Chapter 344: All Sales Final

Leo’s mouth moved. It took Aria a second to understand it was a smile, pulled up on the side where his lip wasn’t split.

He lifted his bound hands an inch off his lap. A wave.

"Keep coming," Valérie said.

Aria had put the phone in her coat pocket on the first flight. The voice came out of it small and pleased.

Aria kept coming.

The last flight ended in water. It closed over the toes of her sneakers, black and flat, smelling of rust and salt. She waded out into the circle of the lamp.

Up close, Leo looked worse. The bruise on his cheekbone had gone yellow at the edges, and a newer one sat on top of it, dark as a plum. Dried blood crusted his hairline. Someone had cinched plastic ties around his wrists so tight that his hands had swollen. His feet were bare on the wet timber.

"Hi, Sister Aria," Leo said.

His voice was hoarse, and calm.

"Hi." Aria’s throat closed around the rest. "Are you—"

"Ask me later." His good eye went past her into the dark. "Jade?"

"At the gate. Waiting for you."

He closed the eye for a moment and opened it again.

"Aria," Valérie said. "Set the box on the block, beside him. Open it. Then three steps back."

Aria set it on the timber by Leo’s knee and thumbed the catch. The lid came up. On the faded satin, the ruby caught the lamp and burned.

Leo’s gaze dropped from the ring to her bare left hand. Then he folded his own hands back into his lap.

Aria stepped back. One. Two. Three. Water slapped at her ankles.

A man walked out of the dark.

Black jacket, black gloves, a knit mask with holes for the eyes. He came to the edge of the light and stood over the open box. He took out a phone, held it close over the satin, and the flash went off twice.

The phone in Aria’s pocket was quiet.

She watched the masked man’s gloves and made herself breathe through her nose.

"Smaller than I imagined," Valérie said at last.

"Then you imagined wrong."

Valérie laughed, low and delighted. "Perhaps I did."

The man shut the lid, tucked the box under his arm, and backed away. Three steps past the block, the dark took him again.

"Merci," Valérie said. "Up you get, Leo."

Leo stood. He swayed and caught himself on the block with both tied hands. Aria went in under his arm and took his weight. He was lighter than he should have been.

"Can you walk?"

"I’ve been sitting for three days. Watch me."

"Monsieur Sinclair," Valérie said. "Send my son down."

Aria tipped her head back. At the top of the wall, against the orange haze of the port, Damien stood at the lip of the quay with one hand on Rémy’s collar. He let go.

Rémy started down. He went down slowly, the open cuff swinging from his wrist.

Aria and Leo took the first flight slowly. His breath caught on every step, and she felt his ribs flinch under her arm.

They met Rémy on the second landing. The steps were barely wide enough for two. Rémy flattened his back against the wall to let them by, and stayed there, looking at Leo’s face.

"Ils t’ont nourri?"

(Did they feed you?)

Leo answered him in English, easy and flat. "Bread. Once."

Rémy made a face. "Moi, de l’eau."

(Me, water.)

He pushed off the wall and went on down into the dark.

They climbed on. Near the top, a shape came over the lip of the quay and down the last flight in long strides. Then Damien was there, taking Leo’s other arm, lifting half of him off her.

They got him over the top between them. Leo sat down hard against the bollard.

Damien took a folding knife from his coat, crouched, and slit the ties on Leo’s wrists. Leo flexed his fingers. As the blood came back into them he hissed through his teeth, then laughed at himself.

"Thanks, Mr. Sinclair," Leo said.

Damien stood. He caught the front of Aria’s coat in his fist and pulled her into him, and his other arm locked across her back. She pressed her face into his collar. His heart was going hard under her cheek.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He took it out behind her back, and she turned her head to read it with him.

[Kai: The phone she’s talking on is on the water. Behind the dock gate, forty meters out.]

Damien put the phone to his ear and said three words in French.

The floodlights came on.

They ran in banks along the cranes, and they snapped on one after another down the whole north basin until dry dock 4 was white from end to end. Aria saw all of it at once. The steel gate. A rope ladder hanging over it. Three men in black at its foot, one with the red box under his arm. Rémy halfway across the floor, his arm thrown over his eyes.

One of the men at the gate fired.

The shot slammed between the stone walls. A chip flew off the bollard beside Leo’s head.

Leo moved first. He caught Aria by the back of her coat and dragged her down behind the bollard beside him, fast and practiced.

"Head down," he said. "Stay against the stone."

Damien was over them both in the next breath, crouched with his back to them and his gun up, firing down into the white. Shots answered from the water as Damien’s boats came in off the breakwater.

Then he dropped low and turned. His hand closed on her jaw.

"Are you hit?"

"No."

His thumb moved along her cheekbone. He turned his head. "Leo?"

"I’m good," Leo said.

Aria looked at him. He was crouched with his back flat to the bollard and his chin tucked, breathing slow and even.

’He’s done this before,’ she thought.

Below them the shooting broke off. In the sudden quiet, through the ringing in her ears, Aria heard her own coat pocket laughing.

"Oh, Monsieur Sinclair," Valérie said. "And we were getting along so well."

The line went dead.

Aria lifted her head over the bollard.

The man with the red box was already at the top of the ladder, one leg over the steel gate.