Read Chapter 17: The Henchman's Gambit

The boat deck was a slaughterhouse of order. Stewards in brass-buttoned uniforms bellowed *women and children first* while men with faces like chalk pressed against the ropes, their hands white-knuckled on the rail. A lifeboat swung out over the black Atlantic, its davits groaning, half-full of weeping women who stared back at the men they were leaving.

Jack flattened himself against the warm bulkhead of a ventilator shaft, the letter and map crinkling against his ribs beneath his stolen dinner jacket. Margaret was somewhere behind him—or ahead, or lost in the crush. He couldn't see her. He'd made the mistake of looking back once, and now the corridor where they'd split was a river of bodies moving wrong in every direction.

He needed to think. The map burned against his skin. Phosphorus. In the forward hold. If the water reached those crates—

A hand clamped onto his shoulder like a mooring line snapping taut.

"O'Leary."

Jack spun, instinct bringing his elbow up, but Moran was already inside his guard, close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath and the salt-sweat beneath it. The man's face was a mask of patient cruelty, the kind a boxer wears when he knows the other fellow can't punch worth a damn.

"Easy, easy." Moran smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "I'm not here to break your bones. Not yet."

"You've got a funny way of showing it."

Moran stepped back, arms spread in a gesture of peace that Jack didn't trust for a second. Behind him, the boat deck churned with panic. A woman screamed. A man shouted that there weren't enough boats. The bow was visibly lower now, the forward rail dipping toward the sea at an angle that made the whole ship feel drunk.

"I hear you've been busy," Moran said. "Vance's room. Quite the haul you made off with."

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"The letter. The map. The list." Moran ticked them off on his fingers. "Don't play dumb, Jack. You were always better at playing clever, and even that wore thin."

Jack's jaw tightened. "You've been watching me."

"Watching, waiting. Mostly waiting, if I'm honest. You're harder to catch than a rat in a grain store." Moran glanced over his shoulder at the chaos unfolding at the lifeboats. "But the ship's sinking, Jack. Rats don't get to be choosy about which hole they crawl out of."

"What do you want?"

"Now that's the right question." Moran stepped closer, dropping his voice so the wind couldn't carry it. "I want what you've got. The list. The one you memorized from Anna Jackson's key."

Jack felt the cold creep up his spine. "I don't have—"

"Don't." Moran's voice was flat. "I know about the key. I know about the safe-deposit box in Southampton. I know Vance thinks you're working for me, which is the only reason you've got a pulse right now. So let's stop the theater."

The ship groaned beneath them, a sound like a dying whale, and the deck tilted another degree. Jack grabbed the ventilator shaft to steady himself. Around them, people were starting to push toward the remaining boats with less ceremony. A steward shouted that there were no more on the port side. A man in a top hat was arguing with a sailor, waving a wad of banknotes.

"Here's my offer," Moran said. "Simple. You give me the list—the real one, the one in your head—and your debt's gone. Clean slate. No more Fletcher Street, no more collection, no more looking over your shoulder in every port from Liverpool to Boston."

"And a cut," Jack said.

Moran's eyebrows rose. "A cut?"

"You said clean slate. Doesn't sound like you're offering me anything worth dying for."

The older man laughed, a short bark of genuine amusement. "Still greedy. I like that. Fine. A cut. Ten percent of whatever Ferrier pays for the registry."

"Twenty."

"Fifteen, and I don't tell the captain you're a wanted pickpocket who's been impersonating a first-class passenger aboard his ship."

The threat hung in the air like fog. Jack looked past Moran at the nearest lifeboat. Half-empty. Men being turned away at gunpoint. If the captain's officers got wind of who he really was, they'd lock him in a cabin to face justice on the other side—if the ship made it that far.

"Fifteen," Jack said slowly. "And you make sure I get on a boat."

Moran's smile widened. "Now you're thinking like a businessman."

"One problem."

"Yes?"

"I don't have the list." Jack spread his hands. "I memorized the coded version. The decoding key's in the notebook Vance took. You want the list, you need to get it back from him."

Moran's face went through a series of small shifts—surprise, calculation, then something harder. "You're lying."

"I'm not. I was going to decode it in New York. Find someone who could translate the cipher. Then Vance showed up and took the notebook, and now you're both chasing me for something I can't even read."

The wind picked up, sharp and cold off the water. Somewhere below, there was a sound like distant thunder—bulkheads giving way, cargo shifting. The bow dipped further. A woman near the rail let out a wail that cut through the noise of the crowd.

Moran stared at him. Jack stared back, keeping his face as blank as a card sharp's.

"Then you're worthless to me twice over," Moran said finally. "An empty-headed thief who can't even deliver what he stole."

"I can give you the key's sequence. The numbers, the letters. Someone in your organization could decode it."

"Someone in my organization has been dead for three years, Jack." Moran's hand moved to his coat, and Jack tensed for the blade. "You're talking to the last man standing from that crew. Everyone else is buried under the Atlantic or in a New York prison."

"Then take me with you. I'll decode it."

"You just said you can't."

"I said I can't decode the cipher alone. But I know someone who might." Margaret's face flashed through his mind—her steady hands, the way she'd read the forged letter like it was a children's book. The way she'd looked at him when she'd said *I believe you*. "I know a banker in New York. Works with private registries. If anyone can crack the code, it's him."

Moran was quiet for a long moment. The ship tilted again, more noticeably this time, and a bench slid across the deck with a screech of wood on iron. Someone screamed. A man in a lifebelt stumbled past them, knocking into Moran, who shoved him away without looking.

"You'll give me the key sequence now," Moran said. "As proof."

"And if I write it in the air for you to memorize, what's to stop you putting a knife in my ribs?"

Moran's lips twitched. "Nothing. But you're forgetting something, Jack."

"What's that?"

Moran moved fast—faster than a man his size had any right to—and his hand closed around Jack's throat, slamming him back against the ventilator shaft. Jack's head cracked against metal, and stars burst behind his eyes. He gasped, clawing at Moran's wrist, but the grip held like iron.

"You're forgetting," Moran said, voice soft and terrible, "that even if you survive this ship, you'll have to survive me. And I don't need the list to bury you. I just need to walk up to those officers and tell them who you really are. Thief. Imposter. Wanted in three ports." He squeezed once, hard enough to make Jack's vision blur. "You'll spend the rest of your life in a cell—if you make it to shore at all. Dead men don't negotiate."

The pressure released. Jack doubled over, coughing, hands on his knees. When he straightened, Moran was already turning away, walking toward the lifeboat with the casual confidence of a man who had nothing to fear.

"Fifteen percent," Moran called over his shoulder. "And the key sequence. Find me before midnight, or I find the captain and tell him everything."

He disappeared into the crowd.

Jack stayed where he was, breathing hard, head throbbing. The wind bit through his jacket. The bow was definitely lower now—he could see water glinting at the forward deck, white foam where the sea was climbing aboard.

Morgan knew about the list. Morgan knew he'd memorized it. And Morgan would sell him out in an instant if Jack didn't produce something useful.

But Margaret was out there. The banker was in New York. The stolen letter and the phosphorus map were pressed against his chest.

And somewhere beneath them, in a forward hold slowly filling with the freezing Atlantic, a pile of phosphorus waited to meet the water.

Jack started moving, scanning the crowd for Margaret's dark hair.

He had to find her before midnight—and before the sea found them all.