Chapter 3 - THE FIRE AT GWEN’S HOUSE
Smoke was already rising above the tree line when the convoy reached Gwen’s road.
Roman’s vehicles stopped two hundred yards from the property.
Gwen did not wait for instructions.
She opened the armored SUV door.
Roman caught her wrist.
“Look first.”
“My workshop is burning.”
“The corner is burning.”
She stared through the windshield.
He was right.
Flames climbed along the outside wall nearest the boat ramp, but the main structure remained intact.
Someone wanted her to see it.
Not destroy it yet.
A warning.
Thomas spoke into his radio.
“Two heat signatures behind the workshop. One near the tree line.”
Roman opened his door.
Gwen grabbed his sleeve.
“Your leg.”
“I can walk.”
“You can limp dramatically.”
He stared.
“That’s my job,” she added.
Roman almost smiled.
Thomas’s men spread through the property.
A gunshot cracked from the trees.
Gwen ducked.
Roman pulled her behind the armored SUV.
His men returned fire toward the tree line.
The exchange lasted seconds.
Then silence.
Gwen smelled burning wood.
She looked toward her workshop.
“I’m going.”
Roman swore.
She ran low toward the building.
Roman followed despite his injured leg.
At the side wall, Gwen grabbed the exterior hose and attacked the flames.
Roman stared.
“Seriously?”
“You handle your war. I’m handling mine.”
He took the second hose.
Together, absurdly, they fought the fire while armed men searched the woods.
The flames died before reaching the interior.
Gwen dropped the hose.
Her father’s workbench was safe.
Then she saw the front door.
Open.
Someone had entered.
“Don’t.”
Roman’s warning came behind her.
Gwen already had the pry bar raised.
They entered together.
Drawers had been emptied.
Cabinets opened.
Paper covered the floor.
Nothing valuable was taken.
“They were looking for something,” Roman said.
“I don’t keep money here.”
“Documents?”
“My father’s repair books.”
“Where?”
Gwen crossed to an old metal cabinet.
The bottom drawer was open.
Empty.
She froze.
“My father kept thirty years of service notebooks there.”
Roman’s voice sharpened.
“Harbor work?”
“Some.”
“What years?”
“Everything up to his death.”
Thomas entered.
“One attacker is dead. The other escaped through the marsh.”
Roman looked toward Gwen.
“What did your father know about Sullivan Vane?”
“Nothing.”
“Think.”
Gwen’s anger flared.
“My father fixed engines, Roman. He wasn’t in your damn mafia.”
Thomas looked toward the empty cabinet.
“What company maintained dock equipment when Vane first took the south harbor?”
Gwen went still.
Her father’s employer.
Miller Marine Industrial.
She crossed the shop and pulled open a different drawer.
Receipts.
Old invoices.
A faded photograph.
Her father standing beside three dockworkers in front of Warehouse Four.
One man in the photograph was much younger, but Gwen recognized him.
Thomas.
She slowly turned.
“You knew my father.”
Thomas said nothing.
Roman looked at him.
“Thomas.”
“I knew Jack Miller.”
Gwen crossed the distance between them.
“You stood in my shop pretending you’d never been here.”
“I had been here once. Twenty-two years ago.”
“Why?”
Thomas glanced toward Roman.
“Jack repaired boats used by both families before the harbor war split the docks.”
“Both families?”
“Vescari and Vane.”
Gwen’s stomach tightened.
“My father worked for you?”
“Not exactly.”
Thomas took the photograph.
“The old harbor ran differently. Your father kept engines alive for anyone who paid. He didn’t care which name controlled which pier.”
Roman asked, “Why would someone want his notebooks?”
Thomas stared at the image.
“Because Jack documented everything.”
Fuel.
Repairs.
Serial numbers.
Unauthorized modifications.
Boat movements.
Gwen understood.
“My father’s maintenance books could show which equipment belonged to whom.”
“And where it went,” Thomas said.
Roman looked toward the scorched workshop wall.
“Especially old smuggling routes.”
Gwen swore.
The stolen notebooks might contain proof of routes Sullivan still used.
Or proof someone inside Roman’s organization used them.
