Page 31 of Damian
River clipped the courier before he could bend to the box. My hands found pockets and the flash drive glittered in my palm, the stupidly miraculous kind of thing that can untangle the whole mess. Cyclone slid it into his laptop and the roomwent quiet as he decoded the little democracy of spreadsheets.
Folders open like mouths, names spilled out. Some were initials, coded and cruel. Then a full name sat there in a column, neat and clinical and gutting. A date was beside it — seventy-two hours.
The world narrowed to that number. Ruby’s name was a bell with a bad tone. I felt the top of my head go cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. Seventy-two hours is a long time to be alone in a world built for monsters. It’s also a time a man can measure in miles and decisions.
“Fuck! We follow the truck,” I said. “We don’t drop. We don’t engage without warrants. We trail until the handoff. We make them tie themselves to paper.”
River’s jaw tightened. “We go tonight.”
“No,” I said, and heard the hunger in my own voice. “We do it right. We get the warrants. We force them into their documents. We do it clean so names stick.”
Cyclone worked like a man possessed, mapping every transfer, tracing the shell companies until the money’s face dried into a single vendor. The relief that came with data is a small and dangerous thing: it means you can move like law, and law binds. It means you can get the names to stick on a piece of paper that won’t fold under pressure.
We slid back to the farm with the drive and the manifest and the taste of a narrow victory. Morgan was waiting on the porch, rain still in her hair from some small chore, the recorder shadowed like a companion. When she saw the drive in my hands her face went pale and for a second I thought the world would tilt.
“Seventy-two hours,” I told her, because the ledger was not a thing you sugarcoated. “They’ve scheduled a transfer in seventy-two hours.”
She folded like a small, fierce thing, and I wanted to holdher like a weapon and a promise both. Instead I pressed my thumbs to her fingers — the only thing that felt like a human law I could keep in a world of cold names.
“We pull every thread,” I said. “We follow every hand. We bring her home.”
Morgan’s eyes were steady, bright with the kind of hope that burns slow but true. She squeezed back, small and hard and an anchor. “Then don’t waste a second.”
I didn’t. The map was a living thing now, and the clock had started to count. We would draw the noose neat and tight, and when it came time to pull, we’d do it in a way that left no seam for them to hide behind.
I thought of the kiss on the kitchen counter, the way her mouth had felt like an answer, and then I put that quiet, private thing into a pocket. There would be time for the rest later. For now, the ledger wanted blood and names and the stubborn, slow work of pulling people out of the dark.
We had seventy-two hours. We had a route. We wouldn’t screw this up.
“Brief in twenty,” I said. “We move on warrant at nightfall. Everybody ready?”
Heads nodded down the line. The van eased into the dusk like a thing that knew both mercy and steel. We were going to Del Mar’s shadow again, this time with law clutched in our fists and a promise at our backs.
37
Damian
Warrants feel like thin paper miracles — one signature, one stamp, and suddenly the law has weight where money once pretended to have it. We had the papers before dusk: affidavits cobbled from Cyclone’s decrypts, the manifest printouts, the vendor links. The judge signed with a hand that looked like it had seen more than its share of dirty money. I folded the warrant into my breast pocket the way a man folds an oath.
The team moved quieter than a church. Cyclone’s laptop hummed like a prayer; River checked a magazine and gave me a look that said he’d trust me with his life and his secrets. Raven’s drone breathed over our heads like a nervous bird. I thought of Morgan on the porch, recorder dark and eyes raw, and kept that picture small and fierce in my chest. It made me steadier than anything else.
The yard at the edge of the industrial park smelled of salt and old rubber — rows of stacked containers like a city of steel. Our lights dimmed to a whisper as we eased in: law enforcement at our back, the warrant in our hands, our faces the only things in the night that were not pretending. Wewalked as a unit—no swagger, no bravado—just the business of pulling small people back from monstrous hands.
We hit the perimeter first: a slow, legal knock that carries the weight of authority and patience. Men shuffled inside the gate, surprised, then angry, then cowardly. They tried to buy us time with questions and raised voices; the warrant is a blunt instrument that vocabulary can’t fake around. We moved through the lot with search teams and flashlights, uniformed officers leading the way, my team folded in as we always do—silent, close, human anchors.
Inside the third container from the east, the air hit different — humid, the stale breath of those who’d waited too long. My ribs tightened in a way that had nothing to do with weather. Cyclone’s light cut a path across crumpled blankets and the hollowed shapes of children pressed against each other, eyes like moons in a black sky.
“Move them out,” I commanded, voice low but not empty. My hands found the first child, a small, cotton-scented weight that felt like all the world's errors and mercies at once. River and Cyclone made a channel; officers took kids into the warm light of blankets and murmurs.
The shipping manifests told us this yard was a relay. Men who moved merchandise like children traded numbers and accounts and closed mouths. The manifests also, mercifully, lied only so much. They had left tracks — tattoos, a temporary wristband, the little things that people who traffic forget to erase: a scribbled initial, a cheap locket, a marker name written in a child’s own scrawl.
I swept the container with my flashlight and then I saw her.
She was smaller than I’d pictured, hair plastered to a damp forehead, eyes wide and carved out of fear. A lopsided bracelet dangled at her wrist — a string of beads with one bead stamped as if by hand with a name: “Ruby.” The light hitit and it was an absurdly ordinary thing to save a life with — a bead and a name. My lungs compressed around the sort of scream and prayer that cannot both leave the throat at once.
“Damian?” Cyclone’s voice was miles away. “You seeing—”
I didn’t answer. I moved faster than the rest of my planning allowed, careful and quick as blessing a child back to daylight. I reached for Ruby and she looked up, and for the first time in what felt like forever two worlds met: her fear and the strange, steady truth of being rescued.
