Chapter 238

Chapter 238

When Patrick arrived, Arthur was already sitting near the corner, a half-finished cup of coffee in front of him. He gave Patrick a chin nod when he walked in.

Patrick sat down across from him. Arthur slid the menu over, but Patrick didn't open it — just asked for a glass of water.

Gideon showed up right on time. He had on a dark gray jacket, hair neatly combed, looking less like someone in the criminal world and more like an ordinary office worker. He gave Arthur a polite smile when he spotted him, then his eyes moved to Patrick and the smile faltered slightly, though he quickly pulled it back.

"Didn't expect Ellis to call me out," Gideon said, settling into his seat and draping his jacket over the chair back. "It's been a long time since you've had a drink with me."

Arthur didn't respond to that. Instead, he pushed a document across the table — a manila envelope, sealed, not thick, but packed solid. Gideon looked at it, and his smile slowly faded.

"Open it," Arthur said.

Gideon pulled out the documents and flipped through a few pages. His expression grew tighter as he read. When he finished, he slid everything back into the envelope and set it beside him.

"Ellis," he said, "where did you get this?"

"That's not your concern," Arthur said. "What I need to know is how deep you are with the people named in there."

Gideon was quiet for a moment, his fingers running back and forth along the edge of the envelope. He glanced at Patrick, then back at Arthur. "Some of them I know personally. Some I've only heard of." He paused. "But the people in those documents go higher than my level. Dig any deeper and it's out of my hands."

"You don't have to handle anything," Patrick said, his voice low but steady. "Just tell me what you know."

Gideon looked at him. His eyes lingered for a second on Patrick's left arm, still wrapped in bandages, then moved away.

He didn't ask who Patrick was, or what any of this had to do with him. He just sat there for a moment, then pulled out his phone, scrolled through it, and turned the screen face-up on the table.

It was a photo — a handwritten address and a date.

"That address is where they're moving their latest shipment through," Gideon said. "The date is the day after tomorrow. What you do with it is none of my business and not my place to say. But I'd suggest you don't go in through the front."

"Ellis, you know Raymond better than I do. You should be thinking about which island to disappear to."

He stood up after that. His footsteps crossed the old floorboards, the door swung shut, and the sound of the wind outside was cut off.

Patrick picked up the phone from the table, looked at the photo, memorized the address, then set it back down. Arthur leaned back in his chair, staring at the closed door, and said nothing for a moment.

"Have you done this kind of thing before?" Patrick asked.

Arthur turned to look at him, his expression flat. "When I was overseas, trying to get a foothold — yeah, I did some things." He didn't say what things, and Patrick didn't ask.

The restaurant sat in dim yellow light. A pot of coffee sat untouched on the table. From somewhere far off came the low, muffled blast of a harbor foghorn. As Patrick gathered the documents and got up to leave, Arthur said, "Tomorrow, three o'clock, my place," then grabbed his coat and walked out first.

Patrick went back to his place and didn't sleep. He spent a while in the living room looking up information on the address — confirmed the location, pulled together some basic background — then organized everything on his phone and sketched out a rough layout on paper.

He finally lay down for a little over an hour just before dawn. His left arm ached dully. He unwrapped the bandage and checked the wound — healing fine, no sign of infection. He changed into a clean jacket and headed out. The sky had just started to lighten, and the streets were nearly empty.

He arrived at Arthur's place at exactly three in the afternoon. Arthur was already ready. A printed area map was spread across the table with several spots circled in red. When he saw Patrick, he pointed straight at the map.

"It's an old warehouse complex, registered to a freight company that's already been dissolved. Security is loose, plenty of blind spots in the camera coverage. We go in from the side — not the front."

Patrick stood at the table and studied the map. Arthur moved his finger across the circled spots one by one, pointing out where the security shift changes happened, where the main passages were, where the cameras didn't reach. He spoke at an even pace, clear and to the point.

Patrick took it all in, cross-referencing with the map as he listened.

"What are you carrying?" Patrick asked.

Arthur glanced down at his jacket. "A voice recorder, a high-beam flashlight, two guns." He looked up at Patrick, his eyes pausing briefly on his left arm. "Can you move that hand?"

"Yeah."

Arthur didn't ask anything else. He handed Patrick one of the guns, then picked up his jacket from the chair back, put it on, and pulled the door open.

Patrick followed him out. Neither of them said much. They walked to Arthur's car parked along the road.

By the time they drove off, the sky was already beginning to darken.

The road from the city toward the port wasn't too busy. Patrick sat in the passenger seat and said nothing.

They parked on a small unlit road along the outer edge of the warehouse complex.

Both got out and moved along the base of the wall toward their target. The wall was red brick, cracked in places, with dry dead vines creeping across it.

Loose gravel scattered across the ground made faint crunching sounds underfoot.

Arthur walked ahead, his steps light, each one carefully placed to avoid the patches of gravel.

They came around to the side of the warehouse. There was a sheet metal door. Arthur reached out and pushed — it wasn't locked. It swung open a crack.

He slipped through sideways. Patrick followed.

Inside, the light was even dimmer. Only the fading dusk coming through a few high windows near the ceiling lit the space, casting blurred outlines across the wooden crates and shelves piled in the corners.

Arthur stopped and stood beside a row of crates, listening. The deeper part of the warehouse was silent — unnervingly so.

Patrick stood beside him and listened too. His eyes swept across the crates and shelves, then settled on a pile of objects in the corner covered with a tarp. The shapes underneath were irregular — not like ordinary cargo. He walked toward it, reached out, and lifted one corner of the tarp.

Underneath were several silver drinking vessels, stacked neatly in rows.

They were wrapped in foam and soft cloth, but sloppily — silver glinting through the gaps in the packing material, catching the last of the fading light.