Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO MISSED
Silas Reed contacted Damon forty-eight hours after the shooting.
The message arrived through a burner phone left inside the glove compartment of Claire’s car.
COME ALONE. OLD FERRY TERMINAL. MIDNIGHT.
Damon showed the message to Ward.
“You are not going alone,” she said.
“He will see surveillance.”
“He shot a woman in front of forty witnesses.”
“He aimed at me.”
“That distinction will comfort her doctors.”
Damon went anyway, but he wore a transmitter Ward hid inside his watch.
The abandoned ferry terminal smelled of rust and river water. Silas stood beneath a broken departures sign with empty hands visible.
“You should have died at table twelve,” Silas said.
“Yet you found me at table nine.”
“I was told the change was temporary. When you remained there, I adjusted.”
“Who hired you?”
Silas almost smiled.
“You know better.”
“You missed.”
“I did not miss.”
Damon’s eyes hardened.
Silas explained that his first round struck Keisha only because she moved. He had a second clear line to Damon afterward. He did not fire.
“Why?” Damon asked.
“Because the contract changed.”
“During the attack?”
“My employer sent a withdrawal code through the kitchen light system. Three short flashes, one long. I was ordered to leave you alive.”
Damon remembered the kitchen doors. Warm light had pulsed against the metal frames just before Silas retreated.
“Who controlled the lights?”
“The same person who controlled the cameras.”
“Marco?”
Silas gave no answer.
Instead, he removed a memory card from his pocket and placed it on a bench.
“The contract file.”
“Why give it to me?”
“Because someone sent men to kill me after I left the restaurant.”
“You want protection.”
“I want the client to understand that breaking terms has consequences.”
Damon did not touch the card.
“What is on it?”
“A voice recording, payment routing, and an image of the target package.”
“Why not listen yourself?”
“The voice is distorted. The money crosses six countries. The target image came from inside your home.”
Damon felt the first true fear of the night.
Claire had visited his home that morning.
Before he could ask more, a red laser point moved across Silas’s chest.
Damon shouted.
Silas dropped as a rifle round struck the wall behind him. Damon pulled him behind a concrete pillar while Ward’s hidden team rushed the terminal.
The shooter escaped by boat.
Silas had been wounded by debris, not the bullet. Ward arrested him on the restaurant charge. Before officers placed him in the vehicle, he looked at Damon.
“The woman did not save only you.”
“What does that mean?”
“The contract included a second death after yours.”
“Whose?”
Silas looked toward the memory card in Ward’s evidence bag.
“Ask why Marcus Monroe had to die before he opened the file.”
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The recording on the card was distorted, but one sentence remained clear enough to understand:
When Cross is gone, the sister signs everything.
