~CrypticSilvers~

The gravel road that Lanny and Javier were bouncing along in the old bronco led a curving path through an increasingly rocky landscape. The bay itself was a fairly large one, with a handful of different buildings scattered about the more accessible areas of its length. Bypassing the first fork in the rutted road, Lanny carried on towards one of two ports nearer to the opening of the bay, where the large, three-story wooden structure was surrounded by a weed-infested parking lot, overlooking a dozen docks that stretched out at varying lengths into the storm-darkened waters.

Lanny was leaning forward and squinting his eyes, scanning a landscape whose details were obscured by the consistent fall of rain, and the thick, rolling clouds overhead that blotted out much of the sun's light. In fact, it was dim enough that the only two functioning street lamps of the parking lot's total of eight had flickered to life. Lanny avoided these bright spots and rolled the bronco into the far corner of the back lot, where the port building shielded it from immediate sight of the road.

"Alright, here we go." He glanced to the watch on his wrist to confirm the time, pulled out his cellphone to check for messages, then unbuckled his belt. "My guests should be down in the boathouse by now, or will be soon. And I didn't see any squad cars along the road, so the coast is clear." Lanny took a moment to look in the rearview to fix his rain-soaked hair as best he could, then finally looked across to Javier, "You just need to make sure no cop gets into this parking lot. There's only this one road they can take to get here, so it should be to hard. Got it? This job shouldn't take long either; maybe twenty, thirty minutes, tops. You got any questions?"

The Bay was probably sort of pretty, if you were into nature and stuff. Javi leaned forward in his seat as the coastline came into view, staring at the endless expanse of water with a slightly slack jaw. The land curved round to almost meet at the entrance to the Bay, and then beyond that was just… water. Black water, its surface muddied by the haze of the rain which was finally starting to ease off, as far as the eye could see. In the distance, beyond the Bay, the ocean glittered under starlight.

Javi had never seen the ocean before. It seemed like a dumb thing to say and he wasn’t gonna say it in front of Lanny, but he hadn’t realised it was so big. He kept staring at it while Lanny rolled his piece of shit car behind a wood-slatted building, flicked the lights off and stilled the engine. Without the chundling and occasional splutter of the engine, a new sound could be heard above the rain: a sort of rushhh-slap, which Javi guessed was the waves cuffing the shoreline.

Lanny started saying something, and Javi regretfully turned his dark eyes away from the ocean to glance at him. Keep the cops away from the parking lot for thirty minutes, right. Anything longer than a five minute distraction, in his experience, usually required a lot more preparation and planning – but it was quickly becoming apparent that Lanny was not a preparation and planning kind of guy. Javi should have asked what the full payment for this job was.

“Got it.” He confirmed, with a bit of a face. He was going to have to get creative for this one. “You wanna meet back here in thirty minutes?”

If only Laurence wasn't so preoccupied with the upcoming meeting, he might have noticed the way that Javier was staring at the darkened waters. Had he spent any amount of time getting to know the kid he'd yanked off the street to make up for his shortcomings, he might have learned where the boy had come from, and that this was his first time seeing a coastline in person. And because he was Lanny, he might have even indulged Javier's quiet wonder by pointing out the seals further down the coast, neatly camouflaged by the rocks.

But none of things happened, because the lieutenant of the CrypticSilvers had come dangerously close to running late for a meeting he hadn't properly prepared for, and was spending that last few moments of time fussing with his rain-soaked hair.

The bronco's chassis creaked and shifted as he stepped out, and the door groaned as the man briefly bore his weight against it. They were noises so familiar to him that he didn't notice it any more than the rhythmic crash of waves on the sand and rocks below that had so captured Javier's attention. Lanny was busy running his hand through his hair one more time, and looking from Javier to the gravel road that lead out from the bay,"Yeah, meet back at my car in thirty; don't go in the building. And kid-" The grin that had graced his sly face so often throughout their brief time together was now gone, adding weight to his next words despite a lack of detectable malice or threat, "-don't make me come looking for you after this."

With the keys stuffed into his pocket, Lanny slammed the door close and started across the lot. But after about seven paces, the man muttered a sharp curse before turning and jogged briskly back to the bronco. The door was yanked back open and a small briefcase was taken from behind the driver's seat, and with that now in hand, Lanny resumed an equally brisk walk back towards the port building.

