We have Rao's jacket, two cuffed workers, and three heat signatures hunting the warehouse.
"Positions," Juno says.
I shove the jacket into my vest and roll a fresh Beacon down-aisle. Lark floats high and mean, LEDs off now to save glare. Mia mirrors feeds across our visors and opens the building PA with a soft chime that says DELIVERY DOCK CLOSED in a voice no one believes.
Two masked figures edge the roll-up, testing angles. The third—tube-guy—hangs back, scanning.
"Paint rounds," Mia says. "Marker, not kinetic."
"Copy," Juno says. "No one leaves with city gear."
The office worker leans in the doorway, zip-cuffed, eyes blown small from stimulants. He watches like he's trying to memorize a story he's not part of.
The first masked figure commits. Juno commits harder.
Ken makes her heavy. She rides the momentum, hip checks a rack into the gap. The intruder ricochets into a pallet and loses his tube to concrete. I flick a line, snag it by the strap, and fling it deeper in.
The second one throws a can. Smoke billows. Juno walks through it like it's gossip. Her palm finds a wrist; her knee finds the ground through someone's shin. The man learns to pray.
I angle for tube-guy. He backpedals, firing paint to blind our cams. Red flowers bloom across my chest plate. Cute.
I bait him with Phantom Steel scraping right and cut left, low under the smoke. When his barrel swings to the sound, my blade taps the tube—light, quick—just enough to smack his aim. A splat coats the ceiling. He hesitates at his own mess. I shoulder into his ribs, steal his feet, and Juno zip-bands him before he finishes swallowing his curse.
"Three down," Mia says. "No more outside."
We drag bodies clear of the roll-up and leave the door half-shuttered, light striping the floor. My shoulder complains. I ignore it. Juno's boot is still foam-bitten; she laces it quick with an emergency cord from her belt.
"Talk," she tells the first pair we cuffed. "Who sent you? Why scrape barcodes?"
"So it looks like scrap," one says, then flinches. "Text orders. Number changes every time. Same words. Always after midnight."
Mia has his city-issue phone already. "Spoofed app. No SIM trail."
"Work orders?" I ask.
"Filed," the office guy says helpfully, then smirks. "In black ink."
Juno doesn't waste breath. "Faces to the floor," she says, and they listen.
I crack Rao's jacket on a cleared pallet. Light gray shell, inside pocket stitched into the lining. I slice and shake it out: a laminated pass from Yard Six, expired; a paper receipt from a coffee shop three blocks from Pier Four; and a tiny rubber earplug case, empty. No phone. No wallet.
"Pass is real," Mia says, scanning. "Issued to a contractor two months ago. Fake name, wrong photo. The coffee is cash with a timestamp that puts him…huh. Two hours before our Pier Four call."
"So they've been in the yards a while," Juno says.
"Or longer. The log trail is clean, which means someone with keys kept it clean."
I look at the office guy. "Broken axles?"
He stares right through me. "What do I know?"
Juno taps his badge with one finger. "You know where the keys live."
He pivots to sulky. "You'll figure it out. Maybe."
The word lands wrong in my ear. I almost put steel through the pallet to get the splinters talking for me. Body cams roll. I don't.
We stack seized gear in a neat rectangle, shoot it from four angles with GPS lock and time stamps because reports like to grow black rectangles where the good parts go. Foam clings to my edge; I clean the blade with a rag and elbow grease. It hates me back.
"Board liaison inbound," Mia says. She doesn't say Kade. She doesn't have to.
He arrives like rain dodges him—same coat, same dry shoes. Walks through foam dust like it's curated snow. Takes in the room: tied men, dolly frozen to concrete, racks shifted, smoke stain on the ceiling, Juno's quick laces.
"Event," he says.
"Active theft of city brace gear," Juno reports. "Two in custody here, one outside, one fugitive—Rao."
He waits. Juno fills silence with the clean list—times, positions, patterns used. Injuries: minor. Property damage: foam, palleted rack shift, paint on ceiling.
Kade writes nothing and forgets less. "Identifiers on the fugitive?"
"Male, thirties," I say. "Local accent. Short dark hair. Small scar at the eyebrow break. Gray jacket, ring device used for smoke pellet. Calls himself Rao. R-A-O."
His eyes tip at me when I spell it. "Civilian property damage?"
"Under active interference," Juno says. "Warehouse is a crime scene."
Kade's glance lingers on me one beat too long—like he can see the thing I keep off the report: the part where I said Zann's name to a stranger. He can always smell the smoke.
"Bag it," he says to no one we see. Board windbreakers appear on cue, gloved, quiet. Evidence slides into numbered cases. Our neat rectangle becomes their neat rectangle. Ownership shifts without moving.
"The Pier Four footage?" Juno asks. "We need it to connect this."
"It's under review," Kade says.
"By who?" Mia is tired enough to be sharp.
"By me," he says, not unkind. He doesn't smile. "Good work."
He turns, steps through the half-shuttered door, stops with his hand on the frame, and says without looking back, "Watch your off-book comms."
Then he walks into the clean morning and takes the narrative with him.
I look at Mia. She looks at me. Off-book comms: the anonymous drop that told us to look where the wood hums. He knows. Of course he knows.
"'Anchors,'" Juno says, eyes on the jacket. "Rao said anchors."
"Same cadence," I say. "Different target."
"Geophones?" Mia mutters. "We could listen for vibration shifts."
"We're not drilling holes in a pier without a permit," Juno says automatically, then blinks at herself. "We won't drill. We'll listen."
I thumb the edge of my blade. The foam residue is almost gone. The tension in my shoulder is not.
"Plan," Juno says, businesslike. "We go back to Pier Four at dawn. Anchor Gun and two coils. We go under."
Anchor Gun: city tool that drives steel spikes into timber or concrete to clip safety lines. Not magic. Pressure and bolts. Mia reworked ours into a compact frame with recoil break.
"We'll die if the tide turns," Mia says. It sounds like math, not fear.
"We won't," Juno says, and makes the room believe it for ten seconds.
The office guy whistles a little tune under his breath—three notes that live in my teeth. I don't look at him. I look at the jacket. I look at where Rao paused to drop a line on purpose—anchors—and I picture a different face. Zann would have smiled at that like it was a hint only brothers could hear.
I put the blade away. It catches at the throat from dried foam, then slides home.
"Break down the scene with the Board," Juno says. "Make them like us. Mia, get me a legal tag for a below-deck inspection. Routine. Safety priority."
"On it," Mia says.
Outside, the yard shivers itself awake. Generators hum. The sky goes the color of old steel.
My phone buzzes.
Unknown: Wood hums louder at low tide. Bring a long line.
No metadata. No route. No signature.
"Zann?" Mia asks quietly.
"Maybe," I say.
Or maybe we're late to our own story, and the people who started it are writing the next page while we run.
Either way, the tide is going out.
Permit clocks green, the sky pales, and Juno says, "Gear in ten—we're going under Pier Four."