The Truck at Pier Nine

The scream lasted less than a second.

That made it worse.

Long screams belonged to fear. Short ones belonged to surprise, pain, and men discovering that the dark had teeth.

Evelyn stepped through the gate behind Cassian before common sense could catch her by the collar. Pier Nine had always been ugly at night, all concrete, steel ribs, stacked containers, and yellow lines worn thin by forklifts. Without the overhead lights, the place became something older. A maze of black shapes and rainwater mirrors.

The refrigeration unit on the seized truck still hummed.

Forty minutes.

Less now.

"Stay near the fence," Cassian said.

"You said decide quickly."

"That was before you chose badly."

"I chose my cargo."

"Then keep your head lower than your pride."

She should have snapped back. The words rose, found no room, and died.

Ahead, a flashlight beam cut across the loading canopy. A Dockside man stumbled backward into view, both hands lifted, baton dangling uselessly from his wrist strap.

Rowan appeared behind him.

The cab driver did not look like a cab driver anymore.

He moved with quiet economy, shoulders low, one hand gripping the man's collar, the other holding the dead flashlight. He pressed the man against a container without slamming him. Somehow that restraint looked more frightening than violence.

"Count," Rowan said.

The Dockside man swallowed. "What?"

"Visible personnel. Count."

"I don't--"

Rowan tilted the flashlight until its metal rim rested under the man's jaw.

"Start with yourself. Builds confidence."

"Twelve," the man blurted. "Eight outside. Four in the office. Crowe ain't here."

Cassian looked at the truck. "Who has the keys?"

"Office supervisor."

"Name?"

"Denny."

Rowan glanced at Cassian. "Denny has poor timing."

"Most Dennys do."

Evelyn stared at them. "Do you two always do this?"

"Talk?" Rowan asked.

"Terrify people in the rain."

Cassian walked toward the office. "Only when rushed."

Two Dockside men emerged from behind a forklift. One held a crowbar. The other had a pistol, which made Evelyn's breath catch.

Cassian did not speed up.

"Don't move!" the pistol man shouted.

Cassian kept walking.

The man raised the gun with both hands. "I said don't--"

Cassian exploded forward.

The distance should have been too far. It was not. His left hand slapped the pistol wrist upward as the shot cracked into the loading canopy. His right elbow drove into the man's sternum. The pistol spun once in the rain before Cassian caught it by the slide, stripped the magazine, cleared the chamber, and drove the empty frame into the second man's crowbar swing.

Metal screamed against metal.

The crowbar man staggered.

Cassian kicked the back of his knee, caught his collar before he fell, and hurled him shoulder-first into the forklift cage. The whole machine rang.

The pistol man tried to crawl toward the loose magazine.

Cassian stepped on it.

"Pick it up," he said softly.

The man froze.

"Not with that hand."

The man stopped.

The gun lay open in pieces across the wet concrete.

Cassian looked at Evelyn. "Keys."

Right. The truck. The medicine.

She forced herself into motion.

The office door was locked, but the window beside it had been left open two inches for cigarette smoke. Rowan noticed it the same moment she did.

"I can open that," he said.

"So can I." Evelyn pulled a metal ruler from the exterior paperwork box bolted beside the door. She had used it three times in the past year because Pier Nine's office lock jammed whenever salt got into the frame.

Rowan stepped back with exaggerated respect. "Management has skills."

"Management has underfunded maintenance."

She slid the ruler between the frame and the latch. The first try failed. The second caught. The window shifted. She reached through, ignoring the scrape along her wrist, and unlocked the door.

Cassian saw the blood before she did.

His eyes moved to her wrist.

"It's nothing," she said.

"I did not say it was something."

"You looked."

"I notice damage."

"Then notice the keys."

The office smelled of stale coffee and wet boots. Four Dockside men had been inside. Two were now sitting against the far wall with zip ties around their wrists. Rowan must have moved faster than the dark itself. A third lay face-down, groaning into a rubber mat. The fourth, a heavy man with a shaved head and a supervisor badge clipped to his jacket, stood very still beside the desk.

Denny, presumably.

He held a ring of keys.

He also held a knife.

Evelyn froze in the doorway.

Denny pressed the blade against the side of a young Vale driver's neck. The driver was barely twenty, face gray with terror, uniform soaked through.

"Back off," Denny said. "Or I open him."

Cassian stopped.

The office seemed to shrink around the sound of the refrigeration unit outside.

Evelyn knew the driver. Malik. First month on night rotation. His mother called dispatch every shift because she hated him working the docks.

"Denny," Evelyn said carefully. "Let him go. This is between you and me."

"No, Miss Vale. This is between me and keeping my insides inside."

His eyes kept jerking toward Cassian.

Not Rowan. Not Evelyn. Cassian.

He had seen enough through the office window to understand the room's true weather.

Cassian's voice was calm. "You do not want the boy."

"I want the gate open and your crazy friend gone."

"No."

Denny's hand tightened.

Malik whimpered.

Evelyn's heartbeat pounded so hard she could hear it.

"Cassian," she said.

He did not look at her. "Ask him for what you need."

"What?"

"Your cargo. Your driver. Ask."

It was insane. It was also exactly what she had demanded at headquarters.

He was not taking the room from her.

He was holding it still long enough for her to stand in it.

Evelyn stepped forward. Rainwater dripped from her coat onto the office floor.

"Denny," she said, "give me the keys and let Malik walk out."

Denny laughed once, high and ugly. "Or?"

Her mouth went dry.

Cassian waited.

Rowan waited.

Malik shook under the knife.

Evelyn lifted her chin. "Or Silas Crowe learns that you were the man who turned a delayed payment into attempted murder on a medical route. He will not protect you from police, from us, or from whoever this man is."

Denny's eyes flicked to Cassian again.

Good.

"You are not the threat here," Evelyn said, and believed it as she said it. "You are the receipt."

Denny's face changed.

Cassian moved.

This time Evelyn saw all of it.

He drove the office door inward with his shoulder. The knob punched a hole in the wall. Denny flinched toward the sound, and Cassian took the opening like it belonged to him. One hand locked Denny's knife wrist and smashed it down onto the desk. The blade jumped from the man's grip and stuck in the wood. Cassian's other hand caught Denny by the back of the neck and slammed him face-first beside it.

The desk cracked.

Malik fell away, gasping.

Denny tried to rise.

Cassian lifted him by the collar and drove him into the chair so hard the wheels snapped backward against the wall.

Cassian took the keys and tossed them to Evelyn.

"Truck," he said.

She caught them.

Outside, the refrigeration indicator shifted from amber toward red.

Thirty-two minutes.

Evelyn ran.