Chapter 2 - The Wrong Kind of Quiet
For one second, the harbor vanished.
Then emergency lights glowed along the water.
Rosa crouched beside a concrete barrier.
Her phone remained against her ear.
“Dante?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you cut the power?”
“No.”
“Then somebody else is running your night.”
A distant engine started.
Not the vessel.
A yard truck.
Rosa listened.
It moved too quickly between the containers, then stopped near the eastern gate.
She knew the sound of that truck.
The reverse alarm had been broken for three weeks.
Another repair request.
Another ignored warning.
“Your people need to leave the loading area,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“You keep asking that instead of listening.”
Dante said something sharply to someone beside him.
Footsteps splashed across concrete.
Then Matteo appeared behind the barrier, breathing hard.
“Boss says you’re coming with me.”
“Boss needs to learn flexibility.”
Matteo looked toward the darkness.
“This would be an excellent time to practice cooperation.”
Despite herself, Rosa almost smiled.
They moved toward the maintenance shelter.
Inside, she found the backup radio still functioning.
The harbor dispatcher answered immediately.
Police units were responding. The nearest marine patrol was moving toward the terminal.
Rosa gave an update.
Matteo watched her.
“You called the police?”
“Three strangers and suspected sabotage. Yes.”
He looked as though nobody had ever introduced the option to him.
Dante entered a minute later.
Rain shone on his coat.
“Carmine’s gone.”
“That seems convenient.”
“He said he was checking the gate.”
“Did you believe him?”
Dante’s silence answered.
Rosa pulled an old terminal map from the wall.
“This place has four pedestrian exits. Two are chained because management thinks emergency access is a philosophical concept. The service gate is open.”
Dante studied her face.
“You’re angry.”
“Someone tampered with a crane I inspected. If it fails, they put my name on the report.”
He looked toward the window.
“What happened to your father?”
Rosa froze.
“You checked?”
“Your surname was familiar.”
“Then you know enough.”
“I know a man died.”
“Two men were on that platform. My father died. My brother spent nine months learning how to walk around the part of his life that disappeared.”
Matteo lowered his gaze.
Dante said nothing.
Outside, a voice called his name.
Carmine.
“Dante! We’ve got a problem!”
Rosa watched Dante’s expression.
He did not move.
Carmine called again.
“The boat’s here!”
Dante took out his phone.
No service.
The shelter’s radio crackled.
A harbor patrol officer requested an update.
Before Rosa could answer, something struck the wall outside.
A sharp metallic crack.
Then another.
Matteo pulled Dante back from the window.
Rosa dropped below the counter.
Gunfire sounded nothing like it did in movies.
It was uglier.
Abrupt.
Close enough to feel in her teeth.
“Shots fired,” she told the dispatcher. “Maintenance shelter, Pier Four. Three people inside.”
Dante looked at Matteo.
“Rear exit.”
Rosa shook her head.
“They’ll expect it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the yard truck stopped there.”
Another shot hit the doorframe.
Dante stared at her.
She pointed toward a narrow service hatch.
“That goes beneath the inspection walkway.”
Matteo reached for it.
Rosa caught his sleeve.
“One at a time. The second section is damaged.”
They moved through darkness that smelled of wet rope and harbor mud.
Rosa went first.
Behind her, Dante followed without arguing.
At the far end, beneath the old gantry stairs, they stopped.
Three men crossed the apron above them.
Rosa saw their boots through the grating.
One carried a weapon low against his leg.
Another spoke into a phone.
“Not in the office.”
A pause.
Then:
“Rusk said she’d be alone.”
Dante’s face became frighteningly still.
Rosa watched him absorb the betrayal.
The third man stopped directly overhead.
“She knows the pier. Find her first.”
Rosa tightened her grip on the railing.
Across the water, a siren sounded faintly.
Too far.
The men separated.
Dante leaned toward her.
“Can we get to the gate?”
She looked at the crane, the stacked rigging, the narrow corridor between two empty cargo frames.
Then at the men moving through her workplace.
“Maybe.”
His eyes followed hers.
“What are you thinking?”
May you like
Rosa’s jaw tightened.
“I’m thinking they should have left the pier to me.”
