Chapter 8 - THE LINE IN THE ASHES
The plan was madness, but madness was the only currency we had left.
Outside, the heavy metal roll-up door rattled violently as Vincent's men took sledgehammers to the tracks. "Thirty seconds, Julian!" Vincent shouted, followed by the metallic click of shotguns being racked.
"Move!" Julian hissed.
Vance and Gabriel scooped up the heavy stacks of original ledgers, the cassette tapes, and the legal depositions, packing them into Eleanor’s canvas bag and two heavy vinyl tool sacks. Eleanor grabbed Toby, lifting the nine-year-old into her arms. Toby didn't cry; he wrapped his small arms around her neck, whispering, "I'm being brave, Eleanor, just like you told me."
"You're the bravest boy in this city," she whispered back, kissing his forehead before ushering him toward the narrow rear doorway that led to the dark canal slipway.
Julian and I remained in the center of the warehouse. We grabbed stacks of old, worthless maritime shipping manifests from the dusty wooden pallets, dumping them into the iron steamer trunk. I tipped over the drum of waste oil, letting the black, viscous liquid soak the useless papers, spilling across the concrete floor toward the heavy front entrance.
"Mason," Julian said, catching my arm. His hand was warm, firm, and steady. For the first time in my life, I didn't pull away. He reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch—the one our grandfather had given him, the one he wound every single morning at five o'clock. He pressed it into my palm. "Take this. If anything happens on that pier, you run. You don't look back for me."
"Nothing is happening to you, Dad," I said, closing my fingers over the gold watch. "We just got you back."
The roll-up door buckled inward with a deafening screech of tearing metal.
Julian pulled a brass lighter from his pocket, flicked the flint, and dropped the flame into the pool of oil.
A wall of orange fire erupted instantly, roaring toward the ceiling and throwing thick, blinding black smoke into the rafters. The heat pushed us backward, searing the hair on my arms.
Through the sheet of flames, the front doors were forced open. Vincent and four armed men stumbled into the warehouse, coughing violently as the thick oil smoke filled their lungs.
"The trunk!" Vincent shouted, catching sight of the burning iron box through the fire. "He's torching the books! Get in there!"
Two men lunged forward, but the intense heat of the industrial oil forced them back, shielding their eyes. Julian grabbed my jacket collar and hauled me through the rear exit into the freezing night air.
We sprinted down the narrow wooden boardwalk of the marina, the salt spray freezing against our faces. Ahead of us, the twin-engine pilot boat purred in slip seven, its exhaust bubbling in the dark water. Vance stood on the stern, waving frantically.
"Get on!" Vance yelled.
Julian pushed me aboard first. I tumbled onto the deck, Gabriel catching my arm and pulling me up. Julian stepped onto the gunwale, turning to cast off the stern mooring line.
"Julian!" a voice snarled from the head of the dock.
Vincent had made it through the alleyway, his clothes reeking of smoke, his face streaked with soot. He raised a black semi-automatic pistol, aiming directly at the boat's cockpit. "You don't leave this harbor alive!"
Before Vincent could squeeze the trigger, Eleanor stepped out from the boat's shadow, holding a heavy marine flare gun she had grabbed from the emergency console.
"You threatened my sister’s children for the last time," Eleanor said, her voice cutting through the wind like a whip.
She fired.
The blinding magnesium flare hissed through the dark like a shooting star, exploding in a blinding shower of red sparks directly against the wooden piling at Vincent's feet. The concussive blast and blinding white-red light sent Vincent tumbling backward off the dock, splashing into the freezing, waist-deep harbor water with a frantic scream.
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Julian severed the bowline with a dock cleat, vaulted onto the deck, and slammed the twin throttles forward.
The boat surged into the open Atlantic, carving a white wake through the dark, icy swells, leaving the burning warehouse and the ruined remnants of the Moretti empire behind us in the freezing mist.
