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  The PA box emitted a low burst of static and a voice said, “What’s going on down there, fellas?”

  The first guy turned to the box and said, “Nothing we can’t handle. Got some guy here that thinks he really needs to talk to Turner.”

  “My name is Robert Myers, I work for Mr. Turner on the docks,” Thorn said to the box.

  The guard again stepped forward and again jammed the barrel of his gun into Thorn’s face. “I thought I told you to shut up?”

  The pain was so sharp that instinct took over and in one quick swipe, Thorn knocked the gun away from his face. He heard it clatter to the guard as he snapped a hard right into the guard’s nose, hearing the satisfying sound of bone crunching beneath his fist.

  Grabbing the man by the scruff of the neck he drew back to fire another shot as a sharp blow landed on the back his skull. Stars erupted in front of his eyes before giving way to total darkness.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The water was cold, splashing against Thorn’s face and soaking the front of his shirt.

  “Wake up, boy,” a gruff voice said, Thorn pulling himself from the darkened fog and opening his eyes

  Water dripped from the tip of his nose and ran in rivulets down his cheeks as he raised his head, swinging his gaze about. Best he could tell he was seated in the middle of an open garage, his hands tied behind him. A trio of large men stood in front of him, two of which he’d just encountered at the gate.

  “Not saying much now, huh?” the first guard sneered, a splint running the length of his nose, a bit of bruising already present in the corner of either eye.

  “You woke me up. You must have something to say,” Thorn replied, his voice low.

  A tinge of red colored the man’s cheeks as he glanced to either side. “Boss is coming out to see you. You so much as think about getting smart with him and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  Thorn smirked at the tough guy act. “That’s an awful pretty splint you’ve got there.”

  The man stepped forward and shot a left cross to Thorn’s jaw, sending the salty taste of blood through his mouth. Thorn swung his head with the momentum of the blow to weaken the impact and came up smiling, blood outlining his teeth. “You realize if I weren’t tied up I’d break more than your nose, don’t you?”

  The man’s face flushed as he jerked his gun from his waistband and pointed it at Thorn. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t waste you right now.”

  “Because I said so,” a voice boomed behind him.

  Surprise and embarrassment both gripped the man as he lowered the weapon and jammed it back into his waistband. “Sorry, boss, I was just teaching this punk a lesson.”

  Billy Turner walked into the garage and stopped alongside the man, examining his face. “Looks like he already taught you one there, Melvin.”

  His gaze swept past Melvin and settled on Thorn. “Robert, what the hell is this all about?”

  Thorn pushed out a mouthful of bloody spittle, letting it smack on the concrete between his shoes before looking up at Turner. “I pulled up to the front gate, pushed the call button, and asked to see you. The rest is on them.”

  An angry scowl crossed Turner’s face as he glared at the men. “Dammit, untie him right now.”

  The two men from the gate remained in place as the third moved around behind Thorn and untied his hands. The moment he felt his bindings give way Thorn took three steps forward, snapping a hard right into Melvin’s face. The blow shattered his splint, dropping him into a heap as droplets of blood dotted the floor around him.

  Appalachian stepped forward to intervene, raising his hands to strike. Thorn pivoted and swung a straight heel kick forward, driving the sole of his shoe into the man’s groin. Like Melvin, he fell to the ground whimpering.

  Thorn shifted his gaze to the third man and measured him for a moment before nodding. “Thanks for untying me.”

  The man stood frozen in place, his mouth agape. “Don’t mention it.”

  “Mr. Turner, I apologize for that, but they had it coming.”

  Turner glanced at the two men on the ground and cocked an eyebrow. “And now that it’s over?”

  Thorn lowered his hands by his side, turning to face his temporary employer square. “How long will it take for you to get Mr. Cardoza over here?”

  If the question surprised Turner in the slightest, he kept it hidden. “Fifteen, twenty minutes?”

  “Please do so. It’ll make sense very soon, I promise.”

  A wary look crossed Turner’s features as he examined Thorn. “You’ve given me no reason not to trust you. Don’t let this be that reason.”

  Thorn nodded at him and waited as Turner made the call. It was obvious from the tone that both men on the line were a little apprehensive, both agreeing after a few moments of back and forth.

  When it was complete Thorn and Turner left the others in the garage and made their way to the main house. Turner showed him to the main living room and left him there without a word, disappearing to wait for Cardoza by the front door.

  The pain in Thorn’s cheek grew steadily as twenty minutes passed, his mind racing to push things into place, before Turner and Cardoza entered together. Both wore tight expressions as they arranged themselves on either end of a sofa, both facing Thorn in an armchair across from them.

  “All right, Robert, what’s this all about?” Turner asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

  His posture alone told Thorn he was on very thin ice, that the men in front of him were even more frazzled than he over all that was taking place.

  It didn’t make what he was about to do any easier.

  “First of all, my name isn’t Robert Myers. It’s Thorn Byrd. I’m from South Carolina and as far as I know, I don’t have a drop of Irish blood anywhere in my lineage.”

