Chapter 12 - The Saltwater Route
The freezing spray of Narragansett Bay tasted like rusted copper against Tessa’s lips.
It was four in the afternoon, and the sky had turned the color of bruised slate, heavy with the promise of early snow.
She had not taken the highway, nor had she approached the regional rail depots where the Providence transit police were already stopping lone travelers.
Instead, she had followed the abandoned rail line down toward the commercial fishing piers on the south side of the harbor.
She knew the coastal maritime trade because she had reconciled the fuel invoices for the Voss family’s dummy shell companies for four years.
Every illegal shipment entering Boston had a secondary offloading vector along the Rhode Island sound.
She walked down the rotting wooden planks of Pier Nine until she reached a battered fifty-foot lobster boat named The Iron Maiden.
A barrel-chested man in yellow oilskin overalls was securing nylon docking lines to an iron cleat.
His face was crosshatched with broken veins from forty years of salt air and cheap whiskey.
Frankie? Tessa called out, her hood drawn forward against the freezing wind.
The fisherman froze, one calloused hand resting on the heavy rope as his dark eyes locked onto her face.
He stared at her for five long seconds before dropping his eyes to her scuffed boots and the thin canvas duffle.
Mrs. Voss, Frankie muttered, his voice sounding like gravel being churned in an iron cement mixer.
You shouldn't be within twenty miles of this dock.
Conrad’s harbor masters have been calling every boat captain from Newport to Gloucester since noon.
They’re offering fifty grand just for a verified location ping.
Tessa stepped closer to the gunwale of the boat, pulling an unadorned white envelope from the lining of her wool parka.
Inside was two thousand dollars in clean, non-sequential fifty-dollar bills—her final reserve of paper currency.
I don't need a ride to Boston, Frankie, she said evenly.
I need you to run me across the sound to Greenport on Long Island before the tide turns.
Frankie didn't reach for the envelope immediately.
He spat a mouthful of dark chewing tobacco into the dirty green water between the hull and the pilings.
Conrad Voss will have my boat burned to the waterline if he finds out I carried you, girl.
Conrad Voss won't have an empire by tomorrow morning, Frankie, Tessa said, her voice completely devoid of hesitation.
The Morettis hit his crew at The Blue Anchor two hours ago; the state police are raiding his shell offices in Quincy as we speak.
If you take this envelope, you have fuel money for the winter and you’re in New York waters before midnight.
If you call his dispatchers, you’ll be handing your coordinates to a dead man whose captains are already tearing each other apart for scraps.
Frankie wiped his mouth with the back of a greasy wool glove, staring at the envelope in her pale fingers.
He knew the rules of the waterfront better than anyone.
When a syndicate boss started losing territory in daylight, the wise men made quiet deals with the survivors.
Get below deck, Frankie growled, snatching the envelope and stuffing it beneath his oilskin bib.
Don't turn on any cabin lamps, don't show your face through the portlights, and if the Coast Guard patrols hail us, you stay inside the fish hold under the ice bins.
Tessa climbed over the wooden railing and slipped down the narrow companionway ladder into the dark, engine-scented belly of the boat.
The diesel engine coughed to life with a violent, bone-rattling shudder that vibrated through her ribs.
The hull pulled away from the wooden pilings, churning gray-green foam as The Iron Maiden cleared the breakwater into open water.
Tessa sat on an overturned wooden crate in the dark engine room, wrapping her arms around her knees to stop the shivering.
The motion of the boat was rough, tossing violently as the small vessel met the heavy swells of the Atlantic outer banks.
Every roll of the hull made the rusty steel bulkheads groan under the hydrostatic pressure.
She closed her eyes, letting the rhythmic roar of the diesel pistons drown out the echoes of Conrad’s frantic voice in the diner.
I pulled you out of the gutter! I put diamonds on your hands!
He had honestly believed that those things constituted love, devotion, and protection.
He had never understood that the diamonds were just chains that caught the light, and the mansion was just an elaborate holding cell.
She opened her canvas bag, pulled out her mother’s peeling photograph, and held it against her chest in the darkness.
Her mother had died in a public ward, coughing her life out while the hospital administrators calculated the cost of her oxygen tank.
Tessa had sworn on that linoleum hospital floor that she would never let any man control the air she breathed.
She had broken that promise for five years because Conrad’s velvet cage had seemed softer than the cold concrete of South Boston.
Now, as the salt spray hammered the wooden deck above her head, she felt the final remnants of that shame wash away into the dark ocean.
May you like
She was not Conrad’s runaway prize.
She was the executioner of his vanity, and she was carrying the blade straight into the heart of Manhattan.
