The ship towers over the group of five: a sailor with a wool cap on his head and tattoos on his pale neck; two large mobsters in suits and fedoras; a clean-cut white man in a navy double-breasted coat and hunting cap; and a slim young woman with long, curly hair under a headscarf. Her hazel eyes pop against her light brown skin, eyes so pale they’re nearly yellow.
“’Course it is.” The sailor spits on the ground, turns his beady glare on the woman with the pale hazel eyes. “Lot of fuss for some jewelry. You owe us.”
She’s bent over a wooden crate, staring inside. The crate’s top has been jimmied with a crowbar, and nestled within the stuffing is a jewelry box. The box is open and the faint dock lights glint on copper. Short in length, a choker—no, an amulet, set with a giant blue stone. She doesn’t touch it, doesn’t run a finger along the copper that flashes in the light. But her gaze never leaves the amulet.
“It’s strong,” she says, as if to herself.
“You’re sure it’s what the boss wants?” the bigger of the mobsters says to the woman.
“I can see its power, can feel it against my skin. I’m certain.” Her eyes slowly float to the mobster. She studies him for a moment, gaze flitting over his outline. “You’re a man whose loyalty can be bought by fear. Does Mansfield know, I wonder?”
The mobster pales, but the sailor hisses. “Screwy bitch.” He takes a menacing step in the woman’s direction. “What’s she running the show for? I’m getting rid of her—”
They’re his last words as the man in the double-breasted coat turns and plunges a dagger into the sailor’s chest.
The mobsters gasp and swear. The sailor flails, hands reaching for the jeweled hilt of the blade in his heart when he freezes, arms in midair like rigor mortis has already set in.
The mobsters draw guns, and the big one starts to speak. “Where the hell—”
“Lower your weapons,” the woman says calmly.
“But he just—”
“You’ll want to hear what we have to say.”
The mobsters exchange looks and muttered curses, but they don’t shoot. The man in the double-breasted coat yanks the dagger out of the sailor and kicks him with a heavy boot, sending the unmoving man toppling like a stone statue off the dock and into the ocean next to the cargo ship. The man in the coat inclines his head toward the woman, who’s watched the murder without a flinch.
“Let me close the beauty up first,” she says to him. “We don’t want to risk any ears.”
He nods and folds his arms, the bloody dagger still in one hand. The mobsters exchange another look and clutch their guns.
“Now that we’ve had a brief demonstration,” she says, as she reaches for the lid of the box, “let’s have a chat about loyalty.”
Rory’s eyes flew open. Heart pounding, hands stinging, he took deep gulps of air as he frantically tried to orient himself: blurry city lights through a narrow space, the floor bare and cold beneath him, snores coming through the thin wall next door—
His boarding house room. His breath left him in a violent rush as he turned on his side and stared blankly at the legs of his bed. He’d tried to get out, then; had clawed at the door, he discovered, as he clenched his throbbing fingers into fists and found them slick with blood. Two of his stinging nails felt broken to the quick, but his mind was stuck on what he’d seen.
A murder.
He drew his knees tight to his chest, body shaking. He could still see the knife glinting in the sailor’s chest—
When had it happened? In the last hour? The last century? If there was even a chance it had just happened, he should tell the police, but what could he even say?Excuse me, I see visions, and I might be a witness to a homicide—unless, of course, it happened before all of us were born—
He made a choked-off sob and drew himself into a tighter ball. Of course he couldn’t go to the police. But there was still the very real possibility a man had just died a horrible death on the dock and he had no one to tell, no one to help him, no lifelines—
Ace.
Rory scrambled to his feet, fumbling for his glasses in their spot on the nightstand, and dug frantically for the business card he’d shoved in his pocket when he’d stormed out of the shop. Clutching it tight in his bleeding fingers, he bolted to the first-floor common level and the party telephone on a small table in the hall.
By the fifth ring Rory had slumped to the floor in despair, back to the wall and knees curled to his chest, the white-knuckled hand holding the receiver trembling—
“This is Ace.” The words were thick with sleep and unmasked annoyance. “And so help me, at this hour, this better be the Queen.”
“Arthur.”
Ace’s voice snapped to wakefulness. “Rory?”
“I—I saw—” Rory’s voice broke. He couldn’t banish the scene from his mind, the death playing out like a twisted moving picture. “I saw a murder.”
