Chapter 4 - Salt and Ash
Moses was waiting with the sedan’s doors open at the mouth of the alley.
Rafferty threw Maggie into the backseat, dived in after her, and slammed the door. Moses floored the accelerator; the tires screamed on the wet cobblestones, kicking up plumes of freezing harbor spray as they vanished into the winding lanes of Locust Point.
Maggie was gasping for air, her sweater soaked in brackish harbor water and oil. Beside her, Rafferty slumped against the leather, his breathing shallow and ragged.
“You’re hit,” Maggie said immediately, her eyes catching the dark, slick patch spreading across his left ribcage.
“Graze,” Rafferty ground out through clenched teeth. “It’s fine.”
“Shut up and let me look,” she snapped, her market instincts taking over. She had spent years handling deep flesh wounds from slipping cleavers; blood did not make her faint. She grabbed the hem of his fine white shirt and ripped it upward without hesitation.
A bullet had torn a three-inch furrow along his ribs. It was bleeding heavily, the edges charred by powder burn, but it hadn't punctured the lung.
“Moses, drive to stall 14 at the market,” Maggie ordered.
“Mr. Kowalic has a private clinic in Roland Park—” Moses began.
“Your private clinic has doctors on Voss’s payroll,” Maggie cut in fiercely. “And right now, every hospital in the city is being watched. Take us to Chesapeake Market. The ice lockers are empty, the stalls are locked, and I have suture thread and medical alcohol in my tackle box.”
Moses glanced in the rearview mirror. Rafferty gave a faint, tight nod. “Do what she says.”
Ten minutes later, the market loomed out of the harbor fog—a cavernous, silent cathedral of steel beams, corrugated roofs, and wooden tables. To anyone else, it looked abandoned. To Maggie, every shadow was an old neighbor.
She unlocked the side grate of stall 14. Rafferty leaned heavily on her shoulder, his body radiating heat as shock began to settle in. Moses stood guard at the perimeter, his coat unbuttoned, his hand resting on his sidearm.
Inside the stall, Maggie sat Rafferty down on an overturned wooden crate. She lit an oil lamp, setting it on the stainless steel cutting table. The golden glow illuminated the silver fish scales dried into the wood grain.
She pulled out a bottle of high-proof whiskey from beneath the counter, poured half of it over a curved sailmaker’s needle, and turned to Rafferty.
“This is going to hurt worse than your mother’s dinner,” she said.
“Just do it,” Rafferty whispered.
Maggie poured whiskey directly over the wound. Rafferty’s muscles locked like iron bands, his hands gripping the edges of the crate until the wood splintered, but he did not make a single sound.
With steady, practiced hands, Maggie pushed the needle through his skin, drawing the flesh closed with tight, even stitches. Her face was inches from his; she could feel his ragged breath against her forehead, could smell the rain, the gunpowder, and the cedar cologne clinging to his collar.
“You didn’t run,” Rafferty said quietly through the pain, watching her focused eyes.
“I had what I came for,” she answered without looking up, pulling the knot tight and snipping the thread with her fillet knife. “I found the police report.”
Rafferty went still. “What did it say?”
“My father died because he refused to carry Voss’s cargo,” she said, looking straight into his eyes. “Your father gave the order to drown him. But the hand on the wheel... the man who cut his anchor line... was signed as *A. Voss*.”
Rafferty closed his eyes, a deep, bitter sigh escaping his chest. “Anthony Voss. Julian’s father.”
“My father died keeping this bay clean,” Maggie said, her voice trembling with nine years of held grief. “And you’re letting them marry you into the family that murdered him.”
Rafferty opened his eyes. His gaze was burning, stripped of all corporate coolness. “I agreed to that marriage because it was the only way to get close enough to Anthony Voss’s safe to take down his entire syndicate from the inside. But that was before tonight.”
He reached out, his bloody, calloused fingers closing around Maggie’s hand where it rested on his knee.
May you like
“Now,” Rafferty said, “we burn them both.”
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