Chapter 22 - A Friendly Hand, A Hidden Knife
Elias dropped behind the sedan’s open door, dragging his sidearm up toward the salt piles. "Sniper!" he barked into his shoulder mic. "Pier 44, north bulkhead! Shots fired!"
"Hold your fire, you idiot!" Arthur roared, throwing his arm out to shield his face from flying asphalt. His eyes never left Adeline. "He’s not trying to kill us! Look at the trajectory!"
Adeline didn't wait to inspect the angle. The moment the tire ruptured, she bolted sideways, ducking beneath the massive steel undercarriage of the gravel hopper. Her boots pounded against the frozen mud of the access road, her lungs burning as cold air clawed down her throat.
"Adeline! Stop!" Arthur’s voice boomed through the open pier, stripped of every trace of gentleness. "You run out into that street and you're an accessory to treason! Marcus was small time, Adeline! You have no idea what you're holding!"
Behind her, heavy footsteps gave chase. Elias was fast, younger and unburdened by four years of running on pure adrenaline and terror.
"Drop to your knees and put your hands behind your head!" Elias yelled, his boots crunching close.
A second rifle crack echoed across the water. A spark kicked up off the iron stanchion three inches from Elias’s boot, sending him tumbling hard into a stack of wooden pallets.
Adeline broke through the perimeter chain-link fence where the mesh had been peeled back from the concrete footing. She scrambled through the tear, the wire snagging the hem of her coat, ripping the fabric as she tumbled onto the cracked pavement of Terminal Street.
A pair of dim yellow halogen headlights flicked on fifty yards down the dark industrial corridor.
An unmarked, battered gray utility van lurched forward, its side door sliding open with a heavy metallic clatter before the wheels had even come to a complete stop.
"Get in!" a voice commanded from the shadows inside.
Adeline reached the sliding door, grabbed the recessed handle, and hauled herself inside as the van accelerated hard, throwing her against the corrugated metal wall. The side door slammed shut, cutting off the shouts from Pier 44 and the rising wail of incoming sirens in the distance.
The van took a violent turn onto Northern Avenue, tires squealing in the rain-slicked darkness.
Adeline sat on the floorboards, her back pressed against an empty tool rack, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her hand was tucked inside her inner coat pocket, her fingers clenched around the small titanium USB enclosure that contained the entirety of Boston’s political underworld.
In the dim light cast by the dashboard console, she looked at the driver.
He wore an old waterproof field jacket, dark jeans, and a faded ball cap pulled low over a weathered face. Across his right cheekbone ran a jagged, silvery surgical scar that pulled at the corner of his lip—a scar that hadn't been there the last time she had seen him standing in their father's kitchen.
"You took your time," the driver muttered, his eyes glued to the side mirrors as he navigated the narrow side streets cutting through South Boston.
Adeline felt the tears before she even realized she was crying. But along with the tears came a surge of white-hot, suffocating rage.
"Pull over," she said, her voice shaking violently.
"Addie, we've got three minutes before the state police broadcast the vehicle alert—"
"Pull this damn van over, Julian!" she screamed, lunging forward and slamming both palms against the dashboard. "Pull over right now!"
Julian’s jaw clenched. He glanced at the rear-view mirror, yanked the wheel hard to the right, and swung the van into the pitch-black alley behind an abandoned meatpacking warehouse. He cut the lights, threw the gear shift into park, and turned around in his seat.
For the first time in four years, brother and sister looked each other in the eye.
"You let me identify a dental mold," Adeline said, each word falling like lead. "You let me stand in an empty church in front of forty cops who whispered that my brother was a dirty cop who jumped off a bridge to avoid a grand jury. You let me marry Marcus."
Julian’s face didn't break. The boyish, easy-going brother she had grown up with had been hollowed out, replaced by a ghost with flint in his eyes.
"I didn't know you were going to marry him, Addie," Julian said quietly. "By the time I found out, Marcus had already wrapped his fingers around you. If I came back, they would have killed both of us."
"Who is 'they'?" Adeline demanded, holding up the metal drive. "Arthur Vance brought the marshals tonight! He arrested Marcus! He arrested Eleanor!"
"Arthur didn't arrest them to put them on trial," Julian said, his voice dropping into a chilling whisper. "Arthur arrested them because Eleanor tried to cut him out of the harbor contracts. Arthur Vance has been running the Irish and Italian kickbacks through the transit authority since before our father was on the force."
Julian reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a battered military-grade laptop, flipping open the screen.
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"Arthur didn't help you take Marcus down, Addie," Julian said, typing a rapid string of commands into the terminal. "He used you as a battering ram to clean his own house."
***
