The service lane breathes damp salt and old rust. The side door hangs open on a scarred frame, and the stink of ozone and expensive tobacco spills out like a warning. Jackson Temple crouches low, pale as paper, his weapon angled to the concrete.

Jackson flicks his eyes toward the dark beyond the threshold, then back to Dallas Fontaine. Inside, a thin line of light cuts across stacked crates, and the whole dockyard feels set for an ambush.

Dallas sees the trap for what it is, a delivery lane turned killing box. The route to Harlan Tate is through that door, and the only other way out is past the men waiting to bury the truth.

Murderbone pads to the doorway and stops, ears up, nose working the air. Jackson holds his ground, shaking, while the opened service door frames the next step toward Pier Nine and the man who ordered his daughter’s death.

Dallas slips past the bulb’s spill and ghosts along the crate wall. The alley narrows, then opens to a maintenance strip where the brick gives way to rusted corrugation.

He spots it, a paint-chipped hatch half hidden behind a stack of dock pallets, with fresh scrape marks on the concrete and a smear of wet rope fibers at the seam.

Dallas tests the latch. It gives with a dry click, opening into a dim service passage that runs under the warehouse edge and out of sight of the main door.

A faint current of stale air pushes out, carrying the sound of muffled voices from deeper inside. Dallas now has a cleaner route, one that skirts the trap and brings him closer to Tate’s back side.

Murderbone noses the hatch, then shifts back toward Dallas, rigid with warning as the hidden passage waits open.

Dallas draws his revolver and slips into the passage, shoulder turned to the damp brick. The corridor swallows the alley light behind him.

The air turns stale and metallic. Ahead, the tunnel bends under the warehouse, with voices drifting through the beams in fragments and pauses.

Dallas eases forward, each step measured, the muzzle steady at chest height. Dust shifts under his shoes without a sound.

Murderbone pads in after him, then stops, head lifted toward the voices. His body goes tight, warning Dallas the passage is occupied ahead.

At the end of the bend, a sliver of light leaks through cracked boards, and the outline of a back door shows in the dark.

Dallas stills himself in the dark and lets the passage breathe around him. The voices above shift once, then fade into another hallway, leaving only a boot scuff, a muttered count, and the soft drag of a chair.

He times the rhythm through the boards, then catches the pattern, two men trading positions by the office door above the tunnel. One voice sounds bored. The other sounds like he has been awake too long.

Murderbone freezes beside Dallas, muzzle angled toward the light leak. From beyond the cracked boards comes a second cue, a chair leg scraping back, then the thud of a latch being checked from the other side.

When the voices move off, Dallas hears what they leave behind, a clear window at the back door, unguarded for the moment and open to a man who knows the change has already happened.

Jackson looks to Dallas, tense but certain, while Murderbone waits for the next sound from above.

Dallas slips to the door as the corridor clears, shoulders flat, breathing held tight. The latch gives under a careful touch, and the back door opens just enough for him to slide through.

He moves into the next space without a scrape, letting the door settle behind him. The passage opens into a dim service room stacked with crate shadows and pipe glare.

Across the room, a narrow stair climbs toward a lit landing. Voices carry faintly from above, but none are close enough to challenge him.

Murderbone pads in after him, silent now, nose working the air by the threshold. He stops at a smear on the concrete, then angles his head toward the stairs.

On the wall beside the stairwell, a service map hangs half-torn. One route is marked in grease pencil, ending at a room labeled office.

From above comes a chair leg dragging, then a man’s voice calling for someone to check the back corridor.