Chapter 2 - The Safehouse in the Pines
The wiper blades on my Ford Focus squeaked rhythmically against the glass, pushing away thick sheets of gray water that seemed to swallow the world whole. We were twenty miles north of Rivergate, climbing the winding, narrow two-lane road that led deep into the Blackwood Pines. The streetlights had disappeared ten miles back, replaced by the dark, towering walls of dense pine trees that bent under the force of the wind.
My hands were locked on the steering wheel at ten and two, my knuckles white, my shoulders so tense they throbbed with a dull, aching heat.
Beside me, Dominic Vale had stopped speaking fifteen minutes ago.
His head was tilted back against the torn vinyl headrest, his jaw slack, his chest rising in shallow, rapid hitches that sounded dangerously thin. The red puddle beneath his seat had stopped expanding, not because the bleeding had magically healed, but because his blood pressure was dropping so low his body was shutting down.
In the back seat, Atlas kept his heavy chin rested against my shoulder. Every few minutes, he would let out a soft, warm breath against my neck, as if checking to make sure I was still driving, still breathing, still keeping the dark world outside the glass at bay.
“Hang on,” I whispered into the quiet car. “Just hang on, okay? I don't know where I’m going, so you can't die yet.”
My phone, lying face-down on the rubber floor mat where I had kicked it, vibrated again.
It had been vibrating every three minutes for the past half hour. Messages from my mother. Messages from Caleb. Notifications from group chats I hadn't checked in months. I couldn't look at them. Every time the screen flashed, I saw that sentence burned into my retinas:
CLAIRE, IF YOU FOUND THE MAN IN THE ALLEY, LEAVE HIM THERE. THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
My brother.
The boy I had shared cereal with at the kitchen counter while our father worked the night shift at the paper mill. The brother whose scraped knees I had bandaged when he was ten. He had stood in an office above a dark warehouse and sold a man’s life for ten thousand dollars.
And when he realized his sister was standing in the alley behind her diner, he hadn't tried to save me. He had told me to leave a dying man to be slaughtered.
“Turn... left,” a voice rasped from the passenger seat.
I flinched, my eyes darting sideways.
Dominic was looking at me, his gray eye barely open, a thin sheen of cold sweat glistening on his pale forehead under the dim green light of the dashboard.
“Where?” I asked, my voice shaking. “There’s nothing out here but trees.”
“Quarter mile... double oak tree... yellow reflector on the post,” he grunted, every syllable an agonizing struggle. “Turn... into the brush.”
I slowed the Focus down, the rusted brakes grinding loudly against the rotors. A hundred yards ahead, bathed in my weak high beams, I saw it—a massive, split-trunk oak tree marking a tiny, unpaved logging trail that cut through the thick underbrush. A faded yellow reflector gleamed faintly on a wooden fence post almost buried in weeds.
I jerked the wheel to the left. The Focus bumped heavily over a drainage ditch, the bottom of my car scraping against rock, before rolling onto the dirt trail.
Branches clawed at the sides of the car like sharp fingernails as we bumped through the dark forest for nearly half a mile. The trees were so dense overhead that the rain was reduced to a heavy, constant dripping against the roof.
Then, the trail opened into a small, cleared hollow.
Sitting in the middle of the clearing was a small, low-slung cabin built from dark cedar logs and river stone. It had no porch lights, no mailbox, no signs of life. It looked entirely abandoned, swallowed by the wilderness.
“Key...” Dominic whispered, his right hand trembling as he reached toward his suit coat pocket. He couldn't lift his fingers high enough. “Inside... lining...”
I parked the car, killed the headlights, and reached across the console. My fingers brushed against his blood-soaked shirt—it felt heavy, sticky, and shockingly cold—before sliding into the inner pocket of his jacket. I felt a small, flat piece of metal sewn into the silk lining.
I ripped the thin fabric with my fingernails and pulled out a heavy, brass key attached to a dark leather fob.
“Got it,” I said.
I looked at him. His eyes had closed again.
“Dominic? Hey! Stay with me!”
He didn't answer.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my chest. I scrambled out of the driver's seat, pulled my apron off over my head, and opened his door. The icy night air hit my face, smelling of pine needles and damp earth.
“Atlas,” I called out, opening the rear door. “Come on, boy. Help me.”
The massive Corso leapt out into the dirt, his tail giving a low, tentative wag. He trotted straight to Dominic’s side, pushing his nose against Dominic’s bloody hand.
I grabbed Dominic’s right arm, hauled it over my neck, and dragged his upper body out of the car. He was nearly six-foot-three, built like an iron beam, and completely unconscious. My boots slipped in the mud as I took his full weight, my knees buckling under the sheer mass of him.
“Up,” I grunted through my teeth, tears of sheer physical strain burning my eyes. “Get up, you arrogant bastard! Move your feet!”
A low growl came from Atlas. The dog wedged his broad shoulder beneath Dominic’s uninjured right hip, pushing upward with his broad body, bracing us against the cold wind.
Together, step by agony-filled step, we dragged Dominic Vale up the three wooden steps of the cabin porch.
My hands were so cold I dropped the brass key twice before I managed to jam it into the deadbolt lock. It turned with a heavy, oiled click.
I shoved the door open.
The cabin smelled of cedar, cold ash, and old leather. It was pitch-black inside. I didn't dare look for a light switch—if someone was tracking us, a light in the woods would be a beacon.
I dragged Dominic through the doorway, past a heavy leather sofa, and let him slide down onto a wide, thick Persian rug in the center of the living room floor.
I collapsed beside him, flat on my back, my chest heaving, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs I thought my chest would crack.
