They pulled the sniper out of the tank by his belt and laid him on the wet grate.
Rina: Ettore. Nobody heard the shot. Nobody saw a fucking thing.
Half his head was gone. The sharks had taken the rest.
The rifle was still strapped to his wrists. Scope cracked. Stock slick with tank water.
Ettore: He had a clean line on my head for four seconds.
Ettore: Then somebody put one round in his skull and let him drop.
I turned him with my shoe. Something cracked under his shoulder.
A badge. A cleaner's badge in a plastic sleeve. Blood had got in behind the plastic.
Rina: From nine meters up. That's not luck, Ettore.
Small face under the blood. Sharp cheekbones. Hair pulled back so tight it looked painful.
No smile. Like she hated the camera and the camera knew it.
Ettore: Well. Hello.
I closed my hand over it and put it in my coat. My chest went tight and warm, which was a stupid thing to feel.
Rina: What's that?
Ettore: Trash.
She doesn't let things go. That's why she's good.
Ettore: Get the night crew down here. All of them. Where I can see their hands.
They came in a line, six of them, dripping on my floor.
Rina: You. Front and center.
She had him against the pipe before he finished blinking. His head knocked metal and blood ran into his eye.
Rina: Which one of you dumb bastards works the shark tunnel? Say it fast.
He swore he only mopped the lobby. He was crying by the second sentence.
Rina: You're a lying little shit. I can smell it on you.
She slapped him flat-handed. His head bounced off the pipe.
Nobody in the line looked at him. That's how you stay alive around me.
Rina: The tunnel crew wears green tags. So who's the bitch in the green tag?
He said he didn't know. She hit him again, harder.
I watched a man bleed and felt nothing. That's normal for me.
But my hand stayed over the badge in my pocket the whole time, like it was keeping something warm.
Ettore: Enough. He doesn't know.
Rina: First you tell me not to shoot her. Now you don't want me looking.
Ettore: I want her found. I don't want her spooked.
Rina: Spooked. She put a bullet in a man's brain and fed him to the fish.
Rina: Give me a week and I'll find her. Then I'll put a hook in her jaw and drag her in here on her knees.
I caught her wrist before she finished the sentence. Not hard. Hard enough.
Ettore: You touch her and I'll break both your hands. Am I clear?
She rubbed her arm and looked at me like she'd never seen me before.
Rina: You've known her for one night and she's already got you by the fucking throat.
Ettore: I've known her longer than that. I just didn't know her face.
I took it out. Her photo stared at me the way she had from that catwalk. Straight on. No fear.
A cleaner with a green tag had walked into my building and cleared a path to me through the dark. She never once asked for a thing.
Ettore: Nights only. Quiet. Never misses a shift.
Rina: So I dig through every night crew in the port. For a ghost with a mop.
Ettore: You find her, you tell me first. Not the card room. Not the docks. Me.
Rina: And if she doesn't want to be found?
Ettore: Then I'll wait. She's already come close once.
Somewhere under my ribs, the old cage shifted. A small shape in the dark. A girl I never got out.
I didn't know why a cleaner's badge made me think of her. I didn't like it.
Rina: You're keeping a cleaner's badge in your pocket. Like a kid with a rock.
Ettore: Yes.
She looked at me too long, then started calling names off a list. I walked out before she could ask the real question.
In the car I took it out again. Her face. The flat mouth. The stubborn chin.
She had chosen to let me see her. That was the part I couldn't leave alone.
Ettore: Find her, Rina. Before someone worse does.