----

For the next eight minutes, there would be little action to see around the bay. The storm was blowing past at least, leaving the sky dreary but drier than it had been in the city. The thunder had moved on to distant rumblings, and the darkness that was descending about the area seemed all the heavier for the lack of city lights to chase it away.

In the darkness, if Javier were keeping watch as Lanny had asked, he would notice a pair of headlights cutting a path through the shadows as a car turned off the main road and onto the gravel lanes of the bay. The vehicle was moving slowly, and at a distance too far to immediately note the model of, but it was heading in the direction of their port.

Lanny’s piece of shit car groaned and creaked as he opened the door to get out. Javi curled his lip and followed suit, grimly hanging onto the bronco’s frame as the car shifted alarmingly. He lost the expression fast, though, stood on his own two feet with the ocean wind tugging at his dark, damp hair. It turned out, the sea had a smell: salty and fresh, as if the air around it had opened up fully. Javi inhaled deeply, tasting the unfamiliar flavours of an unpolluted atmosphere.

Thirty minutes out here might not be so bad, especially since the rain was easing off. Just as long a she could come up with a plan off the fly in case the feds showed up.

The gravity in Lanny’s voice might have made Javi shuffle an hour ago, but now he wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes in a classic expression of teenage whatever, old man. How much of an idiot would he have to be to run now when he hadn’t been paid yet, was miles out of town, and his home address was known to an evil Russian? And what kind of idiot hired someone who would be enough of an idiot to do that?

Lanny headed up to the main building after collecting his briefcase, and Javier pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time. 8.09pm. He just had to hold the fort until 8.39. The digital display also told him that he had 38% battery, which should be more than enough. He wiped the screen dry from rain patter, slipped it back into his pocket and started mooching his way over to the road, keeping his eyes peeled for anything that might serve as a useful distraction. There were a couple of rickety older buildings in addition to the newer one Lanny had gone into, slightly further down the road by an older, clearly abandoned pier. The newer pier was behind him, near the parking lot. A half-baked idea started to form. Javi seized on it before he could chicken out and stopped at the side of the road, making sure he was clearly visible.

8.17pm. At least it had finally stopped raining altogether. Twin beams of light heralded the arrival of a car trundling through the darkness. Javi shielded his eyes against the glare of the headlamps and squinted, waiting until he could make out the panda stripes before he stepped up to the kerb, waving pointedly. It rolled to a stop in front of him and the uniformed driver wound down a window.

“Oh my god, finally,” Javi groaned, shrugging his shoulders and rolling his eyes. “I’ve been here like forever. You see how wet I am? You feel how cold it is? Why can you guys not get here quicker? My mama’s always like, ‘you got a problem, you don’t mess around honey, you call 911.’ Well I call 911, and I could fly around the damn world before you guys show up.” He tugged at his wet hoody and made a point of shivering. “Bruh, how long would it take if I file a complaint? I got time for a quick trip to the moon?”

A splash of burnt-orange and distant pink began to color the horizon, marking the sun's descent as some of the heavy cloud cover to the far west began to break. The splash of color would only last a few short minutes before fading into a deepening blue, and it was this gathering darkness that Ryan's headlights cut through as he turned his cruiser down the lane and along the same path that Laurence had taken a little more than ten minutes before. His vehicle slowed as it crawled across the uneven, rain-saturated road, though he didn't offer the usual grimace for the occasional 'ping' of stones being flung up against the chassis and paneling. Tonight, there was simply no room in his mind to entertain his usual frets. Tonight, he had a chance to finally, maybe, make a small difference in the city.

He saw the distant boathouse. And the rain-darkened piers, half of them nearly camouflaged by equally shadowy waters where so many of the overhead lights were burned out or broken. The man's knuckles grew white against the steering wheel. His lips tightened, and his dark eyes focused as he honed in on the task at hand.

And then something else caught his attention. Zoned in on the mission as he was, Ryan's eye for detail would never have let him miss a citizen in need. Though honestly, he'd have to be pretty blind to miss the boy waving his arms and stepping directly into the puddle-dappled gravel lane. Despite a slight pang of irritation for the opportunity he might be missing, the officer made no hesitation as he slowed his ride and came to a stop before the kid.

