Nolan didn’t choose a direction when he left the tower. He just walked, past the yard gates, past the container stacks going silver in the last of the light, out along the harbor promenade where the wind came in hard enough to make his eyes water, or that was what he told himself it was. He walked until the tower was just one more shape on a skyline full of them, until his legs ached in a way that felt like it belonged to someone else, and the whole time his thumb kept finding the compass in his jacket pocket, tracing the scratched glass like he needed to confirm it was still there.Full dark had come in off the water by the time his phone rang. Unknown number.He almost let it go to nothing. Six years married and the only calls he got anymore were from dispatchers and his mother’s old landlord about a storage unit he kept forgetting to empty. But something made him answer, maybe just the need to hear a voice that wasn’t Renee’s or Genevieve’s.“Nolan Cross.” Not a question. A man’s v

Genevieve found Renee in her office before eight the next morning, already on her second coffee, and didn’t bother sitting down before she said it. “I want a formal apology from Nolan. Written, notarized if it has to be. If he won’t give me one, we file for a restraining order before the Sterling announcement goes out. I’m not walking into that press conference with this hanging over the family.” She hadn’t slept, not really, the hospital’s fluorescent lighting still stinging behind her eyes, and she’d decided somewhere around four in the morning that the fastest way through this was control, since nothing else about the last two days had offered her any.Renee didn’t look up from her screen. “You want me to draft the language?”“Draft both. The apology and the filing. Let’s see which one he decides to be smart about.”She called Nolan herself that afternoon, standing at her office window with the phone pressed hard enough to her ear that it would leave a mark. He picked up on the sec

By the time they made it back to the cannery, Jo had stopped being quiet about her fury.She paced the length of the workbench twice before she rounded on Gideon. “He knew our timing down to the minute, and you froze at the door with a gun in your hand and did nothing. Explain that to me.”“I didn’t freeze. I read the room. Four armed men and Wren himself, and you wanted me to start something we’d have lost in about eight seconds.”“I wanted you to at least look like you were going to.”“Maybe if the dead man’s kid hadn’t turned tonight into a magic show, Wren wouldn’t have had a reason to show up in person and gloat about it.” Gideon’s voice was rising now too, some of the earlier respect from the sparring mat curdling back into something closer to blame. “You’ve had him ten days, Jo. Ten days and half trained instincts, and you sent him into a building Wren clearly already had eyes on.”“Maybe I did,” Jo snapped back. “Doesn’t mean the leak came from him instead of from one of the s

Otis Farrow’s stall took up the end of a pier that had been condemned twice and reopened anyway, plywood patched over half-rotten boards, a tangle of salvaged electronics strung along every surface like Christmas lights nobody had bothered taking down in years. He didn’t look up when Nolan and Jo approached, just kept soldering something small and delicate under a gooseneck lamp.“Not talking to strangers tonight,” Farrow said, without looking up. “Especially strangers who walk like they’re expecting trouble.”“We need information,” Jo said. “About a device. Wipe tech, short range, fries drives and hardware both.”“Everybody needs information. Doesn’t mean I’m handing it out for free, or for the pleasure of your company.” He finally looked up, eyes flicking over Nolan with open skepticism. “You want to prove you’re worth my time, get past the rig on my back door without setting off every alarm in this stall. You’ve got about a minute before I start yelling.”Nolan didn’t ask what the

The Calloway Maritime anniversary gala took over the entire ballroom floor of the Ashcroft, chandeliers doubled in a wall of gilt mirrors, a string quartet working through something classical enough not to interrupt conversation, and Julian Sterling holding court near the bar with the particular ease of a man being courted rather than courting. Jo had gotten them both inside through a caterer she’d worked with before, tuxedo and tray of drinks enough to make Nolan invisible to a room full of people who’d learned not to look too closely at the staff. Somewhere in this crowd, if Jo’s information was right, sat the missing piece connecting Wren to whoever inside Calloway Maritime actually signed for his operation, and they had maybe two hours to find it before the gala thinned out and took its secrets with it.It worked, mostly. Right up until Genevieve caught his eye across the room and went very still.She crossed the floor without seeming to hurry, which was somehow worse than if she’