Chapter 5 - Ash on the Flour Sacks
The morning sun had barely cleared the rusted cranes of the commercial fish docks when Delphine Doyle turned on the exhaust fan above the great brick ovens of the Harbor Crust Bakery.
The warm, sweet scent of yeast, browned butter, and rye flour filled the narrow kitchen, pushing back the damp chill of the harbor.
Delphine was nineteen years old, with the same gray-green eyes as her older sister, but her frame was slight and fragile from years of managing brittle juvenile diabetes.
She wiped a smudge of white flour from her cheek with the back of her forearm and checked the brass clock on the wall.
Five-forty-five.
Marin’s shift ended at five-fifteen.
Her sister had never once been late without sending a three-word text message: Still on route.
Delphine picked up her phone from the flour bin, but the screen was completely blank.
No messages.
No calls.
She walked to the front of the shop and flipped the wooden sign on the glass door from CLOSED to OPEN.
Through the fogged glass, she noticed a large orange delivery van parked haphazardly across the loading zone across the street.
It was Marin’s company vehicle.
Delphine smiled with relief and unlocked the deadbolt, expecting her sister to come hurrying through the door with two paper cups of cheap diner coffee.
The front door did not open.
Instead, the heavy wooden delivery door in the rear alley rattled violently against its frame.
Delphine hurried back to the kitchen, wiping her hands on her striped linen apron.
“Marin?” she called out, reaching for the iron slide bolt on the delivery entrance.
“You forgot your key again, didn't you?”
She threw the bolt back and pulled the heavy door open.
It was not Marin.
Three men in dark canvas coats and heavy work boots stood crowded into the narrow brick alcove.
The man in the center was thin and sharp-featured, with a cold, dead look in his small eyes and a gray woolen cap pulled low over his brow.
Kroll stepped across the threshold before Delphine could take half a step backward.
His gloved hand caught the edge of the door and shoved it hard against the brick wall.
“Delphine Doyle?” Kroll asked, his voice smooth and conversational, like an inspector checking a water meter.
Delphine stumbled back against the heavy wooden prep table, knocking a bowl of proofed dough onto the tile floor.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice trembling as her eyes darted toward the kitchen telephone on the wall.
“Where is my sister?”
The two larger men behind Kroll stepped inside and shut the heavy oak door behind them, throwing the iron latch into place.
The smell of raw flour and cinnamon was suddenly overwhelmed by the stench of stale cigarettes and damp harbor mud.
“Your sister had a little accident during her deliveries this morning,” Kroll said, pulling a pair of heavy zip-ties from his coat pocket.
“She picked up a package she wasn’t supposed to touch.”
“Now we need you to come with us so we can all have a quiet conversation about where she took it.”
Delphine grabbed a heavy steel rolling pin from the marble slab and held it before her with both shaking hands.
“Get out of my shop,” she said, her voice rising into a sharp, terrified cry.
“Get out or I’ll scream!”
One of the larger men chuckled, stepping forward with his heavy arms spread wide to pin her against the dough mixer.
Suddenly, the reinforced glass pane in the upper half of the delivery door exploded inward in a shower of glittering shards.
A heavy iron tire iron crashed through the frame, followed instantly by a booted foot that kicked the remaining wooden panel off its hinges.
The oak door burst inward with the force of an artillery shell, striking the closest thug across the temple and throwing his two-hundred-pound frame onto the flour-dusted floor.
Marin Doyle came through the shattered entryway like an avenging specter, her eyes burning with pure, murderous fury.
She was clutching an eighteen-inch steel crowbar she had ripped from the clinic’s maintenance closet.
Before Kroll could clear his firearm from his waistband, Marin drove the flat edge of the steel bar into the collarbone of the second attacker.
The bone snapped with a sickening crunch.
The man shrieked in agony, dropping to his knees among the spilled sacks of unbleached flour.
Kroll spun around, his hand clawing at his holster, his face twisting into panic.
“You!” Kroll screamed, finally freeing the black semi-automatic pistol.
He raised the barrel directly toward Marin’s chest.
He never got the chance to pull the trigger.
Julian Ashworth entered the kitchen directly behind her.
Despite the white surgical bandages binding his ribs and the bullet wound leaking fresh crimson through his torn coat, he moved with the lethal, terrifying efficiency of a trained predator.
Julian’s left hand struck Kroll’s wrist with blinding speed, knocking the muzzle of the pistol toward the ceiling just as the gun discharged.
The deafening report shattered the bakery’s display cases, sending shards of glass and warm pastries flying across the room.
In the same fluid motion, Julian drove the heel of his palm upward into Kroll’s nose.
The cartilage shattered instantly, driving Kroll backward into the massive industrial dough mixer with a wet, bone-crushing impact.
Kroll slumped over the steel bowl, unconscious before his body hit the floor.
Delphine stood pressed against the wall, her rolling pin falling from her numb fingers, her face white with absolute shock.
She stared at the bleeding, six-foot-two stranger standing in the middle of her destroyed kitchen.
Then her eyes shifted to Marin, who was standing over the second groaning thug with the crowbar raised, her chest heaving and her knuckles white with rage.
“Marin…” Delphine whispered, tears finally breaking across her flour-dusted cheeks.
“What… what have you done?”
Marin lowered the crowbar, stepped over the unconscious men, and pulled her trembling younger sister into a tight, desperate embrace.
“It’s over, Del,” Marin whispered into her sister’s hair, her voice breaking for the first time that morning.
“You’re safe now.”
“She isn't safe,” Julian Ashworth said, his deep voice cutting through the quiet room like an iron blade.
He was leaning against the prep table, pressing a blood-stained linen towel against his freshly torn chest sutures.
“Vance will have two more teams at this bakery within twenty minutes.”
“If we stay in this city, all three of us will be dead before the sun reaches the noon mark.”
Delphine pulled back from her sister, her eyes wide with terror as she looked from Marin to the wounded executive.
“Who is he, Marin?” Delphine cried, her voice trembling.
Marin looked down at the unconscious men on the floor, then turned to meet Julian Ashworth’s dark, unwavering gaze.
May you like
“He’s the only man who can finish the war that started two years ago,” Marin said quietly.
“And right now, we have to run.”