For two minutes, the only sound in the dark cabin was the heavy, ragged sound of my own gasping breath, the rain dripping off the roof outside, and Atlas licking his paws near the door.
Then I heard a faint, wet rattle coming from Dominic’s chest.
I sat up instantly.
I reached out in the dark, my hands finding his neck. His pulse was erratic, fluttering like a trapped moth beneath my fingertips. His skin was clammy, turning dangerously cold.
“First aid,” I muttered to myself, scrambling to my feet. “He’s a mafia boss. He’s got to have first aid.”
I felt my way along the wooden walls, my hands brushing against heavy framed pictures, a stone fireplace, and finally a door leading into a small bathroom. I reached into my jeans pocket, pulled out my cracked smartphone, and turned on the flashlight feature.
The bright beam illuminated a sparkling, modern bathroom with slate tile floors.
I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink.
Inside, sitting neatly on the glass shelves, was not a bottle of aspirin and some Band-Aids.
It was a full military-grade trauma kit.
Sterile surgical gloves, rolls of Celox clotting gauze, suture kits sealed in plastic, scalpel handles with disposable blades, bags of IV saline solution with tubing, local anesthetics, and heavy-duty morphine auto-injectors.
My father’s hospice nurse had taught me how to manage IV lines and clean deep bedsores during his final six months at home. But this... this was field surgery.
I grabbed the entire black nylon trauma bag, pulled it off the shelf, and ran back into the living room.
I dropped to my knees beside Dominic, placing my flashlight on the coffee table so its beam hit his exposed chest.
I pulled out my box cutter, slid the blade out, and sliced his thousand-dollar white dress shirt straight down the middle, ripping the bloody silk away from his torso.
The sight made stomach turn violently.
His left ribs were a horrific mess. He had three distinct lacerations—deep, jagged stab wounds that had cut through the muscle tissue between his fifth and seventh ribs. The blood was dark, oozing steadily out over his pale skin. Below his collarbone, a deep, dark purple contusion indicated at least two broken ribs from a heavy blow.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, pulling a pair of sterile nitrile gloves onto my cold hands. “Okay, Claire. You’ve cleaned fish, you’ve bandaged Dad’s sores, you’ve cut up frozen chickens at the diner. It’s just tissue. It’s just blood.”
I opened a packet of Celox clotting gauze—a thick, white mesh designed to stop heavy arterial bleeding on battlefield casualties.
I looked at his face. His jaw was clenched, his eyes closed tightly.
“This is going to hurt,” I said, even though he couldn't hear me. “I’m sorry.”
I took the clotting gauze and pressed it directly into the deepest wound between his ribs.
Dominic’s entire body went rigid as an iron rod.
A guttural, terrifying scream ripped from his throat, echoing off the wooden rafters of the dark cabin. His eyes flew open, bright with pure, unadulterated agony, and his right hand shot out like a steel clamp, wrapping tightly around my neck.
His fingers squeezed. Air was instantly cut off from my windpipe.
Atlas let out a sharp bark, stepping forward.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. Dominic’s gray eye was wild, completely blind with pain and shock, looking at me as if I were one of the men who had tied him up in the alley.
“D-Dominic...” I choked out, grabbing his heavy wrist with both of my hands, trying to break his grip. “It’s... Claire... It’s Claire...”
His thumb pressed harder against my throat. Black spots danced across my vision.
“Dominic!” I wheezed, my fingernails digging into his skin. “Look at me!”
His eye focused.
Slowly, painfully, the madness of shock receded from his gaze. He looked at my wet dark hair, at my apron lying crumpled on the floor, at my small hands clawing at his wrist.
His fingers relaxed.
He dropped his hand, falling back onto the rug, gasping violently, his chest heaving as the clotting gauze burned into his torn flesh.
“You...” he rasped, his voice trembling. “You’re... crazy...”
“You’re choking the only paramedic you’ve got,” I choked out, rubbing my bruised neck, coughing roughly. “So shut up and let me do my job.”
I leaned back over him, using a roll of medical tape to secure the heavy pressure dressing over his ribs. I opened an auto-injector of morphine from the kit, removed the safety cap, and pressed it hard against his outer thigh through his trousers.
CLICK.
The mechanical spring deployed the needle.
Dominic let out a low shudder, his muscles slowly uncoiling as the powerful narcotic flooded his bloodstream. Within two minutes, his breathing slowed, his gray eye growing heavy and unfocused.
“Why... didn't you... leave me?” he murmured, his voice slurring heavily as the drug took hold.
I sat back on my heels, my hands covered in his blood, my body shaking with exhaustion.
I looked down at the feared mob boss of Rivergate, laying helpless on a Persian rug in the middle of nowhere.
“Because,” I whispered softly, pulling a thick wool blanket off the sofa and draping it over his broad shoulders, “if I left you, I’d have to go back to being the girl who lets her family walk all over her. And I think I’m done with that.”
Dominic looked up at me through dark, heavy eyelashes. A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched the corner of his lips before his eyes rolled back, and he drifted into a deep, drug-induced sleep.
I sat there on the cold floor beside him, listening to the rain beat against the cabin roof, until my phone vibrated again in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out.
The battery was at nine percent.
I unlocked the screen.
There were fourteen missed calls from my mother. Five from Caleb.
I opened the text thread with Caleb.
I didn't call him. I didn't write a long, emotional paragraph demanding to know why he had ruined my life.
I simply typed four words and hit send:
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Three seconds later, my phone screen flashed.
May you like
Caleb was calling.
I turned the phone completely off, tossed it onto the coffee table, and pulled Atlas onto the rug beside me. The massive dog rested his heavy head in my lap, and for the first time in twenty-seven years, I fell asleep in the dark, surrounded by danger, feeling entirely unashamed.
