Chapter 16: The Dock

"It's my mother's name," Dante said.

"Your mother's name."

"Greco was her name before she married. It's true, and it isn't all of it."

Javier stood in the doorway of the dean's office with the corridor emptying around them.

Daniel, with a diplomat's instinct, had gone to look at the notice board at the far end.

"What's the rest?"

"I can't say it yet." Dante held his eyes. "Not without you walking out. I'd like to say it when I can say it and you stay."

"That's an odd thing to ask someone to take on faith."

"I know."

Javier looked at him for a long time.

There was no heat in it, and no softness either.

It was the look of a surgeon reading a scan.

"One more thing, then," he said. "You tell me when you're going out. Where, and for how long. I won't ask what for."

"Why?"

"Because I'd rather know the door is shut behind you than lie awake counting." His mouth twisted. "That's a rule, not a request."

"Tonight," Dante said. "The harbor. The east pier. I'll be back by three."

"Wear a coat."

"I'll wear a coat."

"And Dante." Javier turned to go. "Whatever it is. Come back."

The east pier at midnight smelled of diesel and salt.

Dante went in with one man, his mother's oldest driver, and a flashlight he did not turn on.

The three berths that had been Whitfield's at noon stood empty and dark, with a long tin warehouse behind them.

The padlock on the warehouse door was new.

The driver cut it with a bolt cutter and kept his back to the wall.

Inside, there were no crates of electronics.

There were twenty cots in rows, and a pile of duffel bags, and a rack of rifles with a tarp half pulled over it.

On a table by the door sat a clipboard.

Dante read it by the light of his phone.

Names, dates, a harbor road, and a Thursday.

At the bottom, in a smooth hand he knew from a hundred birthday cards, was one line.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.