  The air seemed to be pulled from the room as both men grew rigid in their seats, their faces tightening. Turner was the first to respond in any way, his hands clenching into fists. “What?”

  “My name is Thorn Byrd. I work for a company that was hired to look into what’s been going on at the docks.”

  Turner raised a hand to object, but Cardoza cut him off.

  “Hired? By whom?” Cardoza asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Thorn said. “One day I was handed a folder with information on the situation and told where to go.”

  “Look,” Turner said, all color having drained from his face, his words clipped, “whoever you are, I’m not sure what you’re playing at here but you better start making sense. Fast.”

  Keeping his hands in plain sight, Thorn made a point of remaining as still as possible, not wanting to be threatening in any way. He had no false notions that part of Turner leaving him alone wasn’t to also rotate a crew into place, a cadre of guards no doubt close by.

  “I know how this must sound,” Thorn said, “but I assure you I’m telling the truth. Somebody that was concerned about their holdings at the dock contacted my company. They sent me here.”

  Cardoza glanced over at Turner. “Tallo?”

  Thorn smirked. “Anybody else?”

  Turner cast a glance at Thorn and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He hit a sequence of buttons and waited for it to connect. “Hey, Paul, Billy Turner. How are you?”

  He waited a moment and said, “Listen, I’ve got a guy here that says he was hired to do some digging around the docks. You know anything about that?”

  Another moment passed, Thorn staring directly at Turner, watching as the older man’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this to anybody?”

  There was another pause, followed by a smirk, the first crack in Turner’s visage since entering the room. “Yeah, he says he has some information for us. I’ll listen to what he has to say and give you a call later.”

  The call was ended without signing off, Turner snapping the phone shut in his hand and turning to Cardoza. “He is who he says he is. Hardy we
nt off the books, thought it might be better to have an outside eye take a look at things.”

  “Believe me, I wouldn’t have come here unless it was necessary,” Thorn said, drawing the attention of both men towards him.

  Each one seemed to take a long moment surveying him before Turner nodded slightly. “All right, Thorn. Make it make sense.”

  Leaning forward, Thorn laced his fingers together in front of him, closing the gap between the two sides to just a couple of feet. “You now know who called me in, so I’ll skip the back story and get right to it. Either of you guys piss off any Asians lately?”

  Both men stiffened in recognition.

  “The guy with the fedora,” Cardoza said.

  “You know him?” Thorn asked, shifting his focus just a bit to the left.

  “We’ve seen a picture,” Turner said. “Nothing more.”

  “Damn,” Thorn muttered, shaking his head a bit. “My first night on the job, the night I went in the water, I met one of the refugees afterwards.”

  Across from him both men sat in rapt silence.

  “He was a guy about my age, said his father had disappeared and he was traveling the same route to try and find him.”

  Thorn could sense the strain in the air rise a tiny bit as Cardoza looked across to Turner. “The first container.”

  “Mhmm,” Thorn said, nodding. “In the days that followed he and his sister stuck around, poking at things, seeing if anything shook loose before they went home.”

  “And did it?” Cardoza prompted.

  Drawing in a deep breath through his nose, Thorn said, “During the attack two nights ago, I was able to plant a tracking device on one of the intruders. It led to a place up the shoreline, an estate sitting right on the water.

  “Using satellite imagery, I’ve been monitoring all activity at the location.”

  Thorn fell silent for a moment, looking each man square. The information he was about to deliver was the reason he had come to the house in person, had endured being poked and assaulted by Turner’s men.

  “Most of the people I’ve spotted have been basic goons,” Thorn said. “But this evening somebody new showed up.

  “Marc Tallo.”

  The name was delivered with zero inflection, no bit of triumph in his voice. He knew the information would have an instant effect on the men, not wanting either one to think he was garnering even the tiniest bit of joy from the exchange.

  As far as Thorn was concerned, this was a simple numbers game. He now had a clear idea of how the respective sides were drawn. Working alone, or even with Ingram and Nio, he had no way of going up against whatever lay up the shoreline. If he could somehow tap into the conglomerate resources of Turner and Cardoza though, he might have a chance of both getting Iggy back and ending whatever was going on at the docks.

  “Are you sure?” Turner asked.

  Beside him Cardoza opened his mouth to speak several times, each time failing to find the words.

  “I can have the images sent here right now if you’d like,” Thorn said. “I just didn’t bring any with me for fear of who might see them.”

  This time both men fell silent. Cardoza continued to open and close his mouth while Turner chewed at his bottom lip.

  “The second night I was here I planted a shipment of cars that were never touched,” Thorn continued. “I didn’t realize at the time it was because they weren’t his cars.”

  This time Turner nodded himself awake, color returning to his cheeks as his blood began to pump. He twisted his head at the neck to face Cardoza and said, “I’ve lost men. You’ve lost a great many Cubans. What has he lost? At most, a few cars? And as it turns out, he probably just drove them to a warehouse and parked them.”

  Cardoza bobbed his head in agreement. “That Guido bastard.”

