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Chapter 25
Celine and Sofia stood on opposite sides of Celine's kitchen island, and each waited for the other to sit down first.Vittorio had called them both from the bus shelter. One woman knew the money and the families of Port Halden, and the other knew Leviathan, and the photo in his pocket belonged to both worlds. He had not thought past that. Now it was half past six on Saturday evening, the rain was still falling on The Crest, and he stood at the end of the island like a referee who had lost his whistle.THUNK!Sofia set her rifle case on the white marble floor. Celine's gray eyes went to the case, then to the mud on Sofia's boots, then back to the case, and stayed there.Sofia's eyes made their own trip. They went from Celine's silk robe to the soup bowl still drying by the sink. Vittorio had filled that bowl that morning, and Sofia's mouth curved at one corner."So this is where you eat breakfast now, Commander. It's a big kitchen for one bowl of soup.""Mr. Moretti cooks when he's wor
Chapter 24
Locker forty-seven at Halden Central Bus Terminal opened with a dry squeal, and Teresa's lavender scent drifted out.Vittorio had found the way here at the back of Celine's gray folder. Teresa's bus card showed one last trip on the evening she died, from Mercer Street to the central terminal at a quarter to seven, and the coin lockers in that terminal took brass keys with round heads. The number stamped on Walter's key matched a door in the third row.Before the terminal, he had gone home to change out of Sofia's sweatshirt. The electric bike stood chained behind the laundromat where Robert's boy had left it, with its front tire flat against the wet concrete. So Vittorio walked it two blocks to the corner garage on Mercer Street.Boris, the bearded mechanic there, looked up from the engine of an old truck and wiped his hands on a rag. He wore the same oil-black overalls he always wore, and a cigarette sat unlit behind his ear."Flat again? You ride that thing like it owes you money."
Chapter 23
Celine opened the door of Crest 301 in a silk robe, and Vittorio pressed the split pill into her palm.He had taken a taxi from the harbor in Sofia's gray sweatshirt and walked the last stretch up The Crest under a thin rain. The Saturday day guard at the barrier had known the night man's face and waved him through without a word, and nobody else on the street was awake yet.Celine looked down at the two white halves in her hand. The red wolf stared up from the powder, small and perfect. The color left her face so fast that Vittorio reached for her elbow."Where did you get this?" Celine whispered."From the bottom of the bottle Dr. Graves filled for two years. Crimson Wolf presses that mark into everything they sell, Celine. Somebody fed me their pills every morning and told me it was medicine."She stepped back to let him in and closed the door behind him with her shoulder, because both halves of the pill were still in her hand. They stood in the white hallway for a long moment, and
Chapter 22
The smell of burnt coffee woke Vittorio at seven on Saturday morning.Gray light came through the skylight, and the rain had thinned to a drizzle on the glass. For one second, he did not know where he was. Then his ribs ached, and he remembered the gravel lot, the vans, and Sofia hauling him up a narrow staircase that smelled of flour.HISS!Across the loft, a steel pot spat steam on a single gas ring. Sofia snatched it off the flame and swore at it in two languages, then in a third when the handle burned her fingers."I boiled it dry. I was cleaning the rifle and forgot it was even on, which you are never going to mention to anyone in the Corps. Drink it anyway, Commander, because it's the only coffee in this building."She poured a mug of thick black sludge and pushed it into his hands. Vittorio took one sip, and the bitterness hit the back of his throat like tar.Zero had drunk his coffee exactly this way, black and boiled too long, on mornings when the stove in the barracks had no
Chapter 21
Sofia cut Vittorio's shirt off with kitchen scissors, and the golden leviathan was still glowing on his back.She had found the Valkyrie key in his jacket and driven him across the harbor herself, with the rifle case on his knees and the heater on full.The safe house was a loft above a closed bakery near the water. Its bare brick walls still smelled faintly of old bread, and rifle parts lay in neat rows along a table as long as a coffin.SNIP!The last of the white shirt fell away from his shoulders. The fabric was soaked through with rain and blood, and the left sleeve hung in two pieces where Dutch's blade had opened it.Sofia filled a bowl with ice water from the sink, soaked a towel, and pressed it flat against his spine. The cold bit deep. Under the towel, the scales burned like a stove that someone had forgotten to turn off."Breathe slowly, Commander. The ink cools faster when your heart does, and you've been running hot since nine o'clock. Every reader in Leviathan saw that l
Chapter 20
Tires screamed in the parking lot, and two black vans boxed in the back door of The Anchor.Dutch had said the words Old Master the way dockhands spoke of a storm they had barely survived. Crimson Wolf answered to the old man with the silver cane. Tonight had been a test, and the cleanup crew had already arrived.Doors slid open on both vans. Six men in dark jackets poured out into the drizzle. They carried steel batons, and their boots splashed through the puddles in step. None of them wore a face Vittorio knew.The dockhands inside had nothing to do with this, so Vittorio picked up his jacket, walked down the corridor past the men's room, and stepped out through the back door to meet the six men in the wet gravel.Two of the men slipped past him without a glance and went straight into the corridor. A moment later, they came back out with Dutch hanging between them. His ruined knee dragged through the gravel, and his face had gone gray under the blood.Dutch lifted his head as they h
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