Chapter 7 - The Hand on the Shoulder
The abrupt weight on her shoulder sent a jolt of pure electricity down Maya’s spine. She slammed her laptop screen shut so hard the plastic casing cracked near the hinge, spinning around in her metal chair with her fists raised in self-defense.
Standing behind her was not a security guard or a police officer, but an elderly man wearing a faded wool overcoat and a battered fisherman’s cap. His face was lined with deep wrinkles carved by decades of harsh weather, and his milky-blue left eye stared off at a slightly different angle than his sharp, perceptive right eye.
" Easy there, young lady," the old man said in a low, raspy voice, holding up both calloused hands in a gesture of peace. "Didn't mean to scare you off your perch. But staring at a screen with that kind of intensity in a bus terminal at five in the morning usually means you're running from something you can't outrun."
Maya exhaled a long, shaky breath, her shoulders sagging as the adrenaline receded. She lowered her fists, eyeing the old man cautiously. "I'm not running. I'm just waiting for someone."
The old man chuckled softly, pulling out the adjacent metal chair and sitting down without waiting for an invitation. He smelled faintly of salt water, diesel fuel, and pipe tobacco. "People don't hide behind math textbooks and encrypted proxy servers while waiting for family members, kid. I'm Silas. I run the maintenance crew down at Pier 4. And you look remarkably like the young woman whose photo was pinned to the bulletin board in the dockmaster's office twenty minutes ago."
Maya froze. Her blood turned to ice water in her veins. "What did you say?"
Silas leaned in closer, resting his elbows on the laminate table. "A well-dressed woman with dark hair and a brown leather jacket came down to the piers around midnight. She showed your picture to the night watchman, asking if anyone had seen a teenage girl carrying a black trash bag and a canvas backpack heading toward the old shipping yards. Said you were a runaway in need of psychiatric intervention."
The walls of the bus terminal seemed to tilt slightly. Elena was already hunting her down along the waterfront, anticipating her deductive path before she had even walked it.
"She's lying," Maya whispered fiercely, her voice trembling with restrained rage. "She and her partner framed my father, stole his business, and threw me out of my own home."
Silas studied Maya’s face for a long, silent moment, his sharp right eye searching her eyes for any sign of deceit. Apparently, what he saw satisfied him, because a grim, knowing smile touched the corners of his weathered mouth. "Corporate vultures," Silas muttered, spitting the words out like a bad taste. "They've been buying up the old warehouses down at Pier 4 one by one, using shell companies and strong-arm tactics to push out the independent fishermen. If they're hunting you, it means you stumbled onto something they can't afford to let leave that harbor."
Maya’s mind raced. The external hard drive containing her father’s personal journal and financial records was still taped under the basement workbench at home, but the digital backup files might still be accessible through the server logs of the warehouse network if she could breach their local intranet.
"Silas," Maya said urgently, leaning across the table. "I need to get inside that warehouse on Pier 4 without them knowing."
May you like
Silas pulled a heavy, rusted brass key from his coat pocket and slid it across the table toward her hand. "The side loading door hasn't been used in a decade, but the lock still turns if you know the trick. Just mind the floorboards—the tide comes in right underneath the pilings at high noon."
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