Page 115 of Terror at the Gates

“You can see me too?”

I held up my middle finger.

“Cute,” he said.

“You are such a fucking stalker,” I said, deciding I wasn’t going to let him keep me from what I came for. I unlatched the first of his five containers, which held boxes and furniture. Not at all what I expected.

“You’re in my territory,” he said. “And snooping through my things.”

“None of this looks like yours,” I said, scanning the overly ornate furniture.

“It wouldn’t,” he said. “Seeing as how everything there belonged to my mother and father.”

His comment made me feel cold.

I closed the door and moved to the next, but it was more of the same. I started to wonder if all I’d find here were his parents’ old things.

“What are you looking for?”

“Something that definitely doesn’t belong to you,” I said.

There was a pause, but I knew he’d guessed. He didn’t speak it aloud, and neither did I—we knew better.

“And what are you planning to do with it?”

“It’s currency, Zahariev,” I said, opening the third container. Inside was another, smaller one.

Bingo.

“What are you buying?” he asked.

“That doesn’t concern you,” I said.

“It concerns me,” he said. “You are breaking my rules.”

“Not the ones you gave me,” I said. “See you, Zahariev.”

I hung up and opened the second container. Inside, there was a row of four pallets, stacked with blocks of wrapped white jade.

I set my backpack down and pulled out a plastic bag. I wasn’t about to carry around a brick of this stuff or hand that much over to a complete stranger. I withdrew my blade and shoved it into the side of the shipment. It was a lot like stabbing a bag of sugar. Once my knife was free, it came pouring out in a stream of white.

I didn’t take much, what I considered to be about a spoonful, before I closed the bag and shoved it into my pocket, letting the rest spill to the floor. I didn’t care to save it.

I didn’t care if Zahariev destroyed it tomorrow.

I only cared that I’d gotten what I came for.

Zahariev

I stared at my phone after Lilith hung up.

She knew how to piss me off and liked doing it, but this felt different. She wasn’t breaking into my storage container to make me angry. She was up to something, and she wasn’t telling me.

Maybe that was really what pissed me off: the secrecy.

I could call her back, but I knew she wouldn’t answer a second time. I could head to the port, but she’d probably be gone by the time I arrived, so I’d have no way of tracking where she was off to with a pocket full of jade.

“Everything all right?” Gabriel asked when I entered his apartment again. I’d gone into the hall to make the call to Lilith.

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