Chapter 17 - The Red Bank Safe Haven
The Red Bank marina at seven-thirty in the morning was a ghost town of closed bait shops, shuttered boat rentals, and empty wooden docks wrapped in heavy, swirling coils of river fog.
Dominic maneuvered the small aluminum skiff gently against the mossy wooden pilings of an abandoned boat slip tucked behind a derelict commercial fish house. The motor sputtered and died, leaving us floating in a pocket of profound, eerie quiet broken only by the distant clatter of an early morning commuter train crossing the iron trestle bridge upstream.
"Can we stay here?" I asked, my voice barely audible as I pulled the damp wool blanket tighter around my shoulders, my fingers stiff and aching from the cold. "Vance and Sterling are suspended, but the federal marshal service doesn't just pack up and go home because a news ticker flashed a headline."
Dominic stepped out onto the slick wooden dock, securing the bow line with a practiced sailor's knot before turning back to offer me a steady, calloused hand.
"Vance is done," Dominic said, helping me climb up onto the splintered planks of the pier. "When a federal prosecutor's office gets caught looting its own seized-assets escrow account, the Department of Justice doesn't send out search parties—they send out internal affairs investigators to sweep the wreckage clean before Congress starts asking public questions. Sterling is too busy shredding his own filing cabinets in Washington right now to worry about a couple of fugitives in New Jersey."
We slipped off the open dock into the shadows of the abandoned fish house, its cavernous interior smelling of old brine, rotting cedar crates, and rusted fish-cleaning tables. In the far corner sat a battered, mud-splattered black sedan with New York license plates—unremarkable, dusty, and completely invisible from the main road.
Dominic pulled a spare key from behind the sun visor through a cracked driver’s window, popping the locks with a dull mechanical click.
"Get in the passenger side, Casey," he said, opening the door. "We’re heading north toward the Hudson Valley. I have a friend up near Beacon—an old university professor who owes me a favor from thirty years ago. No federal marshals, no cartel ledgers, just a quiet place where you can figure out what you're going to tell your thesis committee."
I slid into the passenger seat of the sedan, sinking gratefully into the worn leather upholstery as Dominic fired up the engine with a low, rumbling purr. The heater kicked on immediately, washing a wave of glorious, dry warmth over my frozen legs and stinging hands.
As we pulled out of the marina parking lot onto the empty two-lane highway heading away from the coast, my phone buzzed loudly in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out, half-expecting another federal alert or an urgent email from Columbia University's department chair. Instead, it was an automated text notification from the St. Jude Medical Center billing portal.
Patient Mary Miller: Second-stage dialysis cycle completed successfully. Vital signs stable. Transfer clearance for outpatient recovery confirmed for Friday morning.
A heavy, suffocating weight I didn't even realize I was carrying lifted completely off my chest. I let out a long, ragged sigh, resting my head back against the headrest and closing my eyes as the New Jersey countryside blurred past the window in a wash of green and grey.
Dominic glanced over at me, keeping his eyes on the winding road ahead. "Feeling better?"
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"My mother is safe," I said softly, opening my eyes to look at him. "And my dissertation is officially ruined. I'd say that's a net neutral."
Dominic let out a low, gravelly chuckle. "An academic career can always be rebuilt, Casey. But a mind like yours—one that can reverse-engineer a federal mafia shakedown using nineteenth-century maritime protocol syntax—belongs somewhere a lot more dangerous than a Columbia seminar room."
