Chapter 2: The First Exchange

Dracona pushed back from her chair. The legs scraped against concrete, loud in the small room. She stood and took two steps across the floor before stopping at the narrow table near the wall. Her hand rested on the surface beside the water bottle she had already opened earlier.

She would not kill him. That much clarified itself the moment she reached the table. Instead she would keep him long enough to draw his uncle into the open. The warning about the setup could still prove false, manufactured to buy time. She needed confirmation either way.

"We share what we know," she said, turning back toward him. "Names. Timelines. Locations of known players. Nothing more until I verify your story."

Harry tested the straps again, a small shift of his shoulders that told her nothing about whether he believed her. His eyes stayed on her face. The single bulb above them swung once more in the draft from the vent.

"My uncle's lieutenant handles direct contact," he said. "Marcus Hale. He keeps an office above the old rail yard on the east side. If you want to confirm the buyer was working for him, Hale is the route. He'll know the shipment routing that got sold out."

She watched the way he delivered the information. Steady. No rush. Either practiced or genuine, and she had no way to separate the two yet. His compliance meant nothing until she tested the detail against her own sources.

The buyer came next. Harry gave the name without prompting. "Leon Kray. He moves through three ports on rotation. Your codes went straight to him after the pier. Hale arranged it."

Dracona considered the exchange. Giving her Kray's name exposed something. Or it continued the setup. Either result would surface once she checked the names against movement logs and her father's existing surveillance.

"I keep you protected until the evidence lines up," she said. "If Hale confirms Kray handled the hit, we move from there. If not, we adjust."

Harry nodded once. The motion pulled at the strap across his chest. She saw the edge of it dig into fabric before he settled again.

"Until then," he said.

She left the room without further words. The lock turned beneath her key, solid and familiar. Viktor would have handled the verification step himself. Now she had to route everything through three separate contacts while keeping the circle small enough to avoid her father's direct questions.

The industrial park stayed quiet outside the mill walls. Her car waited in the narrow lot where she had left it hours earlier, driver already positioned. She slid into the back seat and gave the address for the first contact point, a bar two blocks from the river where information moved faster than orders.

Three calls later the pattern held steady. Kray had surfaced in two separate reports within the last week. Hale received mention in one of them, though only as a potential handler. The lieutenant's last confirmed location sat inside a warehouse near the rail yard Harry had named. No one had seen him since the night before the pier deal.

She returned to the safehouse close to dawn. The sky above the mill had shifted from black to gray while she drove the final stretch. Lights remained off on the upper floor. She descended the stairs to the lower room and unlocked the door.

Harry had not moved from the chair. His head lifted at the sound of the lock. A faint line marked one side of his face where the strap had rested during the hours alone. He looked at her without asking what she had found, which told her he already read the answer in her expression.

"Hale is gone," she said. "No one reaches him. Current reports place him off-grid since before the exchange."

Harry absorbed the information. His jaw shifted once, a small adjustment that revealed nothing she could use. The room remained cold, the ventilation carrying the same low hum it had maintained throughout the night.

She locked the door again from the outside. The key turned without resistance. Until she decided what the missing lieutenant meant, Harry stayed restrained where he was.