Chapter 9 - The Ferry to North Shore
The sharp crack of the muffled pistol shot behind the iron door echoed through Clara’s skull like thunder. She stumbled backward, cold rain washing down her face, mixing with dirt and tears. Gabriel Cross had bought her minutes with his life, and staying at the alley door meant throwing that sacrifice away.
Clara turned and bolted down the maze of cobblestone alleyways, heading toward the passenger docks. The morning mist was thick, smelling of coal smoke and river silt, providing a fragile veil of cover. She pulled her mechanic’s cap low, hunching her shoulders to blend in with the shift workers hurrying toward the factories.
At the municipal terminal, turnstiles clicked as laborers boarded the North Shore commuter ferry. Clara checked the coat pockets of the mechanic suit she wore. She found two crumpled one-dollar bills and a silver lighter. She shoved the money through the ticket counter, received a brass transit token, and boarded the vessel without looking the attendant in the eye.
The heavy engines thrummed to life, churning brown water into foam as the boat pulled away from the slip. Clara moved to the upper observation deck, sheltering beneath a rusted metal awning. Across the river, the city skyline looked like a cluster of gray gravestones shrouded in cloud.
She took out the three flash drives Cross had loaded and tucked one into the inner lining of her boot, one into her bra, and kept the third hidden inside the silver lighter casing.
“Quite a morning for a cruise, isn't it?”
A woman in an olive trench coat sat down on the wooden bench opposite Clara. She had short dark hair cut into a sharp bob, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth, and eyes that held the cold, analytical intelligence of a prosecutor. A gold badge hung discreetly from her lapel.
Clara’s hand slid into her pocket, fingers wrapping around the iron utility razor she had kept.
“You’re Elena Croft,” Clara said, her voice hollow and defensive.
The woman clicked open a silver lighter of her own, igniting the cigarette before speaking. “Gabriel Cross sent me a priority encrypted ping three minutes before his terminal went dark. He said the Vance widow had the hammer that could crush Raymond Sterling.”
“He’s dead,” Clara said bluntly. “Sterling shot him twenty minutes ago.”
Elena’s hand froze mid-air, the lighter flame flickering in the wind. A rare flicker of genuine pain crossed her hardened face, quickly replaced by stony resolve. She exhaled a long plume of blue smoke.
“Then we have approximately thirty minutes before Sterling realizes I’m not at my desk,” Elena said, looking across the expanding expanse of the river. “The entire court system is under his thumb. The state troopers report to him. If I walk into the courthouse with your recording, I’ll be arrested for treason before I reach the third floor.”
“Then where are we going?” Clara asked.
May you like
Elena pointed toward a dark naval cutter anchored near the mouth of the harbor, flying the flag of the Federal Maritime Authority. “Federal jurisdiction. Sterling’s state judges have no power there. But we have to make it to the slip alive.”
As the ferry neared the North Shore terminal, the vessel’s horn sounded three frantic blasts. The ferry’s engines abruptly died, and two heavy black police interceptor craft pulled alongside, their searchlights blinding the deck.
