The Pawnbroker King

Chapter Eight: Called And Collected

Gideon was already moving when the cable ran loose.

He snatched an iron mooring hook from the nearest bollard, felt its weight once and threw. It spun through the fog and struck the crane's control box dead center. The steel housing burst open in a shower of blue-white sparks. Forty feet overhead, the brake slammed home with a shriek of metal, the cable jerked taut, and Pippa stopped with her bound feet an arm's length above the black water.

Every head on the dock had turned toward the sparks. Gideon used that half second to grab a second hook and hurl it at the junction box on the floodlight pole. The cables tore loose, the lights died with a heavy thunk, and the shipyard dropped into darkness.

Then he moved.

The first man never saw him. Gideon found him by the sound of his breathing, took his wrist and turned it until the shoulder left its socket, and the pistol was in the river before the man finished screaming. The second fired at the noise and hit nothing but fog. Gideon came at him from the side, struck the inside of his elbow and felt the joint give.

After that it was simply work. Gideon had spent ten years learning how a watch came apart, which pin to press and which screw held the rest together. Men were no different. A knee folded sideways, and a collarbone cracked under the heel of his hand. Guns clattered across the concrete and splashed into the water one after another. Muzzle flashes lit the fog in brief orange bursts, and each one showed Gideon where the next man stood. None of them ever saw where he was.

Ninety seconds after the floodlights died, twenty men lay on the dock clutching dislocated shoulders and twisted knees, groaning in the dark. Every one of them was disarmed, and every one of them was still breathing.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Trent had run.

He hadn't run away. He sprinted for the crane, slipping on the wet concrete, and threw his whole weight against the rusted manual lever at its base. The arm swung slowly inland with a groan of old gears, carrying Pippa away from the river. A gunshot cracked out of the fog. Trent spun and fell against the lever with blood spreading across his shoulder, but he held on with his other hand until his sister swung back over the dock. Gideon reached the shooter a second later and broke his wrist.

Only one man was still standing.

The Auditor waited near the edge of the pier with his jacket buttoned. When Gideon came for him, he met him with a speed that didn't fit his accountant's body. His first strike went for Gideon's throat and his second for his eyes. Gideon blocked both, slipped a third and felt the wind of a fourth pass his ear. For three exchanges they traded blows in the dark as evenly as dancers.

On the fourth, Gideon caught the Auditor's forearm, locked it against his own chest and snapped it. Something fell from the man's jacket and slapped onto the wet concrete.

The Auditor didn't scream. He staggered back to the edge of the pier with his arm hanging at a sickening angle, and he laughed. It was a soft, genuinely amused sound.

"Go on," he said. "Kill me if you like. It changes nothing. The Red Ledger holds tickets on half this city, Mr. Mercer." He smiled through the pain. "Including your wife's family."

Before Gideon could reach him, he let himself fall backward off the pier. The black water closed over him, and the current carried him into the fog. Gideon stood at the edge for a long moment, but nothing surfaced.

He went back to the crane and lowered Pippa onto the dock as gently as he could. He cut the ropes from her wrists and ankles with his pocketknife, and she tore the tape from her mouth and threw her arms around his neck so hard they both nearly fell.

"I knew you'd come," she said into his shoulder, shaking. "I knew it."

Trent was slumped at the base of the crane with one hand pressed to his shoulder and blood leaking between his fingers. When Gideon knelt in front of him, he started to cry.

"I didn't know," he said. "Gideon, I swear to God, I didn't know they killed Grandpa. I thought they'd only scare her. Please. Please forgive me."

Gideon looked at him for a long time.

"You pawned your sister," he said quietly. "That's one debt I don't accept."

Trent's face crumpled. But Gideon was already tearing the sleeve from his own shirt. He packed it hard against the wound and held it there with both hands while Pippa called for an ambulance on a phone she took from one of the groaning men. He didn't let go until the paramedics arrived and lifted Trent onto a stretcher.

Then more headlights swept across the dock.

Three black SUVs rolled out of the fog, and men in Hartwell Medical security jackets spilled out. Selene stepped from the lead car with her phone in her hand, its screen showing a small blue dot that was him. She had ignored every word he'd said. The real key hung from a cord around her neck.

She stopped at the edge of the headlights. She looked at the twenty men groaning on the concrete, at the dangling crane and at the paramedics loading Trent into the ambulance. Then she looked at her husband, standing in the middle of it all with blood on his shirt that wasn't his.

Selene understood then that there had never been a Rag Mercer. There had only ever been this man, wearing that name like a borrowed suit.

Gideon turned away from her, and that was when he saw the notebook.

It lay on the wet concrete where the Auditor had dropped it, its red cover dark with rain. He picked it up. Most of the pages held lists of names, half of them crossed out in the same neat ink. Clipped inside the back cover was a ticket.

It was the size of a pawn slip, printed on heavy crimson card, with a few typed lines across it.

Collateral: Evelyn Hartwell. Called and collected.

It was dated twenty years ago, on the night her car went off Marrick Bridge. At the bottom was a line for the debtor, the person who had sold her to the Red Ledger, and someone had signed it with two initials in a careful hand.

Hartwell.

Behind him, Gideon heard Selene's footsteps crossing the wet dock.

He slipped the crimson ticket into his pocket before she could see it.