Chapter 93 Untitled Chapter

Chapter 93 Untitled Chapter
Nobody in the mansion had slept, not really. Victor’s deadline was still burning on the main screen and the numbers kept dropping like they were counting down to something bad for them specifically. 
Skyler hated every second of it. He hated the timer sitting there like a threat, he hated that Bash couldn’t sit still and kept pacing the length of the surveillance room, he hated that Kendrix had gone quiet and hadn’t said more than two words in an hour, and he hated that Victor was winning this round even if it wasn’t the whole war. It wasn’t the kidnapping that was getting to him the most. It was the stuck feeling. Like they were in a room with no doors and Victor had the key. 
He dragged both hands down his face hard enough to hurt and hit play again. The video started over without asking him. Maya tied to a chair with her hands behind her back, Antonio slumped next to her, the concrete floor under them, Victor stepping into frame with that smile that made Skyler want to punch something, and then it cut to black. He had watched it maybe a thousand times by now. He didn’t even know what he was hoping to catch anymore. A reflection in the wall, a shadow on the floor, a sound in the background, anything. Because sitting there doing nothing was making him furious and the anger was starting to leak out in ways he didn’t like. 
“You’re gonna go blind if you keep doing that,” Bash said from the chair next to him. 
Skyler didn’t look up from the screen. “Thanks. That’s real helpful right now.” 
“You’ve been on that for about two hours.” 
“Four,” Skyler corrected without thinking, because apparently his brain decided that was important. 
Bash looked wrecked. They all did. Even Roberto. Especially Roberto. The man hadn’t sat down once since this started. He was standing near the far wall with a secure phone to his ear, talking low and moving pieces around that none of them could see. He was too calm about it, and Skyler had known him long enough to know that when Roberto got quiet, people should get nervous. 
He hit play again and watched the whole thing repeat. Maya in the chair, Antonio beside her, the floor that looked like concrete, Victor walking in with that smile, then it ended. He did it again. And again. Then his thumb stopped on the spacebar. 
“Wait,” he said. 
Bash looked up from his own screen. “What?” 
“Shut up for a second, will you?” 
Bash rolled his eyes but kept quiet. 
Skyler dragged the timeline back a few seconds, then forward, then paused, then went back again. His pulse started picking up speed and he could feel it in his throat. “No. No way.” 
“What?” Bash leaned over. 
Skyler zoomed in until the image turned grainy and messy. It was bad footage, but not completely useless. In the far corner, half hidden behind stacked crates, there was a shape. Blue metal. A shipping container. 
Bash frowned. “Okay. And?” 
Skyler didn’t answer. He was already adjusting the contrast and brightness until something under the dirt came through. White paint. Faded and scratched to hell. But it was a number. He sat up so fast his chair almost tipped backward. “Oh, you clever, stupid, brilliant...” 
Bash blinked. “What are you talking about?” 
“Look,” Skyler said, and pointed at the screen with his finger. “Maya. She’s looking right at it.” 
The frame showed her face turned left. Not toward Victor. Not toward Antonio. Toward the container. 
Bash squinted at it. “You think she meant to do that?” 
Skyler gave him a flat look. “Have you met Maya?” 
Bash opened his mouth, then closed it. “Right. Stupid question. Fair.” 
Skyler was already typing. His fingers moved fast across the keyboard and container records started flooding the monitors. Shipping databases, port logs, commercial inventories. Thousands of results. His headache showed up immediately, right behind his eyes. “Please don’t let this be another dead end. I can’t take another one tonight.” 
The system kept loading in that slow way that made him want to throw something.
Bash crossed his arms. “So what exactly are we hoping to find here?” 
“A miracle,” Skyler said, and he didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Or something close to it.” 
When it finally finished, the results came up and his stomach dropped. Several hundred entries for Container 17. 
“Great,” he said. 
“That’s not great,” Bash said. 
“No, it’s not,” Skyler agreed. 
He started filtering and deleting and cross-referencing until his eyes burned. The timer kept ticking down. The room stayed tense. Nobody made jokes. Nobody got up for food. Nobody moved unless they had to. Then his hands stopped. 
“No,” he said. 
Bash sat up straight. “What again?” 
Skyler was just staring. “No way.” He stood up so fast his chair rolled back and hit the desk behind him.
Across the room Roberto cut his call off mid-sentence. 
“What is it?” Roberto asked. 
Skyler turned the monitor toward them. A company profile filled the screen. Shipping, storage, logistics. All normal on the surface. Except the ownership records. He had dug through layers of shell companies that were supposed to keep it hidden, and there it was. 
Bash read the name and cursed under his breath. Roberto went completely still. They all knew it. One of Victor’s old businesses. They thought he had abandoned it years ago. It was tied to container yards near the coast. 
Skyler looked between them and felt something he hadn’t felt all night. It wasn’t relief, not yet, because that would be dumb, but it was close to hope and that scared him more than the nothing did. “I think Maya left us something on purpose.” 
Roberto stepped closer without taking his eyes off the screen. “How many locations are we talking?” 
Skyler checked the data. “Five.” 
The air in the room got heavy again. Five was better than fifty, but five was still five chances to be wrong, five chances for Victor to disappear before they got there. 
Bash ran a hand over his face and looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. “Can we narrow it down any more?” 
“I’m trying,” Skyler said. 
Roberto was quiet for a second, thinking the way he always did when something mattered. Then his expression changed. It got sharp. The kind of sharp that made people step back. 
“What?” Skyler asked. 
Roberto didn’t look away from the screen. “Victor wanted us angry and running in circles.” He pointed at the monitor. “But this is real.” 
For the first time all night his voice didn’t sound tired. It sounded sure. Not happy, not relieved, but like he finally had something solid to hold onto. Victor made a mistake. Maybe it was small. Maybe it was an accident. But he made one, and now Roberto had a thread to pull. 
The timer kept counting. 
20:43:12. 
And since the kidnapping it didn’t feel like they were standing still in the dark. It felt like they were moving, and that was enough to make Skyler breathe again.