The lamps along Dockside flickered in the damp wind, their pale glow barely piercing the fog rolling in from the river.
The city's veins of iron and smoke bled into this district, where sailors' songs rose and fell with the crash of waves. It was here that Delilah Boone was last seen.
Jonathan Wayne heard it first from Silas's apprentice a dock boy with soot-stained fingers who swore he saw Delilah leave the square arm-in-arm with a man in a tailored gray coat.
The boy remembered him only as "polite," but in Gotham, politeness was often the mask worn by wolves.
Isadora was frantic she had come to Jonathan's safehouse, her cloak half-soaked by the rain, her eyes wild with guilt. "She was with me," she whispered, pacing the room. "I told her to wait. Just to wait while I asked after Father's things. And then she was gone."
Scrap, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a ledger spread open before him, looked up "That's how they work they take one when you're looking the other way. They don't make noise. They don't have to."
Isadora rounded on him. "Don't you dare speak of them as if you know!" Her voice cracked. "She's my sister i should've protected her I should've".
Jonathan stepped between them, laying a steadying hand on her arm. "Isadora. This isn't your fault. They wanted her. That means she was marked long before tonight."
The words gave no comfort. Her face twisted, but she let him guide her into a chair.
Lionel Crane entered then, shoulders hunched beneath his overcoat. He tossed a damp newspaper onto the table.
The headline screamed of the courthouse fire, of panic in the Founders' District. Beneath the ink, Crane's jaw worked.
"Vanishing girls, fires in the square, whispers in every ward. The Owe are accelerating. They don't want the city to breathe between cuts."
Jonathan opened the ledger Scrap had been pawing through. The boy had stolen it from a shipping office two nights earlier a neat column of transactions, half of them traced to Blackthorn-owned enterprises.
On one margin was scrawled a name: Nina.
His breath slowed. "Nina Blackthorn."
Isadora stiffened. "You think she took Delilah?"
"I think she delivered her," Jonathan answered grimly. "That coat the description matches the style I've seen at Blackthorn's estate. And Nina is always the hand that closes the door behind you."
Scrap hugged his knees. "If they've taken her, she's already below. Nobody comes back from below."
Silence spread in the room the only sound was the soft crackle of the fire.
Isadora rose sharply, knocking her chair back.
"Then I'll go below. I don't care where. I'll go into the sewers, the factories, the tunnels. I'll tear apart every chamber until I find her."
Jonathan caught her wrist before she could storm out. "No. That's what they want."
She glared at him, trembling with rage. "What they want is our silence. And every minute we sit here talking, she gets further away."
Crane spoke then, voice heavy. "Jonathan's right. They bait us. They know blood binds tighter than reason. If they took her, it wasn't random. They're calling you to chase, and the chase will end with more than one Boone dead."
Isadora wrenched free, but her shoulders sagged. She pressed both hands to her face. "I should have protected her."
Jonathan's chest tightened. He had felt that same guilt a thousand times over the dead he hadn't saved, the friends consumed by the Owe's shadow.
But guilt was a blade they counted on. He forced his tone steady. "We will find her. Not by running blind, but by following the trail."
Scrap shuffled forward, sliding the ledger back across the table. He tapped the margin with Delilah's name.
"If Nina was the hand, then the trail is here. Look this column. Ships, arriving and departing, all coded. But these marks" He pointed at a symbol scrawled beside a particular date. "That's not numbers. That's a circle."
Jonathan leaned closer. The boy was right. It wasn't a merchant's tally it was the Owe's sign, etched small but deliberate. A shipment had arrived the very day Delilah vanished. Its destination: Blackthorn's warehouse near the ironworks.
Crane exhaled. "So she's cargo now."
Isadora slammed her fist against the table. "Then we take her back."
Jonathan closed the ledger. His eyes met hers. "We will. But you have to understand, Isadora if Nina is involved, this isn't just a kidnapping. It's a message.
The Owe want you broken, because your family's name still means something. If they turn you, Gotham turns easier."
Isadora's lips trembled, but she set her jaw. "Then I won't break."
For the first time that night, Jonathan believed her.
The fog outside thickened, swallowing the lamps. Somewhere deep in the city, a bell tolled, low and mournful. It might have been for Delilah. It might have been for all of them.
Jonathan rose, fastening his coat. "We move at dawn. Blackthorn's warehouse first. If she's not there, we track the shipments further. But no matter where they've taken her, we'll tear open every door they've sealed."
Isadora whispered, "And if she's already gone?"
Jonathan's face hardened. "Then we burn what took her."
No one spoke after that.
The fire guttered low.
Scrap curled against the wall, eyes wide and unblinking. Crane poured himself a drink with hands that shook more than he'd like to admit.
Isadora sat stiff in her chair, eyes fixed on the window where fog pressed like a living thing. Her thoughts were far from the room chasing her sister through the labyrinth of Gotham, through the tunnels and smoke.
And Jonathan, standing in the shadows, swore silently that whatever abyss had swallowed Delilah Boone, he would drag her back or he would drag the Owe down into it with her.