Chapter 6 - The Ghost of the Docks
The rain poured relentlessly, soaking through my red dress and chilling me to the bone.
I watched the highway billboard cycle through my face again, realizing how deep Adrian's corruption ran.
He controlled the local police, he had assets inside the Pentagon, and he owned the media narrative.
Headlights cut through the darkness as a beat-up pickup truck rolled silently into the container yard.
The passenger door swung open, and I sprinted toward it.
I dove into the cab, slamming the door shut as Jax slammed his foot on the gas pedal.
Jax looked exactly as he had three years ago, rugged, scarred, and completely unfazed by chaos.
"You look terrible for someone who was just on a dinner date," he noted dryly.
"The date went poorly," I replied, shivering violently as he cranked up the heater.
He navigated the truck through back alleys, entirely avoiding the main roads and police blockades.
We arrived at an abandoned auto repair shop on the outskirts of the city.
Jax pulled the truck inside and lowered the heavy steel garage door.
He tossed me a duffel bag containing tactical cargo pants, a black sweater, and a pair of combat boots.
"Change into these, then tell me who we are hunting," he said.
I quickly changed out of the ruined red dress, feeling my confidence return with the tactical gear.
I sat at a metal workbench and explained the entire situation, from the stolen funds to my kidnapped brother.
Jax pulled out a heavily encrypted military laptop and connected it to a secure satellite network.
"If Adrian is running an illegal logistics ring, there has to be a physical ledger," Jax muttered, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
"He would never trust the cloud with his treason."
Jax hacked into the port authority's manifest logs, cross-referencing Adrian's active destroyer.
"Found it," Jax said, pointing to a highlighted row of data on the screen.
"Adrian loaded thirty crates of unaccounted weaponry onto his ship this afternoon."
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Before I could process this information, the proximity alarms outside the garage began to scream.
The steel door violently buckled inward as an explosive charge detonated, throwing us both to the floor.
