“You hurt her?”
“She’s alive. For now.”
“I want proof.”
A muffled scuffle. Then Josie came on, breathing hard.
“Nate, don’t—”
The line cut.
Micah glanced at me. “He sounds desperate.”
“Desperate men improvise.”
“Badly.”
“Usually after they shoot someone.”
Riverside Packing had closed ten years earlier. The building still smelled like rust, river mud, and old meat trapped in concrete. Broken windows lined the upper floor like missing teeth. Police staged three blocks out, dark and quiet. Ramos was furious about the distance. I was furious about everything.
We did not bring fifty grand.
We brought a bag weighted with paper and old bar towels.
I walked in alone.
Water dripped somewhere in the dark. My boots crunched glass. The air was cold enough to show my breath.
“Enrique,” I called.
A light snapped on.
Josie sat tied to a chair on the loading dock, mouth taped, one eye swollen. Enrique stood behind her with a pistol at her head. Two younger men flanked him, both nervous. Not loyal. Paid.
“Bag,” he said.
I set it down.
“The drive?”
“In my pocket.”
“Slide it.”
“No. She walks first.”
He laughed. “You think you’re negotiating?”
“I think you need me more than I need you.”
His face twitched.
There it was: fear under the swagger.
“Maurice is done,” I said. “Quinton is talking. Van is talking. Danny is talking. Your face is on cameras from the boat shop. Every cop in the state knows your name.”
“Shut up.”
“You have one card. Her. But she only matters if she’s alive.”
Josie looked at me with wet, terrified eyes.
I still did not forgive her.
But forgiveness and rescue are different things.
One of Enrique’s men shifted near a side door. Not toward me. Away.
“He didn’t pay you enough,” I told him.
Enrique snapped, “Don’t listen.”
“He’s running,” I said. “You’ll be left holding kidnapping charges while he disappears.”
The young man swallowed.
Micah’s voice whispered in my hidden earpiece. “Left side is peeling off.”
Good.
The right-side man followed three seconds later.
Enrique realized too late.
“You cowards!”
His gun moved off Josie for half a second.
That was all I needed.
I crossed twenty feet in less than three breaths. His shot went wide, deafening in the concrete room. I hit his wrist, drove him into the dock wall, and stripped the pistol before he found balance.
