The Royston Secret

Behind them, Corby slowly emerged from between the oil drums. He stepped gingerly over the puddle of engine grease, staring at Mercer’s pinned form with wide, manic eyes.

"You did it," Corby stammered, a wild, hysterical grin breaking across his pale face. "You got him! My God, Reese, you took him down. We can leave him here! Let the tide drown him when the basin opens. Nobody will ever know what he had to say!"

Reese turned her head. Her gaze pinned Corby to the deck as effectively as the iron hatch held Mercer.

"Tobias," she said, her voice dropping into a register that made Corby's smile vanish instantly. "If you make one more suggestion about disposing of witnesses, I will pull this wrench out of the dogging bracket and let Owen finish his conversation with you."

Corby swallowed hard, clamping his hands behind his back. He took two steps backward until his spine hit the diesel block. "I was only... I was speaking out of relief. Pure relief."

"Stand there and do not speak," Reese instructed.

She crouched beside the grated hatch, looking directly into Mercer's bloodshot eye.

"You talked to Royston at the Underwriters' Exchange this morning," Reese said. "Before Fallow went missing. What did she give you?"

Mercer coughed, spitting a mixture of salt water and phlegm onto the grating. "She had Fallow's soundings ledger. The pages from Section Nine. The historical charts from the 1888 quarantine reef."

"And what did the charts prove?"

Mercer closed his eyes for a second. When he spoke, the gravel in his voice had lost its rage, replaced by the hollow fatigue of a broken man. "The Sovereign wasn't wrecked by a storm. The city founders scuttled her. Two hundred immigrants locked in the steerage hold to keep the cholera off Wharf Street, while the aldermen bought up their land warrants for pennies on the dollar. The founding families built the whole harbor trust on the gold and deeds pulled out of those passengers' sea-chests. Captain Gentry found the lockboxes when Corby’s dredge hauled the mud."

Corby squeezed his eyes shut, leaning his head against the cold iron of the engine.

"And when Gentry refused to bury the boxes back in the silt," Reese said, "Royston gave the order."

"She didn't just order the hit," Mercer whispered. "She was on Croft's tug. She watched the Osprey get boarded from two hundred yards out in the fog. She paid off the harbor watch to log the trawler's running lights as a ghost sighting. Then she told me Corby was the one who set Gentry up, told me Corby was trying to pin the whole massacre on the longshore local. She gave me the hook and told me Corby was hiding in Slip Three."

Mercer looked up through the iron grate, his breath shallow. "She played me. She was going to let me hang for Corby's murder while she sailed the founding chest out of the bay on the midnight ebb."

"Where is the chest now?" Reese demanded.

"Berth Fourteen," Mercer rasped. "In the bonded refrigeration vault behind Royston's packing plant. Croft's tug is already warming its boilers to transfer the crate to the offshore packet before the three o'clock morning tide."

Reese stood up.

She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a small coil of marline twine, and bound Mercer's free left wrist securely to the dogging bracket's safety eyelet. Mercer did not resist. He lay his head against the steel plate, closing his eyes against the cold.

"You stay here, Owen," Reese said. "The bilge scuppers are open; the water won't rise above your knees before Teague's watch comes through on the four o'clock rounds. If you want to see Royston answer for Gentry and his boys, you tell Teague exactly what you just told me."

"Teague won't believe me," Mercer muttered.

"She'll believe you when I hand her the Section Nine chart and Corby's signed clearance," Reese replied.

She turned around and faced Tobias Corby.

The fish-broker looked like a corpse that had spent three days in the harbor mud. His silk tie was torn, his collar was blackened with grease, and his hands were shaking so violently he could not clasp his fingers together.

"Reese," Corby began, his voice a pleading whine. "Listen to me. We have to get out of the city. My personal cutter is moored at the private yacht basin. I have eighty thousand dollars in bearer bonds in the floor safe at my town house. We take the cutter, clear the heads before dawn, and reach the southern rail terminal by noon. I'll give you half. Forty thousand dollars, Reese. You never have to work a dock or look at a fish manifest again in your life."

Reese walked toward him, her footsteps slow, rhythmic, and unhurried on the steel deck.

She stopped two feet in front of him. Corby shrank back, his head ducking into his shoulders as if expecting a blow.

Reese did not raise a hand. She reached out with two fingers, plucked the damp silk pocket square from his lapel, and used it to wipe a fleck of Mercer's blood from the barrel of her spud wrench.

"Our contract is terminated, Tobias," Reese said quietly.

Corby blinked, terror flashing across his features. "What? No! You're my bodyguard! I hired you! I paid your retainer! You took the five hundred dollars!"

"I took five hundred dollars to protect a mid-level fish-broker from union disputes and dockside competitors," Reese said, tossing the soiled silk onto the deck. "I did not contract to serve as an alibi for four counts of premeditated murder, maritime fraud, and the cover-up of a century-old atrocity."

"I didn't kill them!" Corby cried out, his voice echoing off the curved hull frames. "I told you, Royston went behind my back! She brought the enforcers! I was trying to save my business!"

"You sent Captain Gentry into that reef knowing what was down there," Reese said. "You wrote the transit clearance that ordered him to keep his radio silent. You gave Royston the blindspot she needed to butcher four working men in cold water. You are as guilty of their blood as if you held the hook yourself."

Corby slid down against the engine casing, burying his face in his hands. A dry, pathetic sob racked his shoulders. "What are you going to do to me? Hand me over to Teague? The dockworkers will tear me apart before the police can even read the charges."

"You aren't going to the dockworkers," Reese said. "And you aren't running to your yacht."

Corby raised his head, tears carving pale tracks through the grime on his cheeks. "Then what?"

"You are going to walk out of this dry dock at my shoulder," Reese said, her voice dropping into an icy, absolute command. "You are going to lead me through the private security gate into Royston's packing plant at Berth Fourteen. You are going to use your executive clearance to open the bonded refrigeration vault. And when I take the founding ledger from that chest, you are going to stand in front of the district magistrate and swear under oath to every word in your signed clearance slip."

Corby stared at her, horrified. "Royston will kill me! Her syndicate owns half the judges in the county!"

"Then you had better stay very close to me," Reese said. "Because from this second forward, Tobias, you are not my employer. You are my evidence."

She reached down, seized Corby by the collar of his ruined coat, and hauled him to his feet with a single, sharp heave.

"Move," Reese ordered.

Corby stumbled forward on trembling legs, clutching his bruised ribs, nodding frantically. "Yes. Yes, whatever you say. Just... don't leave me behind."

Reese looked back at the severed iron ladder hanging uselessly above the sump.

She walked past the diesel blocks to the forward bulkhead, where the auxiliary sea-chest inspection trunk opened into the ship's emergency chain-locker scuttle. She climbed the welded inspection rungs with effortless economy of motion, threw the dogged escape scuttle open to the cool night air, and hauled Corby up through the deck grating behind her.

They emerged onto the Osprey's foredeck.

Above them, the coastal fog hung thick and cold over the slipway, smelling of low tide, diesel fumes, and wet shale. Far down the waterfront, past the cranes and timber towers of Pier Four, the yellow warning beacons of Berth Fourteen pulsed rhythmically against the dark sky.

Reese tightened the strap of her canvas tool roll across her shoulder, slid the B-07 spud wrench into her belt, and looked toward the packing plant.

The passive defense was over. Tobias Corby was her prisoner and her key. And before the morning tide cleared the harbor, Calista Royston’s syndicate was going to burn.