Then she ghosted him.
Thane stood in the yard for five minutes, then ten. An hour passed. He pretended to smoke half a cigarette before he flickered the rest to the gravel and muttered, “Fuck this.”
Still no Trish
He found Malcolm in the office, feet up on the desk, phone in hand playing on his phone.
“If you’re gonna waste my time,” Thane said, his tone different from flirtatious casual from before, “let me know now. I’ll take my business elsewhere. Your little bitch has given me the slip.”
Malcolm gave him a look. “Relax. She’s temperamental, but she gets the job done.”
“Temperamental doesn’t get deals done. It is not going to be good for your business.”
Malcolm’s smile thinned as he dialled a number. “Give me five minutes.”
Thane listened as Malcom tore Trish a new arsehole.
And just like that, five minutes after the call, the message came through from a withheld number.
Docks. 4:30. South bay entrance. Ricky and Jac will bring you.
By the time Thane arrived at the docks, the sun had sunk low in the sky and the air stank of salt, rust, and old diesel.
Ricky had immediately split—thank Christ. The bloke was insufferable. Thane had the pleasure of sitting in the backseat while he yapped away in the front. His jet-black hair was slicked back with half a bottle of product, the smell of his too-tight leather jacket and body odour wafting to the backseat and a smile that made your skin itch. He had stood too close while they frisked Thane yet again, all the while talking loudly to Jac. They had a folder a few inches wide with a rap sheet a mile long on him at the base. He also talked about Trish like she was a trophy he owned.
Jac, by contrast, was a shadow. Wiry, shaved head, with eyes like a snake—flat and the colour of onyx. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, it was short, efficient, and unsettling. There were no empty threats with this man. You just knew he’d already considered how to kill you with what was in his pockets.
He disappeared as well, like Thane was an unwanted parcel.
A man by the entrance—probably just a low-level runner—gave Thane a stiff nod and unlocked the bay door. “She’s inside.”
The metal door creaked as Thane stepped in.
It was a stripped-down container office with steel walls, scuffed desk, cracked blinds, and that unsettling silence that always came before something unpleasant.
And Trish.
She stood behind the desk, braced against the surface with one hand, the other holding a thin glass straw to her nose. She snorted the line and held her breath before exhaling with a sigh, her eyes closed. When they opened again, they locked straight onto him.
The hostility was now replaced with a strange expression which bordered interest.
Thane stepped forward, that trademark grin already curling into place. “Want to share?”
The next week passed in a blur of surveillance.
Thane followed the day-to-day operations closely—shipment checklists, whispered conversations, cash pick-ups, and rotations of sealed vans. But still not a child in sight. The crew was wary of him. He would have to gain their trust.
Trish had become less hostile since that day in the container. She wasn’t exactly warm—nothing about her veered toward softness—but she no longer treated him like gum stuck to her shoe.
And she was still an attractive woman who eyed him when she thought he wasn’t looking.
It started with a look one afternoon. The two of them were in the back lot, going over future logistics.
Then there was silence, and he looked into her eyes to see a gleam of interest.
“You wanna fuck?” she asked, blunt as always.
Thane didn’t answer with words. He gave Ricky, who was lurking nearby with his habitual sullen glare, a slow, infuriating smile, and then followed Trish into a side room that smelled faintly of oil and old concrete.
