Marina Dre's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

Varro woke tied to a chair on the old cannery floor. Rust streaked the metal beneath his boots. Marina had picked the place for its silence. No one heard anything here. She wanted him to feel that. He kept his mouth shut. Marina expected that. So she had made a call before dawn. The door scraped open. A small woman in a black suit walked in, hands in her pockets, unhurried. She looked at Varro the way a mechanic looks at a stalled engine. Marina had worked cases beside Elena Kovak years ago, before Elena left the agency. Elena had broken harder men than this one without raising her voice. "You called me for him?" Elena said. She circled the chair once. "He is already scared. He just does not know it yet." Marina set Varro's burner phone on a crate. The screen was locked. She fit the bypass tool to its port and turned the small lever. Lights ran across the panel. The lock cleared. A call log filled the screen, then a single saved contact with no name. "Someone paid you," Marina said. "I want the name." Varro smiled. "You will not get it from a phone." Elena crouched to his eye level. "No. We get it from you." She held up a vial of shimmering purple liquid. She flicked it once. "This loosens the tongue. It also makes a man honest with himself. Most men do not enjoy that part." Varro's smile thinned. Elena pressed the needle to his arm. "Last easy chance," she said. "Talk now, and we skip the rest." Marina leaned close. "You came to kill my daughter. Look at where you are. No one is coming for you. Only what I decide." Varro looked at the phone, then the vial, then Marina's face. Something in him gave. "Fine," he said. "Pull the needle." Elena did not pull it. "Name first." Varro breathed hard. "The buyer. The one with the old king's watch. He hired the hunt. Both of us." "Both," Marina said. "The second hunter." "She is better than me," Varro said. "And she does not take prisoners. The buyer wants the girl silenced before the family evidence spreads. He gave a deadline. Tonight." Marina straightened. The threat had a face now. The buyer. The same man who had stolen Mia's shop label and posted her face. This was not one bounty. It was a schedule. Elena capped the vial. "He is telling the truth. The serum does not leave room to lie." Marina picked up the burner. The saved contact glowed on the cracked screen. One tap would reach the buyer directly. "Tonight," she said. She thought of the second hunter already moving, faster and colder than the man tied here. She pocketed the phone. She had the name. Now she had far less time than she thought.