A guard entered carrying a small object sealed inside a plastic evidence bag.
“Found behind the shop.”
A silver cuff link.
Roman’s face changed.
Thomas did not speak.
Gwen noticed both reactions.
“You recognize it.”
Roman took the bag.
“My senior operations chief wears these.”
The man had sat at the table the night Gwen warned them about the tunnel.
He had scoffed that the route did not appear on the blueprints.
Gwen remembered his face.
Careful.
Dismissive.
Present when Roman planned the terminal attack.
“What’s his name?”
Roman looked at her.
“Adrian Knox.”
Thomas was already calling the operations center.
No answer.
Knox had disappeared.
His office safe stood open.
Several encrypted drives were gone.
The internal betrayal finally had a name.
Roman ordered every harbor exit monitored.
Gwen remained in the workshop staring at the empty cabinet.
Her father had died six years earlier.
She had thought his notebooks were worthless collections of grease-stained numbers.
Now someone had nearly burned her home to steal them.
Roman stood beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at him.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“You barely knew him.”
“I know what it means when someone drags the dead into a war they didn’t choose.”
Gwen looked toward the photograph.
“You understand loss?”
Roman’s expression became unreadable.
“My wife was killed nine years ago.”
Gwen had not expected that.
“Vane?”
“No.”
“Your world?”
“Yes.”
One word.
Enough.
For the first time, Gwen understood why Roman’s gray eyes could look at a sinking airplane without panic.
Some men feared death because they had lives they wanted to keep.
Roman looked as though part of him had stopped arguing with death years earlier.
Gwen hated how familiar that felt.
Her father’s death had been slower.
Cancer.
Months of watching a strong mechanic lose the strength to hold a wrench.
Afterward, Gwen remained in the coastal house because leaving felt like erasing him.
Roman touched the edge of the burned workbench.
“They won’t come here again.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“But I can promise they won’t do it cheaply.”
Thomas entered again.
“We found Knox.”
Roman straightened.
“Where?”
“Warehouse Four.”
Gwen laughed without humor.
“Of course.”
Thomas continued.
“He contacted Vane. They’re meeting tonight.”
Roman headed toward the door.
Gwen followed.
“No.”
Roman turned.
“No?”
“You’re injured, angry, and about to walk into a place your traitor chose.”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“Neither am I.”
Thomas looked between them.
“Can we save the marriage counseling until nobody is trying to kill us?”
Gwen stared at him.
Roman’s mouth twitched.
“We’re not married.”
Thomas shrugged.
“You argue professionally.”
Gwen grabbed her father’s old harbor map from the wall.
“If Knox has those notebooks, he knows the drainage system.”
Roman looked at it.
“And you know it better.”
“My father taught me.”
Roman’s expression sharpened.
“What are you suggesting?”
Gwen spread the map over the workbench.
“You tried trapping Vane with fire once.”
She pointed toward the canal gates.
“This time we trap him with water.”
Thomas studied the route.
Roman studied Gwen.
“You understand this could get you killed.”
“So could sleeping on my couch, apparently.”
Roman’s eyes held hers for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Show me.”
For the next hour, Gwen explained the old marsh system.
Not a battlefield plan.
A mechanic’s map.
Floodgates.
Service platforms.
Maintenance roads.
Places men unfamiliar with the harbor would assume were dead ends.
Roman changed his operation around it.
No fire.
No mass killing.
They would close the exits and take Knox alive.
Gwen noticed.
“You changed the plan.”
Roman folded the map.
“You made your opinion clear.”
“That never stopped you before.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“But I’m beginning to discover that keeping you nearby while ignoring everything you say is exhausting.”
Gwen smiled despite herself.
Thomas’s phone rang.
His expression changed.
“Knox moved.”
“Where?” Roman asked.
Thomas looked directly at Gwen.
“He’s not at Warehouse Four anymore.”
He turned the screen.
A security camera showed Adrian Knox entering Gwen’s workshop twenty minutes earlier through the rear boat door.
Gwen looked toward the dark hallway behind them.
They were standing inside that workshop.
Roman slowly reached beneath his coat.
May you like
A floorboard creaked overhead.
Knox had never left.
