Dallas, Elena, and Murderbone slip through the customs annex fence and hug the loading dock shadows. The manifest’s locker row waits under a flickering light, each steel door tagged and numbered like a confession.

Murderbone freezes, nose lifted. Down the dock, a hand truck rattles softly, and a maintenance man in a gray coat steps out from behind stacked crates with a key ring already in hand.

He jerks his chin at the locker row, then at the service door beyond it, where fresh scuffs mark a recent drag. The bait is clear, the Liber Signorum Rubrorum was never the prize, it was the lure.

Dallas ignores the warning and drives a shoulder into Locker 4B. The steel door buckles, the latch snaps, and the whole row shudders with a harsh clang that rolls down the dock.

The door flies open. Inside is a cloth-wrapped church attachment, dry despite the wet dock, tucked beside a stamped route slip and a brass key with chapel paint still on it.

Dallas pries the tag free. A second number is scratched beneath the transfer code, pointing to a storage slot in the customs annex office, not the chapel.

Murderbone steps in front of Dallas, teeth bared, as the maintenance man reaches for the key ring.