Chapter 9 — The Gift Graves Insisted I Wear

"Take it off," Adrian said.

The bomb technician shook his head before I could answer.

"The band contains a tension sensor. Cutting or forcing it may complete the circuit."

My hand lay beneath the scanner, steady despite the cold crawling up my arm.

"How much damage?"

"The charge is small, but the setting is packed with tungsten fragments. It will destroy the hand. If it’s close to the throat or chest when it detonates, it can kill. Anyone within a few feet could be hit."

Adrian turned toward Deputy Chief Ward. "Pull her out."

"No," I said.

"This is not negotiable."

"Then stop pretending you learned to trust my judgment."

His face tightened.

The technician identified a radio receiver inside the ring. It required an external command; Kane controlled the trigger.

"Can you block the signal?" I asked.

"Maybe, but continuous jamming would alert anyone monitoring the ring. We need the exact frequency."

"Then trace it when Kane tests the system."

Adrian stared at the black stone on my finger.

"And if the test is a detonation?"

"Then the operation ends quickly."

"That isn’t funny."

"I wasn’t joking."

Ward approved forty-eight more hours under one condition: a jammer would remain within operational range whenever possible. Adrian argued until I reminded him that Kane possessed hundreds of pounds of fentanyl and the names of officials protecting him.

"We leave now, and he disappears," I said. "Next time, the ring goes on someone who doesn’t know what it is."

I returned before Kane noticed my absence.

The following morning, the ring pulsed once against my finger.

Task-force equipment captured the signal.

It came from a remote transmitter inside Kane’s biometric key fob.

Now we knew the weapon. We still could not take it without exposing me.

The signal team built a narrow-band jammer tuned to the captured frequency. It fit inside a maintenance van and could block the trigger within two hundred yards, provided there were no steel walls, active repeaters, or competing transmitters between us.

Pier Nineteen had all three.

As a second defense, the bomb technician made a rigid blast sleeve that could contain most of the fragments if I got my hand inside it before detonation. I hid it beneath the passenger seat of my car.

It was a plan built from seconds we might not have.

That afternoon, Kane moved his final transaction forward by nine days.

"Three nights from now," he announced. "Twenty-eight million dollars. Enough product to own every city from Boston to Albany."

The first timeline’s transaction had occurred in December. This one would happen in October, during a coastal storm.

History was accelerating around us.

Before I could send the new date, Kane ordered me to inspect a storage facility where someone had been photographing his trucks.

The photographer was Daniel Ruiz.

Through a crack in the office blinds, I saw my mentor crouched behind a van with a telephoto lens. Kane’s gunmen were approaching from both sides.

In my first life, Daniel died months later in the warehouse.

Time had found another way to take him.

I deliberately backed a truck into a stack of empty drums. The crash sent metal rolling across the loading floor and drew every eye.

"Police!" I shouted, firing twice above Daniel’s position.

He understood. He dropped the camera, slid beneath the van, and escaped through a drainage channel while Kane’s men chased the sound of my shots.

I retrieved the camera and smashed its memory card in front of Kane.

What he did not know was that Daniel had transmitted every photograph before entering the yard.

That night, Adrian’s voice came through my earpiece.

"Daniel is safe. Bruised ribs. Injured pride."

I closed my eyes.

One life saved.

Twelve more to go.

"He wants to speak to you," Adrian said.

"Absolutely not. Kane may be monitoring the channel."

There was a muffled argument on his end, followed by Daniel’s voice deliberately speaking away from the microphone.

"Tell the rookie she still owes me lunch."

My throat tightened.

"Tell him I’ll pay when this is over."

Adrian relayed the message with the solemnity of an official command.

For three years in my first life, I had watched the people I loved grieve over the dead. Now they were arguing over a lunch that might actually happen.

Kane gave me no time to recover.

He had captured Caleb Ross, the dockworker I claimed to have killed eighteen months earlier.

Two men dragged Caleb into the basement and forced him to his knees.

"The Atlantic returned your body," Kane said.

He handed me a suppressed pistol.

"Correct your mistake."

I had prepared for this possibility from the day I put Caleb on that truck. The pistol Kane kept in the basement had been cleaned by me the previous week. I had replaced its first cartridge with a low-powered round and hidden a blood capsule beneath Caleb’s coat after arranging his return as a controlled informant.

Caleb had contacted federal agents six months after I helped him escape. Since then, he had worked as a controlled source, mapping Kane’s drivers and memorizing account passwords. Because recapture was always possible, he wore a narrow ballistic insert beneath his shirts whenever he approached the waterfront.

But the insert protected only his heart. If Kane ordered a shot to the head, our plan would become a death sentence.

I raised the pistol and let my hand tremble once—the signal we had agreed meant chest shot.

Caleb shifted half an inch, placing the reinforced panel behind my aim.

I aimed beside his heart.

"Sorry," I said.

Caleb heard the signal in my voice.

The gun coughed. He fell backward as blood spread across his shirt. Kane checked for a pulse exactly where I had taught Caleb to block the artery beneath his jaw with his tongue and shoulder.

"Dispose of him properly this time," Kane said.

I drove the body bag away myself.

Caleb sat up three blocks later, gasping and furious.

"You broke my rib."

"You’re welcome."

In return, he gave me the password to Kane’s finance server.

By midnight, the task force had the complete ledger: shipment routes, bribes, shell companies, and every account Kane planned to empty after the transaction.

We had enough to destroy the organization.

Then Kane called.

"Change of plan," he said. "The buyers are nervous. We trade tonight. Three hours. Pier Nineteen."

My ring pulsed against my finger.

"And Eva," he added, "if you arrive without my gift, I will know."