Chapter 140: Displacement
TODAY.....
Katsuro’s safe house in Harrington was quiet despite the conference taking place inside.
Several faces occupied the large television mounted against the wall, each belonging to a representative of a different syndicate. The encrypted connection distorted their features slightly, concealing their identities while their voices carried clearly through the room.
Katsuro sat at the head of the table, listening to one of the men discuss the succession arrangements that had been circulating between their organizations. He barely moved, his attention fixed on the screen until the door opened quietly behind him.
One of his men stepped inside and approached without interrupting the meeting. He leaned down and whispered into Katsuro’s ear.
"We’ve found her location."
Katsuro’s expression remained unchanged, although his eyes shifted briefly toward the man before returning to the television.
"Gentlemen, it appears this meeting has come to an end. There are other matters requiring my attention."
The men on the screens exchanged brief looks.
"Of course," one of them replied. "We can continue another time."
"We’ll revisit the succession matter later."
Katsuro nodded once.
One screen went black, then another, until the remaining faces disappeared and the television reflected only the room around him.
He rose from his chair.
"Show me."
The man followed him into the hallway and handed him a tablet. A photograph of Raina filled the screen.
"Security footage caught her entering Atlantic County two days ago. Since then, we’ve received nothing."
"Nothing?"
"No confirmed sightings. No reliable communication. It’s as though she disappeared."
Katsuro’s eyes remained on the photograph.
"Do we have anyone in Atlantic County?"
"No established contacts."
"What about connections we can use?"
The man hesitated.
"None that I’m aware of."
Katsuro considered that for a moment.
He disliked entering unfamiliar territory without information.
"Look into the local police department. Find someone who can be persuaded to cooperate. Money, influence, whatever it takes. I want someone inside that department who can give us information without asking unnecessary questions."
"Understood."
"And Toshiro."
The man stopped at the doorway.
"Make certain there is no trace of our involvement."
"Yes, boss."
He left.
Katsuro remained in the hallway, looking down at the photograph on the tablet.
Raina had gone to Atlantic County because of Ethan. That much was obvious.
What concerned him was what had happened after she arrived.
Two days ago, the tracking signal he had discreetly placed on her phone had vanished. It had never happened before. Katsuro had always known where Himari was, whether she told him or not.
Now there was nothing.
No signal.No reliable contact.No information.
He walked toward the window and looked out over Harrington.
"Where are you, Himari?"
The question disappeared into the quiet room.
EARLIER ON TODAY....( Somewhere in Atlantic county).
Raina was floating.
There was no ground beneath her, no sense of direction and no weight to her body. She felt suspended in a darkness so complete that she couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open.
For a while, she simply drifted.
Then her eyes opened.
She blinked slowly, trying to make sense of the darkness around her.
"Where am I?"
Her voice sounded strangely distant.
Then the darkness changed.
Water rushed around her.
Raina gasped and instinctively held her breath as the sensation of drowning seized her body. She kicked hard, throwing her arms forward in an attempt to swim, but there was nothing beneath her feet and nowhere to go. Panic surged through her as she twisted helplessly in the endless blue.
She tried to breathe.
Nothing happened.
No water entered her lungs.
Raina froze.
She slowly opened her mouth.
She could breathe.
Her eyes widened.
The water wasn’t hurting her.
She stopped fighting it and simply floated there, suspended in the strange silence.
Then she remembered.
"Ah."
Her expression changed.
"Yes."
"I remember now."
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER....
Raina stood beside the window of her hotel room while Graham worked at the small desk nearby. He was the technical specialist Zach had sent to help with the search, a quiet man in his early thirties whose lean frame seemed almost too still whenever he was focused on a problem. His dark hair had fallen forward over his forehead, and the faint shadows beneath his eyes suggested he had spent nearly as much time awake as the rest of them since he arrived .
His laptop was surrounded by cables, portable drives and equipment he had brought with him, most of which Raina couldn’t identify.
"Did you find anything yet?"
Graham didn’t look up.
"Not yet. That’s the same answer I’ve given you the last fifteen times you’ve asked."
Raina glanced at the clock before folding her arms across her chest.
"Sorry. I’m just worried."
She tried to keep her voice steady, but the effort didn’t hide the strain underneath it.
"Ethan doesn’t have much time left. For all I know, he could already be dead, so please, find him and work faster."
Graham finally stopped typing and looked over his shoulder.
Raina caught herself.
"Please."
He nodded with a faint smile.
"That’s more like it."
He turned back to the computer and continued working.
A few minutes later, the hotel door opened and the driver walked in carrying a paper bag in one hand and a drink tray in the other.
"Here."
He placed the bag beside Graham.
"I got your cheeseburger."
Graham looked inside.
"Onions and extra cheese?"
"Sure."
Jonah turned to Raina and held out a cup.
"And your coffee, boss."
"Thanks."
Raina took it.She looked at him for a second longer than necessary.Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Mm."
Jonah stared at her.
Raina stared back.
Finally, he sighed.
"Jonah. My name is Jonah "
Raina gave him an apologetic smile.
"Right, Jonah. I’m sorry. I’m terrible with names." she put the cup aside "I’ll remember eventually."
Jonah shook his head and walked towards a corner in the room to eat .
Graham’s computer suddenly emitted a sharp electronic beep.
He stopped typing.
"Found it."
Raina turned immediately.
"You did?"
Graham leaned closer to the screen.
"I think so."
She crossed the room and stood behind him.
