Chapter 9 - Pier 7
At 11:56 p.m., Emma stood in the rain at Pier 7 holding a black binder against her chest.
She had won the argument.
Sort of.
The binder was a duplicate filled with copied pages and a tracker hidden inside the spine. Detective Keene had officers positioned in unmarked vehicles two blocks away. Grant’s security team watched the waterfront from a warehouse roof.
Emma wore a tiny microphone beneath her jacket.
Eleanor had hated every second of the plan.
“If anything feels wrong, you walk away,” she had said.
“Everything already feels wrong.”
“Then walk away faster.”
Now Emma stood beneath a broken dock light listening to rain hit the water.
Midnight came.
Nothing happened.
12:01.
12:02.
Then headlights appeared beyond the shipping containers.
A gray sedan rolled toward her.
Same shape as the car from the supermarket alley.
It stopped twenty feet away.
The passenger door opened.
Darren Cole stepped out.
Emma’s anger burned hotter than her fear.
“You took Mateo?”
Darren looked exhausted. His white shirt was wrinkled and wet, his tie gone.
“Give me the binder.”
“Where is he?”
“Emma, you have no idea what you’re involved in.”
“You fired me for buying milk.”
“I fired you because I was told to.”
“By Marissa Lane?”
Darren’s face twitched.
That was enough.
Emma took one step closer. “Where is Mateo?”
Darren lowered his voice. “I didn’t take him.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I came because they told me if I didn’t get that binder, they’d bury me with everything else.”
Emma stared at him. “You set your office on fire.”
“I panicked.”
“You stole from charities.”
His face tightened. “I signed paperwork. Pierce told me everybody did it. He said the food was being redirected because the charities couldn’t use it. By the time I figured out what Beacon was doing, I was already in too deep.”
Emma heard Keene’s voice in her earpiece.
Keep him talking.
“Who is ‘they’?” Emma asked.
Darren looked toward the sedan.
“Give me the binder first.”
“No.”
“Emma, listen to me. You think Eleanor Whitmore can protect you because she owns stock and has a famous last name? She can’t. These people have been doing this for years.”
“Names.”
Darren swallowed.
“Pierce. Lane. And somebody at Beacon named—”
A gunshot cracked across the pier.
Darren dropped.
Emma screamed and hit the wet pavement.
Police lights exploded in the distance.
A second shot struck the sedan window.
“Emma, move!” Keene shouted through the earpiece.
Emma crawled behind a concrete barrier.
Darren was alive. He clutched his shoulder, staring at her in terror.
May you like
Then he grabbed her sleeve and whispered the name he had been trying to say.
“Michael.”
