Chapter 17 · The Pass

The key fob was still biting into my palm when the storm hit the roof.

I'd been holding it since three that morning. Cold steel, slick with my sweat, freezing over again every time I checked it. The crest was stamped right into the metal: a black anchor, a chain looped twice around the shank, and a crooked little nick where the die had slipped under the fluke.

Same chain. Same angle. Same notched flaw I'd stared at on the wire transfer slip until my eyes watered.

Eleven thousand dollars to keep my mother on a ventilator seven more days.

Dockhands don't have eleven grand. Dockhands don't wire cash out of Grand Cayman.

The loft ladder groaned under heavy boots.

I snapped my fist shut. Shoved my hand behind my back.

Garrett came up through the hatch sideways, dripping wet, and the room shrank by half. Hair plastered to his forehead. Gray work shirt soaked transparent across his chest, rain running off his shoulders in sheets. Down at the fuel docks he was just the quiet muscle who ate my cereal straight out of the box.