On the windshield, a sticky note, smeared by humidity:
The tunnel ate your headlights. The Porsche’s V8 screamed, hitting 220, then 225, then 230 as the tunnel’s orange tiles blurred into a single, molten stripe. A chime. The in-dash screen flickered:
The terminal was a rust labyrinth. Stacked containers, cranes frozen mid-sigh, and the smell of salt and stale gasoline. But there, under a halogen work light that buzzed like a trapped fly, sat a silver tarp the size of a small yacht. You killed the engine. The rain ticked on the tarp like a thousand tiny hammers.
You didn’t even brake. You burst out of the tunnel, sideswiped a Crown Vic (sorry, officer), and aimed the Porsche toward the docks like a surface-to-air missile.
You didn’t cheer. You just drove. Past the docks, past the cops who were now just blue smears in your side mirror, past the city limits sign that said “YOU’LL BE BACK.” You knew you would. But tonight, the McLaren F1 wasn’t a trophy.
His name was Marcus “Mack” Devere. He wasn’t on the Blacklist. He was the list’s footnote. The guy who’d held the McLaren F1 keys for six months without a single cop sniffing his exhaust. Rumor said the F1 was parked inside the old shipping container terminal at Harbor & West, behind a magnetic gate that only opened for a specific speed trap trigger: 225 mph through the Bellevue Tunnel.