VANGUARD OF THE BAY

CHAPTER 8: The Shadow Assistant

"Shoot me, and the data uploads instantly." I held my ground, staring straight into her eyes, refusing to let the shake in my legs reach my voice.

Wind howled down the alley, driving rain sideways between us. The guards stood on high alert, lasers fixed on my chest. Captain Thomas watched from the ground, fear plain on his face, his zip-tied hands straining uselessly against the plastic.

For five seconds nobody moved. I counted them, actually counted, the way you count between lightning and thunder to guess how close the storm is.

Sienna's eyes ran the calculation, and something in her expression shifted, some internal ledger settling on a different number than the one she'd walked in with. The corner of her mouth twitched downward, cold and unreadable. She lowered the pistol and clicked the safety back on.

"Stand down, all of you."

The lead guard frowned, rifle still raised. "Miss Cross? Mr. Vance gave explicit orders to secure the asset and eliminate any non-essential witnesses."

Sienna turned to him slowly, her voice dropping colder than the rain. "Are you questioning my authority, Officer Davis?"

"No, ma'am." He flinched under her look, the rifle dipping an inch. "It's just that Mr. Marcus said—"

"Mr. Marcus put me in charge of this retrieval," she cut in. "If we execute Leo Vance in an open alley, his digital failsafes trigger and the federal oversight committee is down our throats by noon tomorrow. Is that what you want to explain to the board?"

He lowered his weapon, jaw tight. "No, Miss Cross." His eyes cut to me for a second, and I understood then that Sienna had just spent something valuable to buy Thomas and Hank their lives, some measure of trust with her own men that she might not get back.

"Cut the fishermen loose." She nodded at Thomas and Hank. "They're irrelevant to the company now."

A guard produced a knife and sawed through the zip ties without ceremony. Thomas rubbed his wrists, his eyes finding mine across the alley, and I read in them a warning I couldn't do anything about. Don't trust her. I didn't have a choice. Hank was already pulling Thomas back toward the shop, casting one last look over his shoulder like he expected to see me shot before the SUV pulled away.

"Sienna, what are you doing?" I asked, thrown by the sudden shift, my mind still catching up to what my body had already accepted.

"Shut up and walk." She grabbed my arm and shoved me toward the lead SUV. "You're coming with me to the central tower."

She pushed me into the back seat and climbed in after me, slamming the door. The tinted windows shut out the rain and the sight of Thomas being cut loose, his relief-flooded face the last thing I saw before the glass went dark.

The driver hit the gas and the SUV pulled away, heading for the lit-up towers of the central district, tires hissing on the wet road. I twisted around once, catching a last glimpse of Thomas standing in the rain, hands still raw from the zip ties, before the alley disappeared behind us.

"Why didn't you let them shoot me?" I asked, leaning back but keeping my distance. "You're Marcus's right hand. You've helped him destroy half the small businesses in this city."

She didn't answer right away. She pulled a tablet from her briefcase and started wiping the harbor camera logs, fingers moving fast over the screen, precise and mechanical, like this was just another item on tonight's agenda.

"You don't know anything about me, Leo Vance." She didn't look up. "And you definitely don't know how your uncle operates."

"Then tell me." I watched her fingers pause over the tablet, just for a second. "You clearly know him better than anyone left alive who isn't on his payroll. Tell me what I'm actually up against."

"You're up against a man who's spent thirty years making sure nobody ever sees him coming." She resumed typing. "He didn't seize this city in one night, Leo. He bought a councilman here, a judge there, a harbor inspector somewhere else, over years, so slowly that by the time anyone noticed, there was nothing left to vote out."

"And you helped him do it."

"I helped him finish it," she corrected, without looking up. "By the time I came into his employ, the harbor was already the only piece he hadn't fully swallowed. Your father held that line longer than anyone thought he could. Marcus used to complain about him at dinner like Arthur Vance was a splinter he couldn't dig out."

"You had dinner with him."

"More times than I'd like to remember." Her mouth twisted, not quite a smile. "He kept a photo of you on his desk the whole time. Some birthday party, you couldn't have been older than ten. He used to say you were the one soft place in an otherwise very hard man."

"I know he stole my father's company." My voice came out bitter, harder than I meant it. "I know he hires syndicate mercenaries to murder fishermen. And I know you stand right next to him every time he signs those orders."

She stopped typing. Turned to look at me, ice-blue eyes catching the dim light of the car, and for a moment the mask slipped just enough that I saw something tired underneath it.

"If I didn't stand beside him, Leo," she said quietly, "someone ten times worse would be sitting in my seat. Someone who'd have put a bullet through your forehead the second you stepped onto that dock three weeks ago."

I stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

She opened her mouth like she might actually tell me, and for a second the composure cracked enough that I saw something underneath it, tired and frightened and a lot younger than the tailored suit made her look. Then her eyes flicked to the driver's mirror, to the guard up front who could hear every word, and whatever she'd been about to say folded itself back down.

"Not here," she said instead, barely a whisper.

Before she could answer, the SUV swerved hard left. Tires shrieked on the wet road as the car skidded sideways, the world tilting for a sick half second.

BOOM.

An explosion tore up the street ahead of us, blowing out the streetlights and hurling debris through the air. The SUV slammed into a guardrail and stopped dead, the impact throwing me hard against the door.

"What was that?" the driver shouted, fighting to restart the stalled engine, his hands slipping on the key.

Sienna had her pistol out already. "Get down!" She grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me flat onto the floorboards as a hail of rifle fire shattered the windshield.