True North

Chapter 8

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 rig looked like. He was already moving toward the narrow door at the back of the stall, fingers finding a junction box half hidden behind a stack of car batteries, and something in him simply knew which wire mattered and which three were decoys, knew it the way he now knew most things that used to require thinking. The panel went dark and silent under his hands in under thirty seconds.

Farrow set down his soldering iron very slowly.

“Huh,” he said, echoing Gideon almost word for word, though he didn’t know it. “Alright. Ask your questions.”

“The wipe device,” Jo said. “Who built it.”

“Don’t know who built it. Know where the parts came from, though. There’s a lab up the coast that’s been buying components like that for over a year, real specialized stuff, more than any legitimate research outfit would need.” Farrow lowered his voice slightly, glancing at the door out of habit more than actual concern. “That lab’s funded off the books by Calloway Maritime. Shell accounts, three layers deep, but I traced enough of it myself once, back when I still thought I might do something useful with what I know. Your family’s not just standing near Wren’s operation. They’re paying for it. Whether they know it or not, I genuinely couldn’t tell you.”

“Who signs the checks,” Nolan started to ask, but the question died in his mouth as the stall’s outer door slammed open hard enough to crack one of its hinges.

Four of Wren’s men came through fast, boots hammering the rotten boards hard enough to shake the whole stall, and Farrow was already diving sideways behind his workbench before the first shot cracked the air. Nolan grabbed the nearest supply crate and flipped it onto its side in one motion, more instinct than plan, catching the second man’s rush across the shins and sending him sprawling. The third came in swinging and found nothing but air, Nolan’s elbow catching him under the jaw before he’d finished the motion, clean and economical in a way that felt inherited rather than practiced, like his body had done this exact sequence a thousand times in a life he couldn’t remember living. The fourth man got one shot off before Jo’s return fire caught him in the shoulder and spun him into a stack of crates, gun clattering away across the boards.

It was over in under a minute, the stall smelling like gunpowder and scorched electronics, Farrow’s precious salvage scattered across the floor.

“Go,” Farrow hissed, already back on his feet, shoving something small and hard into Nolan’s palm before they could even ask. A USB drive, cheap and unlabeled. “Everything I traced on the lab, the accounts, all of it. Take it and get it off my pier before more of them show up, because I am done being anywhere near whatever your family’s carrying, understand me?”

They ran.

-----

Genevieve was still awake when Renee called a second time that night, this one carrying none of the earlier calm of routine business.

“There was a fight on the docks a couple hours ago. Pier fourteen, the old salvage stretch. A contact of mine says at least three men connected to someone called Corbin Wren ended up in the hospital, and the description of the man who put them there matches Nolan.”

Genevieve didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Wren,” she repeated. “That name keeps coming up.”

“It does.”

She found Desmond in the study an hour later, still nursing a drink he didn’t need, his arm out of its sling entirely now that no one important was around to see it. “Tell me about the funding rumor,” she said, no preamble. “The one about a lab. About Wren.”

Something flickered across her brother’s face before he arranged it into confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You knew exactly what I was talking about a half second ago, before you remembered you were supposed to look confused.” She sat across from him, watching the way he wouldn’t quite hold her eyes. “Tell me again what actually happened outside that bar. From the start. Slowly, this time.”

He told it again, and it came apart in places it hadn’t a week ago, small inconsistencies she hadn’t noticed the first three times he’d told it, a detail about who’d searched Nolan’s pockets that didn’t match what he’d said before, a timeline that didn’t quite hold together anymore now that she was actually listening instead of just absorbing whatever version arrived first.

She didn’t accuse him of anything. She simply thanked him and left the study, and the not accusing him felt like its own kind of answer.

-----

Back at the cannery, Jo turned the drive over in her hands like it might be fragile, though it was really just plastic and metal, nothing that should have felt as heavy as it did.

“This is it,” she said. “First real proof we’ve had since this started. Once we get through it properly, we can put real names on the lab, the accounts, all of it.” She looked up at Nolan, something careful in her expression. “But Wren’s not stupid. Once he realizes Farrow handed this over, Farrow becomes a loose end. A man like Wren doesn’t leave loose ends breathing for long.”

“Then we need to warn him.”

“We will,” Jo said. “Tonight, if we can. But I want you to understand what we just did to that man by walking onto his pier.”

Nolan looked at the drive in her hands, small enough to lose in a coat pocket, and thought about Farrow shoving it at him with hands that hadn’t quite stopped shaking. “I understand,” he said, and meant it more than he wanted to.

Outside, the fog had come in thick again, the same fog that seemed to follow every hard night in this city, and for once Nolan didn’t mind it. It was easier to think in the dark.