"What did you find?"
I finally got through the camera network."
Graham opened several feeds across the screen.
"After you left Blackwater Point, I started going through the footage from the surrounding roads. I wasn’t looking for anything specific at first. I just wanted to see whether anyone had been coming in or out of that area."
He brought up another recording.
"Blackwater Point is mostly abandoned, so there isn’t much traffic. But this caught my attention."
A blue van appeared on the screen, driving along one of the roads leading away from the area.
Raina leaned closer.
"The van?"
"Yeah. It showed up around the same time you were there, and I found it again on another camera a little later. Then I checked the footage from the other roads."
He switched between several recordings, following the vehicle as it appeared at different points around Blackwater Point.
"It was the only vehicle I could find making repeated trips in and out around that time."
Raina frowned.
"So you followed it."
"I did."
Graham opened another window.
"Then I checked the plate."
He paused.
"It wasn’t registered in the system."
Raina’s expression tightened.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing that matched. I even looked into the cleaning company logo that was on the van and it doesn’t exist either "
He returned to the camera footage.
"That made me more suspicious, so I started tracking the van’s movements from one camera to the next. It took a while because there are gaps between some of the feeds, but I managed to follow it after it left Blackwater Point."
Another camera appeared on the screen.
The blue van was travelling along a coastal road.
Graham continued switching between feeds until the vehicle finally appeared on a security camera overlooking the entrance to the Atlantic County Seaport.
"There."
Raina stared at the screen.
"The seaport."
Graham nodded.
"That’s where it went."
Jonah, who had been eating quietly, looked up from his food.
"No way. We just went there yesterday."
"I know," Raina said.
Graham continued following the footage through the port’s internal roads, but the available cameras became fewer as the van moved farther inside.
Raina watched the screen.
"What happened after it entered the port?"
"I’m trying to find out."
Graham opened another feed, then another, but the blue van was nowhere to be seen. He checked the timestamps and went back through the last few cameras, hoping he had missed something.
Nothing.
He leaned back in his chair.
"We don’t have enough coverage inside that section."
Raina stared at the screen.
"So we know the van entered the seaport, but we don’t know where it went afterward."
"Exactly."
Raina folded her arms and looked toward the window. From this distance, the seaport looked deceptively small, its lights scattered along the dark coastline. She knew better now.
"There’s still one more problem. How are we supposed to find one person in a port with hundreds of containers? It could take forever. We don’t have the manpower to pull this off."
Graham was quiet for a moment.
Then he glanced toward the equipment he had brought with him.
"We might not need to search all of them."
He reached beneath the desk and pulled out a rugged black case.
Raina watched as he opened it and removed a compact thermal imaging camera.
"What is that?"
"I do building inspections on the side," Graham said. "Heating systems, electrical faults, insulation problems. This is one of the tools I use when I need to find a heat source without opening a wall."
He switched it on, and a coloured image appeared on the small screen.
"I brought it because I Wasn’t sure what the job would demand from me ."
Raina looked at the device.
"Can it see inside the containers?"
"No."
Graham shook his head.
"Steel blocks the thermal image. If Ethan is inside one of them, I won’t be able to look through the walls."
"Then how does it help?"
"I can use it to narrow things down."
He brought the seaport map back onto the laptop.
"We already know roughly where the van went before it disappeared from the cameras. If Ethan is still there, we don’t need to search the entire port. We can work through that section and look for signs of recent activity around the containers."
Raina studied the map.
"And the camera?"
"Heat gives us another clue. If a container has recently been occupied, especially if there’s ventilation or an opening somewhere nearby, we may be able to pick up a temperature difference."
It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was better than searching hundreds of containers one by one.
"How long?"
Graham checked the equipment.
"About an hour to modify the sensor and connect it to the wider scanning setup."
"Do it."
Graham nodded and began gathering the equipment.
A moment later, he stopped.
"Wait."
Raina turned.
"What?"
Graham was staring at his laptop.
"I want to check something."
He opened the camera network again and began searching through the most recent recordings.
"What are you looking for?"
"The van."
Raina walked back toward the desk.
Graham switched between feeds, checking timestamps as he followed the vehicle’s movements.
Then he stopped.
The blue van appeared on the screen.
Raina leaned closer.
"Where is that?"
Graham didn’t answer immediately.
He zoomed in.
The van was parked along the street outside the hotel.
Raina’s expression changed.
"When was this?"
Graham checked the timestamp.
"Five minutes ago."
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Jonah slowly lowered the food in his hand.
"You’re kidding."
Graham shook his head.
"No."
Raina stared at the screen.
The same van that had been at Blackwater Point was now sitting outside their hotel.
Five minutes ago.
Her eyes shifted toward the window.
She couldn’t see the vehicle from where she stood.
But that didn’t matter anymore.
Graham closed the feed.
"So it’s safe to say we’re being watched right now."
Raina remained silent.
Anna knew where she was.
She had known when Raina entered Blackwater Point. She had known when she found the building. And now the same vehicle had appeared outside the hotel.
Raina slowly turned back toward Graham.
"Then we stop waiting for her to make the next move."
Graham looked at her.
"What are you thinking?"
Raina picked up her coat.
"We’re going back to the seaport."
Jonah frowned.
"Right now?"
Raina looked at the dark window one last time.
"If Anna is watching us, I want her to think we’re still looking in the wrong place."
She slipped her phone into her pocket and walked toward the door.
"While she’s watching the hotel, we’ll find Ethan."