Chapter 28 · Switch 28

"Marco!" I'm already three steps behind him, my boots slipping on the cold-room threshold, and he doesn't stop, doesn't even turn his head.

"Marco, talk to me!"

"Not now, Lila." He hits the stairwell door with his shoulder and it bangs against the wall hard enough to rattle the safety glass. I go through right after him, the freight elevator groaning somewhere above us like it knows something's wrong before we do.

The counting room is two floors down, past the scale room, past the boxes of shaved ice that never made it to the trucks. The radio's still squawking on Marco's hip, static eating half the words, but I catch enough. *Bell crates. Nine years. Sixty men.* And under all of it, a name I don't know yet.

We come around the corner and there's a man already at the breaker panel. Gray suit, no tie, a briefcase open on the counting table like he's been standing there for an hour waiting for us to show up.

"Marco Bell." He doesn't look surprised to see either of us.

"You move fast for a man who just tore up his own paperwork."

"Voss.