A Little Girl Recognized My Secret Tattoo — Then She Spoke My Dead Teammate’s Code-iwachan

The peacoat man tried a different angle. “You think she trusted you? She didn’t contact you for eight years.”

Nora’s eyes cut to me, then away.

He kept going. “Ask yourself why.”

That one hit where he meant it to. Because I had asked myself that question the moment I saw the photo. Why not sooner? Why send a child? Why now?

But Nora answered before the doubt could root.

“Because every line near you was watched,” she said. “Because two of your team’s deaths were test runs. Because if I reached for any of you before today, I’d be handing them the whole chain.”

Silence followed that.

Even the men across from us seemed to pause.

“Two deaths?” I asked.

Nora looked sick, angry, and tired enough to tell the truth exactly once.

“Briggs wasn’t an accident. And Hollis never drowned.”

Hollis.

I hadn’t heard that name spoken aloud in six years.

Cole swore softly from the pallets.

Reyes finally stepped into view at the man’s blind side, weapon level, voice flat. “That’s enough talking.”

The balance changed right there.

Not because we outnumbered them.

Because now everybody knew there would be no quiet ending.

Image
The peacoat man saw Reyes and understood the geometry had closed on him. He raised one hand a little higher.

“Let’s not be stupid,” he said.

“Too late,” Nora muttered.

One of the men behind him made the mistake first. He glanced toward the packet in my hand instead of my face. Tiny movement. Just enough.

Reyes barked, “Don’t.”

The man twitched anyway.

Everything broke at once.

Cole fired into the concrete near the truck’s front tire, not to hit, to split the lane and force them wide. Reyes drove forward, shoulder-first, folding the nearest operator into the side panel. I yanked Nora behind the pallets as another shot cracked overhead and showered splinters across us.

Her breath hitched.

I put pressure on her side with one hand and shoved the packet inside my jacket with the other.

“You still with me?” I asked.

She looked at the blood on my fingers and managed a crooked smile. “You always did ask dumb questions under fire.”

More shots. Metal ringing. Somebody yelling for the documents.

I smelled hot cordite and fish and that rotten wood smell old docks get when winter never really leaves.

Then Mason’s voice came through the earpiece.

He was supposed to be back at the compound.

Instead he said, “Ellie gave me the second map.”