laugh became a cough. “Didn’t save mine.”
“You alive?”
“For now.”
Outside, tires rolled over wet gravel.
Micah’s voice whispered in my earpiece. “Three vehicles. Maurice isn’t waiting for midnight.”
I dragged Van behind a stack of boat engines.
Maurice entered with Enrique and four others. He looked furious, but not panicked. That meant he had not expected rescue. He had expected bait to remain bait.
“Find him,” he said.
Enrique cursed when he saw the downed guard.
Van leaned close to me and whispered, “Quinton.”
“What?”
“Quinton Parks. Maurice thinks he’s the traitor. But Enrique is the one skimming money. I heard them fighting. Enrique’s planning to run.”
Information changes rooms. One second, I was thinking escape. The next, I saw the whole structure: Maurice’s pride, Enrique’s greed, Quinton’s fear, Van’s resentment.
A gang is not a family. It is a table full of knives pretending to be dinner.
I handed Van my spare phone.
“Call 911. Say shots fired at Delgado’s. Then crawl to the back fence and don’t stop.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to make them look at each other.”
I stepped from behind the engines with my hands visible.
Maurice froze.
Enrique lifted his gun.
I looked straight at Maurice and said, “You tied up the wrong traitor.”
For one second, nobody breathed.
Then Enrique’s eyes flicked toward the exit.
