Chapter 10: Shadows on the Waterfront
Midnight hung over the abandoned Long Island City dry dock like a heavy, suffocating wool blanket. The salt-tinted breeze rolling off the East River carried the sharp scent of decaying seaweed, rusted iron, and stagnant oil. A thick fog was beginning to curl around the base of the towering, skeletal cranes that loomed like prehistoric beasts against the bruised, light-polluted sky. Julian parked his black sedan in the deep shadows of a corrugated metal warehouse, killing the engine and the headlights simultaneously. The interior plunged into absolute darkness, broken only by the faint amber glow of the dashboard clock reading 11:58 PM.
In the backseat, Ajax shifted quietly, his claws clicking softly against the rubber floor mat. The Doberman didn’t growine; he sat rigid, his ears perked forward, his senses locked onto the perimeter. In the passenger seat beside Julian, Maya stared out the frosted windshield toward the rusting skeleton of Dry Dock Number Four, her expression terrifyingly calm for a young girl revisiting