  The two men sat in silence for a moment, anger flashing on their faces.

  “So how do the brother and sister fit in?” Cardoza asked.

  It was a question Thorn had known would be asked before he drove over, a handful of answers passing through his mind. In the end he had settled on a sanitized version of the truth, hoping it would be enough to slide by unnoticed.

  “Through a bit of random timing, they happened to find out the coordinates to the tracking device I planted,” Thorn said, stopping there.

  “And went snooping,” Turner added.

  “And were killed,” Cardoza finished, a sour expression on his face.

  “True, right up to the killing part,” Thorn said, his voice low and even. “The young man was able to escape, but they took the girl. Presumably they’re still holding her there.”

  The two men exchanged a glance, a bit of unease in their expressions.

  “Which is why you came to us,” Turner said.

  “Yes,” Thorn said, dipping the top of his head an inch. “Out of respect, and to propose a trade.”

  Cardoza glanced to Turner before extending a hand towards Thorn and flicking his fingers back at himself, gesturing for him to continue.

  “I’ve seen their layout,” Thorn began. “Been over it twenty times from the air. It’s too big for me to go in alone.”

  “You need manpower,” Turner said, thinking aloud.

  “If you guys can get me into that house,” Thorn said, nodding. “I will bring you Tallo. I won’t harm a hair on his head and I will never speak his name again. I’ll even go on the record and collude any story you want me to.”

  Thorn knew that both men had the resources to find and eliminate Tallo whenever they wanted. His only hope was they would realize by allowing him to do it, their fingerprints stayed off of things. With luck, they might even be able to retain their working relationship with his successor.

  Cardoza pursed his lips and turned to look at Turner, weighing the proposal. ”Billy?”

  Turner matched the look a moment before turning to face Thorn. “You understand this is a lot to swallow right now, right?”

  “I do.”

  “And we’ll of course need confirmation that it is in fact Tallo.”

  “Of course,” Thorn agreed.

  Once more the two men exchanged a glance before Turner faced forward one last time.

  “How many men will you be needing?”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The closed-circuit camera provided a direct view into the warehouse. It was situated high in the center of a side wall at a vantage point that could see the entirety of the vast room beneath it.

  On the floor below, filling most of the screen on the opposite end of the camera, men in white coats scurried back and forth. A fleet of armored vans lined the far side of the space, a team of beefy uniformed guards standing beside them.

  Seated behind his desk, tucked away in his upstairs office, Bern Gold sat and took in every movement. This night had been a long, long time coming and while he couldn’t be there in person he was not about to let it pass without lending a watchful eye.

  Leaning forward, he pressed a red intercom button from the bevy of controls in front of him and said, “The time is near, gentlemen.”

  Several of the guards flinched at the sound of his voice on the loud speaker, though the scientists continued to move around as if he hadn’t spoken. It was far from the first time his voice had permeated their workspace, their lack of reaction a conditioned response years in the making.

  As the crowd of scientists continued their work, a single man broke away. He strode straight towards the camera and stopped ten feet away from the wall, staring upward with his hands behind his back.

  “Crating is being completed as we speak, sir. We will hit our target time with a few minutes to spare,” he said, delivering the information and immediately returning to his work.

  “Excellent,” Gold said, not bothering to press the intercom switch. He swiveled his chair to see Ling in his periphery and said, “I trust you have made the arrangements I asked for?”

  “I have,” Ling replied. “Teams have been sent to each of the cities
you specified. They are ready and waiting for your order.”

  “Good,” Gold said, nodding in satisfaction. “The Vaporizers will depart in mere minutes. It will take a day to reach port, another to be disseminated.

  “Two days from now you may do whatever you like with the others, just so long as I never hear from them again.”

  “I can assure you, your wishes will be carried out to the letter,” Ling said, bowing the top of his head just an inch.

  “Excellent,” Gold repeated, shifting back to the monitor. He watched as a large, stainless steel crate was wheeled into view, the massive container taking four men in lab coats to maneuver it. A moment later a second crate came into view, followed by a third.

  “Any word yet from our guest?” Gold asked.

  “Nothing,” Ling said. “She still maintains she is a tourist visiting with her boyfriend.”

  “You are sure she is the woman from the docks and not really a tourist on vacation with her boyfriend?” Gold asked. He didn’t bother to turn and look at Ling, made no effort to show accusation in his tone or features.

  He had been paying Ling’s bills for long enough to know the simple question would be enough to get his point across.

  “I am most certain,” Ling said, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “I saw her that night.”

  “Indeed,” Gold whispered, continuing to watch the monitors. In total seven shiny steel crates had been wheeled from the lab and into position alongside the vans. Once they were lined up the scientists stood back, allowing the guards to load them.

  The same man returned to face the camera, his hands still behind his back. “Mr. Gold, we are loaded and ready for departure.”

  Gold checked his watch and pressed down the intercom switch. “Three minutes ahead of schedule. Very well done, gentlemen.”

  The man bowed to the camera, revealing a crown completely void of hair, as the other scientists shook hands with one another in the background.