Nora Chen drove us to an abandoned diner near the industrial canal, its neon sign flickering a dim, broken promise of coffee and pie. The place smelled of stale grease and forgotten dreams. She set the voice recorder between us on the sticky tabletop.
“For six months,” Nora began, her voice low and intense, “I’ve been tracking undocumented barrels of chemical solvent. Dumped off the coast, just north of here. Kestrel Maritime’s name keeps coming up.”
She leaned forward, her eyes pinning me.
“I know Arthur Pendelton ran a tight ship, but he wasn’t above cutting corners. You were his operations manager, right? His fixer?”
Her assumption, so wrong, felt like a slap. “I was hired three years ago,” I said, my voice tight. “To streamline dock labor. That’s it.”
I fumbled in my pocket, pulling out the crumpled, now useless employee file and the cold plastic of my revoked access badge. The red light on its surface mocked me.
“This is my terminated employee file,” I told her, pushing it across the table. “And these are my revoked access logs. I was specifically excluded from executive marine operations. I handled cargo manifests, crew scheduling, not illegal dumping.”
Nora picked up the badge, turning it over in her fingers. She studied my file, her expression shifting, a flicker of doubt replacing her certainty. The click of her recorder was the only sound for a moment.
“So,” she said, a slow, dawning realization in her voice, “you’re not his accomplice. You’re just… collateral damage.”
I nodded, feeling a strange, fragile connection form. “I think we both want to expose Marcus Drake,” I said. “For very different reasons.”
She looked at the badge, then at me. “Alright, Maya Lin. You want my help boarding *The Sea Sentinel* under the cover of darkness, you give me everything Arthur Pendelton was hiding on that ship.”
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