Chapter 7 - The Trap at Pier 4
Thursday night arrived with a heavy, suffocating fog rolling in off Massachusetts Bay.
The air smelled of salt, wet soot, and freezing sludge. Commercial Street was completely deserted by eleven o'clock, the yellow streetlights casting long, distorted shadows through the thick white mist.
Mave walked out of the back door of the Copper Anchor at midnight sharp.
She did not wear her thin, worn coat. She wore a heavy black canvas jacket she had borrowed from Toby, her hands jammed deep into the pockets, her head down against the biting wind.
She walked slowly along the cobblestone sidewalk, her footsteps echoing loudly in the quiet night.
Behind her, hidden in the dense fog three hundred yards back, Colin and four armed men were moving silently through the dark alleyways, maintaining a perimeter that Vance’s scouts could not see.
Mave reached the abandoned entrance to Pier 4—a rusting iron gate surrounded by empty wooden shipping crates and broken pallets.
A low engine rumble sounded from the fog ahead.
A dark blue sedan cut its headlights and swung across the sidewalk, blocking her path entirely.
The doors flew open.
Jimmy Vance stepped out, flanked by three heavy-set men carrying thick iron pipes.
“Well, well,” Vance sneered, stepping onto the damp cobblestones. “Look who’s walking home all by her lonesome tonight. Where’s your bodyguard, sweetheart? Where’s Gallagher’s lapdog?”
Mave stopped five feet from his bumper. She did not run. She did not scream. She stood perfectly still, her hands resting inside her jacket pockets.
“He’s not coming, Vance,” she said, her voice calm and remarkably clear.
Vance laughed, waving his iron pipe lazily. “That’s right. Because Gallagher’s old. He’s soft. He doesn't have the stomach to protect his own property anymore.”
He stepped closer, reaching out his leather-gloved hand to grab her jacket collar.
“You’re coming with us, girl. We’re gonna take a little ride down to Providence, and we’re gonna see how much dock territory Declan Gallagher is willing to sign over to get his favorite waitress back—”
“I told you once,” Mave interrupted, her voice dropping into a chilling, absolute stillness. “I am nobody’s property.”
She pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket.
She was not holding a gun. She was holding an industrial foghorn—a high-decibel safety air horn she had taken from the Copper Anchor’s emergency maritime locker.
Mave pressed the trigger down hard.
A deafening, earth-shattering BLARE echoed across the harbor, tearing through the quiet night air with the force of an exploding shell.
Vance and his three men violently clapped their hands over their ears, stumbling backward in sheer, agonizing shock.
Before the sound could even fade into the fog, a massive dark shape leaped out from the bed of a parked pickup truck ten feet away.
Brutus hit Jimmy Vance like a cannonball.
The hundred-and-twenty-pound pitbull slammed his heavy chest directly into Vance’s sternum, sending the slick-haired gangster crashing backward onto the wet cobblestones with an explosive gasp of air. The iron pipe clattered harmlessly across the street.
Brutus stood directly over Vance’s chest, his massive jaws opening to display two rows of gleaming white teeth, letting out a roar that shook the very foundations of the pier gate.
Vance lay frozen on his back, his eyes bulging with sheer, paralyzing terror, his pants soaked with sea water and fear.
“Don't move,” Mave commanded quietly, stepping over the fallen iron pipe.
The three heavy-set men tried to scramble back toward their car, but before they could reach the doors, Colin and four armed union enforcers stepped out from the fog, their heavy handguns drawn and aimed directly at their chests.
“Hands on the hood,” Colin ordered flatly.
The three men instantly threw their hands onto the wet metal of the sedan, weeping with fear.
A heavy black Lincoln pulled up beside the curb.
The rear door opened, and Declan Gallagher stepped out into the freezing fog. He was dressed in his long black wool coat, his gray eyes sweeping over the scene with absolute, terrifying authority.
He walked past the three surrendered enforcers, past Colin, and stopped beside Mave.
He looked down at Jimmy Vance, who was weeping beneath Brutus’s dripping jaws.
“Get him up,” Declan said softly.
Colin grabbed Vance by his silk tie, dragging him to his feet and slamming him against the side of the car.
Declan walked up to Vance, stopping inches from his bleeding face.
“You came into my city,” Declan said, his voice dropping into a quiet, terrifying whisper that made Vance shiver uncontrollably. “You threatened my piers. And you laid your hands on a woman who belongs to no one but herself.”
Declan turned his head and looked at Mave.
“What should we do with him, Mave?” Declan asked quietly.
The entire pier went completely still. Colin, the armed enforcers, and the weeping gangsters all turned their heads to look at the night-shift waitress standing in her borrowed canvas jacket.
Mave looked at Jimmy Vance. She saw the pathetic, shivering reality of a man who had used cruelty to hide his absolute weakness.
“Take his car,” Mave said flatly. “Strip his expensive coat. And make him walk back to Providence in his underwear.”
Declan looked at her.
May you like
For the second time since he had met her, the ghost of a real, genuine smile touched the corners of his mouth.
“You heard her,” Declan commanded. “Strip him.”
