Chapter 2 - The Amber Vial

The maintenance tunnel beneath Pier 9 smelled of dead shad and ancient motor oil.

Tobias reached behind an exposed cast-iron drainage pipe and pulled out a heavy black waterproof pelican case that had been bolted to the concrete foundation with expansion anchors. He didn't fumble with the latches; his fingers moved with rapid, mechanical familiarity.

Inside were two dry sets of gray fleece clothes, three burner phones, twenty thousand dollars in banded hundred-dollar bills, and a small glass amber vial filled with cloudy white liquid.

He tossed a dry sweatshirt at my chest. "Put it on. Your lips are turning blue."

I didn't touch the sweater. I stared at the amber vial sitting in the foam cutout of the case.

"What is that?"

"That's why your blood work came back with stage-two hepatic fibrosis in September," Tobias said. He pulled off his wet slacks, revealing thick, corded leg muscles with surgical scar tracks running from hip to knee. "The warm milk Garrett made you every night at ten o'clock. He wasn't giving you nutmeg and honey, Rosalind."

My stomach lurched with a violent, freezing spasm. I backed up until my shoulders hit the wet, slimy wall of the drainage pipe.

"He said... he said my liver enzymes were elevated because of the stress from the shipyard audit," I stammered, my mind racing through three years of quiet evenings in our Federal Hill brownstone. The steaming ceramic mug on my nightstand. The way he kissed my forehead and waited by the bedroom door until I swallowed the last drop. "He took me to his cousin’s private practice in Bethesda for the treatments."

"His cousin isn't a hepatologist," Tobias said, pulling a dry black hoodie over his head. "He’s a veterinary toxicologist on the payroll of Vance Marine Logistics."

I grabbed the edge of the concrete ledge to keep from collapsing. "Vance Marine? That’s our primary competitor in the harbor."

"Vance Marine isn't our competitor, Rosalind," Tobias said, snapping the locks of the pelican case shut. "Vance Marine is owned by Garrett’s biological father."

NEXT CHAPTER 👉 👉 👉

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