Hardly before he'd gotten the window all the way down, the boy was giving him an earful and then some, complete with an exasperated roll of the eyes and a tug at his drenched clothing to emphasize his dismay at waiting so long for help to arrive. "Okay, okay, lets slow down a minute." Ryan's eyes briefly flashed past Javier and up the road, but in the spotty lighting of the newer boathouse, and with the bronco parked on it's far flank, Ryan couldn't tell if anyone was there or not. Javier's shivering brought his focus back to the more pressing matter, or so he thought. "You said you called 911? Are you hurt, or is someone else?" To his credit, Sohmers had already put his cruiser in park and hit the flashing lights, with a hand then going for his seatbelt.

There were two officers in the panda car. Javi mentally flipped through the various options for his plan, feeling his confidence in his plan waver. Why couldn’t the damn Russian have given him time to actually plan and prep something decent? Now he needed to make sure his imaginary problem was big enough hat it required two cops to solve, but not so big that they were going to tie him up all night or call Joe.

At least they seemed to be buying his performance so far. Apparently Lanny had been right to want help warding off the feds, since the guy who had rolled the window down glanced briefly up at the boathouse before giving Javi his full attention. These guys weren’t out here patrolling randomly – they knew something was going down. Javi got the distinct feeling he should have asked for more money.

The officer gave him the opportunity to run his mouth some more, which he seized upon in the hopes of dragging the conversation out.

“Are you serious, bro?” He stared through the window incredulously. Javi was a practiced liar, and it didn’t hurt when he had to fake a facial expression which ran close to his true feelings. “Like, they don’t even tell you what the 911 call is about? What actually is the point of them asking me all them questions? I gotta be interrogated on the phone and now you gotta interrogate me all over again? Nah.” He shook his head. “You lot just love questioning Latinos, huh?”

Javi clicked his tongue against his teeth and exhaled in a way which would have earned him an instant detention from a teacher.

“Bro, I see someone out there,” he gestured towards the old pier, in the opposite direction to the boathouse, “and it’s like real small, like a kid or a midget, and it ain’t movin’, you get me? And you people up here, making me wait out in the rain – ” he shook his sopping hoody again for effect “ – and you’re all, ‘oh we’ll get someone to you as quick as possible’, and I have to wait forever for you to rock up and be all, ‘is someone hurt?’ Nah,” he held his hands up. “Nahhh, sort it out, man. I’m out here being a good citizen and all, and you better be paying me because right now I’m doing your job better than you, is all I’m sayin’.”

Ryan shared a look with the rookie beside him as the seatbelt disengaged with a quiet click, "Reach out to dispatch, see why that didn't go through." The door handle fell under his reach next, as he again turned his attention to the rain-soaked kid and the torrent of words now spilling from his mouth. The fast-paced recital made it difficult for Ryan to get a word in edge-wise. "You're going to have to slow down, alright?-" Ryan himself took a deep breath as Javier went on, watching the kid's expression devolve into the kind of ire that matched his exasperated words. He'd opened his mouth once, ready to interject and dismiss the notion of racial profiling, but the boy continued with his rapid-fire story, leaving Ryan to balance his patience with his need to gather information.

The officer couldn't quite help the way that his own breath came out a bit quickly following the click of Javier's tongue, or how his own expression crinkled just a smidgen at the other's bold words and behavior. This would have been the point where Ryan jumped in to reign in control of the conversation, but what the kid said next quickly shifted his priorities. Javier himself wasn't hurt, but someone else might be. Or worse.

"Scratch that, Janet." He was pushing the door open, just as the young woman was about to speak into the radio. "Get EMT down here, we'll sort out dispatch later. Stay here, and watch the road." He stepped out of the cruiser with a quick string of commands and a solid splash of water as his crisp black shoes met a grimy puddle. He was already following Javier's pointing finger towards the inky waters down by the pier as he closed the door behind him, dark eyes scanning the choppy waters despite the distance and the gathering darkness.

"Can you show me where you last saw them? And what's you're name, kid?" He spared Javier a brief look, but didn't linger by the squad car. The officer was already moving down to the old pier as he asked these questions, while biting back a feeling of cold dread.

~CrypticSilvers~ (Orca Bay)

the burn don't work and the buzz don't help;

the burn don't work and the buzz don't help;

Officer Sohmers

the burn don't work and the buzz don't help;

~Officer Sohmers~