Page 7 of Peak’s Code

Captain smirked. "I wasn't gonna ask."

"You were thinking it, Peak grumbled.

"I was,” Captain admitted. Peak started typing. The familiar rhythm settled his nerves. Code made sense, but people didn't. He opened a secure operating system from an encrypted drive hidden inside the laptop. Several brothers watched him, but none of them understood what they were looking at, which worked for him. In fact, he preferred it that way.

"What're you doing?" Captain asked.

"Checking something,” Peak mumbled.

"You said you weren't searching for the girl," Captain said.

"I'm not." Peak's fingers flew across the keyboard. "I'm searching for shipping manifests."

Captain relaxed slightly. "Can you access those?"

"I can access damn near anything."

Warden snorted. "There's the arrogant asshole we all know and love."

"It's not arrogance, it’s confidence,” Peak countered.

"It's both,” Warden said. Peak ignored him. He tunneled through three proxy servers before connecting to a commercial shipping database. He started with Baltimore, moved onto Annapolis, and then to the small commercial docks closest to Grave Prowler territory. He found nothing unusual. It was all normal container traffic, fishing vessels, and supply barges—exactly what he expected.

He was just about to give up when he saw it. "There."

Captain stood. "What did you find?"

Peak enlarged the screen. "See this?" Nobody seemed to pick up what he found. He sighed. "Thought so." He pointed. "This company—Eastern Atlantic Freight was registered six months ago."

"So?" Captain asked.

"So the company owns twelve trucks,” Peak said.

Captain shrugged. "And?"

"And it has no employees,” Peak explained.

Ruin frowned. "How's that work?"

"It doesn't." Peak kept digging. "The registered office is an empty warehouse in Dover."

Warden leaned closer. "You think they’re laundering money?"

"Possibly." Peak clicked another file. "Huh."

Captain seemed to recognize that sound. "What?"

"The warehouse." Peak's expression hardened. "It burned down four months ago. Yet the company is still operating."

Captain exchanged a glance with Ruin. "You got anything tying it to our docks?" Captain asked.

Peak clicked on another window. "Working on it." Five more minutes passed, but nobody interrupted him. Even the brothers who normally hated silence kept their mouths shut. Finally, Peak stopped typing, and his stomach tightened.

"What is it?” Captain asked. Peak slowly turned the laptop around. A grainy harbor security photo filled the screen of a shipping container sitting on the dock. Nothing unusual—except there was a motorcycle parked beside it.

Ruin leaned closer. "The hell?" Peak zoomed in and the image sharpened.

Captain inhaled sharply. "That's one of ours."