The tide was coming in, slow and black as spilled ink. Cranes hunched against the skyline, and the dockyard lights cast long bars of sodium gold across the tarmac like prison bars no one remembered building.
Emilia checked her watch once, then didn’t look again. Time mattered, but rhythm mattered more. You didn’t count seconds in a place like this; you measured the distance between breaths, the way a shadow shrank or swelled around a corner, the hush before a foot found gravel.
“East fence,” Nora murmured in her ear. “Two. No, three. The talker from last night and two with him. Pattern matches the sweep team.”
“West?” Emilia asked.
“Quiet. Too quiet.”
Rafael was beside her in the wedge of darkness between stacked containers, a lean presence that somehow made the air feel solid. He che
