Marina Dre's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Marina had the buyer's number, but calling it was a trap. One direct tap and his network would trace her line to Mia. She needed to reach him without giving up where she stood. So she looked for a channel that already belonged to someone else. The answer was an old post office near the water. Its wooden face bore coded marks over the mailboxes and the door slot. Marina had heard the man who once ran it never trusted a phone. He moved messages the old way, with no trail behind them. Inside, a small old man stood behind the counter sorting envelopes by hand. His cap was pushed back, his gray beard streaked yellow at the corners. He did not look up. "Post's closed," Chester Halloway said. "Been closed nine years." "Then you have time," Marina said. She set a bottle of red wine on the counter. A small microphone and battery pack hung against the glass on thin wire. "I need this delivered. A gift, from an admirer." Chester eyed the wire. His hand did not reach for the bottle. "That is no gift." Marina placed a second thing beside it. A crisp document, aged at the edges, signed in an elegant hand. The name read Alexander W. Carter. "These are forgeries," she said. "Yours. Made years ago, for men who never ask twice." The old man went still. He picked up the paper. His thumb moved over the seal. When he set it down his hand shook a little. "I know who you send letters for," Marina said. "The buyer with the king's watch. His people order this same wine. Slip my bottle into his next crate. He opens it himself." "And if I refuse?" "Then these papers reach the harbor master by morning." Marina kept her voice flat. "Help me, and they stay buried. That is the whole trade." Chester looked at the wine, then at her tail, curled behind her. He did not remark on it. He had seen stranger cargo. "What is inside the bottle?" "A note," Marina said. "For his eyes." She slid a folded paper into his palm. The note told the buyer to ping his old harbor radio tower if he wanted his secrets kept and his hunter kept whole. Chester weighed it all a long moment. Then he wrapped the bottle in brown paper, quick and neat, the way a man does a thing he has done ten thousand times. "Goes out at dawn with his usual run," he said. "After that, we never spoke." "We never spoke," Marina agreed. She walked out into the gray light. The message was moving now, hidden inside his own delivery, untraceable to her. By tomorrow the buyer would open the bottle and hear her terms. He would answer at the tower, on a channel she chose. But the tower stood far out and unattended. If he sent men instead of a signal, they would be waiting for her there.