Chapter 2 - The Fire in the Bait Shed
The engine of Silas Cade’s custom black Suburban rumbled to life like a caged predator waking from a deep sleep.
Nora shoved the massive brindle mastiff into the backseat, its heavy paws scratching against the leather upholstery, while the black mastiff scrambled in right behind it. Silas sat in the front passenger seat, his heavy wool coat soaked and stiff with frozen salt, his breath coming in shallow, clicking gasps that sounded like dry leaves scraping over pavement.
He hadn’t looked at the vehicle idling near the pier once.
He didn’t need to. In Ironwood Bay, everyone knew which engines belonged to which cowards.
"Drive," Silas rasped, his voice scraping against his throat like gravel in a tin can.
"My car is parked three blocks up," Nora said, her hands still trembling from the cold and the adrenaline. She wiped her paring knife on her jeans, sliding the small, lemon-stained blade back into her apron pocket. "I’m not leaving my Honda in the middle of the road."
Silas turned his head slowly. The movement cost him; she could see the white flash of pain tightening the skin around his dark eyes.
"Your Honda won’t survive the night anyway," he said flatly. "The fuel line is cracked. Drive this."
Nora froze, her hand hovering over the door handle. "How do you know what’s wrong with my car?"
"I own the insurance agency, the towing yard, and the auto parts distributor in this county, Nora," he said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on her arms stand up. "I know the compression ratio of every engine from here to Bangor. Drive."
She didn't argue. She climbed behind the wheel of the Suburban, the heavy leather smelling faintly of expensive cologne, gun oil, and wet dog.
As she shifted into drive and pulled away from the dark water of the harbor, the vehicle with the phone recording them flashed its high beams once, mocking them, before tearing off up the coastal road toward the hills.
"They're going to post that video by morning," Nora said, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Half the town is going to know Silas Cade was tied up like a Christmas ham. What happens to you then?"
"What happens to them is the more interesting question," Silas muttered, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. "Take the old logging road behind the fish hatchery. Don't go to the hospital. There’s a doctor in Eastport who doesn't ask questions unless someone is missing a head."
"We're not going to Eastport," Nora said, her voice hardening. "You made a promise back on the ice. You said you’d tell me about my father."
Silas didn't open his eyes. "Drive to the hatchery, Nora. Then we talk."
Twenty minutes later, the Suburban bounced down an unpaved timber track, its heavy four-wheel drive chewing through frozen ruts until it stopped before an isolated, cedar-shingled cabin tucked deep into the pine trees. No lights burned in the windows. No smoke rose from the chimney.
It was a safehouse. A place where men who owned the coast went to bleed in private.
Silas forced himself out of the truck, leaning heavily against the passenger door before finding his balance. The two mastiffs bounded out ahead of him, sniffing the dark tree line, their deep chests rumbling with low alerts.
Nora followed him up the wooden steps, her heart hammering against her ribs. The cold inside the cabin was immediate, but Silas moved with practiced efficiency, throwing a match into a prepared hearth until dry birch logs caught and roared into life.
He shed his ruined black coat, revealing a dark turtleneck torn at the shoulder and smeared with dark, dried blood. He walked over to a small mahogany cabinet, poured three fingers of dark amber whiskey into a heavy glass, and drank it in one long, burning swallow.
Then, he turned to look at her.
"Your father’s boat didn't catch fire by accident," Silas said, skipping all pleasantries.
Nora stood by the heavy oak door, her hands clenched inside her pockets. "I know it didn't. I found his watch."
"Caleb Wick was an honest man," Silas continued, his voice steadying as the alcohol warmed his blood. "Too honest for this bay. Three years ago, the federal government wanted to dredge the outer channel for a container port. Millions of dollars in federal subsidies, drug transshipment routes, and environmental waivers."
"What does that have to do with my father?"
"Caleb had the charts," Silas said, stepping closer. The firelight flickered across the hard planes of his face, casting deep shadows under his cheekbones. "He mapped every reef, every deep-water trench, and every illegal dump site from Portland to the Canadian border. He knew where the cartels dropped their cargo, and he knew which politicians were taking the bribes to look the other way."
Silas paused, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
"They offered him half a million dollars to falsify the environmental impact survey. He told them to go to hell. So, they came to his bait shed at midnight to convince him otherwise."
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"You were there," Nora whispered, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. "I saw you through the window. Three men in coats. One was you."
"Yes," Silas said, without flinching. "I was there. But I wasn't there to kill him, Nora. I was there to save him."
