Just as I’m counting on Jaxon’s deluded sense of familial loyalty to buy me entrance onto the trawler.
“What do you do if they don’t let you onboard?” Pomroy asks, narrowing his eyes at me.
“Abort the mission. Walk away.”
“And what do you do if they start to suspect you?”
I sigh. This is about the hundredth time he’s asked me this question. “Make an excuse. Get out.”
“And if you can’t get out?” Stanhope chimes in.
“I use the extraction code.”
“And then?”
“Find cover until you arrive, guns blazing, to haul my ass out.”
Pomroy’s slate-gray eyes narrow. “Don’t be a wiseass. This isn’t a joking matter.”
“I know that.”
“Maybe he’s not right for this op,” he says, glancing at his partner. “Maybe we should wait for a different chance to get the intel—”
Stanhope shakes her head. “You know as well as I do that if the Reina crew heads back out on another run down the coast tomorrow, it could be weeks before they come back to port. Assuming they come back to this port at all. If they don’t… all our groundwork here will be for nothing.”
Pomroy glowers. “I still don’t like it.”
“Well, I don’t like your cologne. We all make sacrifices for this job.”
“It’s a risk.”
“A calculated one,” she rebuts stubbornly. “And you know what they say. No risk, no reward.”
“You’re not the one taking the risk, Stanhope.” Pomroy turns his gaze toward me. His eyes hold a severity that makes my stomach turn. “You sure you’re ready for this, kid? You sure you realize what’s at stake, here?”
Only my life.
I meet his steely stare head on. “My brother already took one future away from me. I won’t let him take this new one I’m trying to build. You say it’s a risk, and I hear you. But I don’t think you understand… I’m risking far more by not doing anything. By letting Jaxon control my destiny. By letting the threat he poses to the people I care about keep me isolated.”
Pomroy nods slowly. “Okay, then.”
“We’re ready,” Stanhope tells the man sitting at the back of the van, manning the comm-station. I hear him relaying commands to the net of units spread around the harbor, prepared to move in at a moment’s notice. The thought is comforting. I keep it close to my chest, like a shield, as I step out of the van, into the night, and begin the long, lonesome walk to the docks.
* * *
The rusty old trawler bobs innocuously at her slip, giving no indication of the danger lurking inside. Nerves churn in my stomach, clawing their way up my throat, as I approach with measured footfalls that sound like gunfire on the wooden planks.
The harbor is quiet, the frenzied daytime rush sedated by the blanket of night that’s fallen in the past few hours. Even the clanking of rigging and lapping of tidal waves seems muted. Perhaps everything is muffled by the roar of blood rushing between my ears.
Someone is up on deck. I feel a set of eyes tracking my movements even before I spot the small red flare of a cigarette against the dim backdrop of sleeping vessels. I don’t recognize the voice that whips my way, but I do recognize the threat in it.
“Wouldn’t come much closer, if I were you.”
I stop walking. In the dark, I can’t make out the stranger’s features, so I fix my eyes in the general direction of his silhouette. I clear my throat. “I’m here to see my brother.”
There’s a tense silence as he absorbs my words. “You’re the kid?”
So, he’s heard of me. “Archer.”