Read Chapter 25: The Boiler Room Standoff

The boiler room swallowed sound and spat it back as heat. Iron catwalks rattled underfoot, and the great furnaces belched orange light that threw long, dancing shadows across the grime-caked deck plates. Jack pressed Margaret behind him as they rounded the last bank of boilers, their breath coming in hard, shallow gasps.

Vance was already there, at the far end of the catwalk, his fine coat streaked with coal dust and his hand clamped around a satchel—the registry pages, no doubt, stuffed inside. He saw them at the same instant they saw him, and his mouth curled into something between a smile and a snarl.

“Persistent as rats, aren’t you?” Vance called, taking a step back.

“And you’re cornered like one,” Jack shot back. “Nowhere left to run but the furnaces, and those aren’t forgiving.”

Vance’s hand went to his pocket, but before he could draw, a voice came from the shadows above them—cool, measured, and utterly without mercy.

“Nobody moves.”

Moran stepped out from behind a coal bunker on the upper catwalk, a Webley revolver in his fist, the barrel trained not on Jack but on Vance. Behind him, two of his bruisers fanned out, blocking the ladder access. Moran’s face was a map of old violence, scars and hard angles, and his eyes were flat as slate.

“You’ve made this very difficult, O’Leary,” Moran said, not looking at Jack. “All this running. All this hiding. I don’t care for difficult.”

“Then let us pass and we’ll call it even,” Jack said, keeping his voice steady even as his heart hammered against his ribs.

Moran laughed, a dry, ugly sound. “Even? You stole from my employer. You’ve cost him money, time, and a great deal of patience. Even is a word for men who settle debts. You’re going to pay yours in another currency.” He gestured with the revolver toward the catwalk between them. “Here’s the arrangement. Mr. Vance has something I want. Mr. O’Leary has something I want. The easiest way to get both is to let you gentlemen settle your differences in the old fashion.”

“You want us to fight for your amusement?” Margaret’s voice was sharp with contempt.

Moran’s eyes flickered to her for the briefest moment. “I want to see who survives. The winner gives me the list and the registry, and maybe I let him live long enough to find a lifeboat. The loser—” he shrugged, “—the loser feeds the fish.”

Vance’s eyes darted to Jack, calculating. Jack could see the gears turning behind those cold, banked eyes—Vance was a man who had never won a fair fight in his life, not when he could cheat, bribe, or betray his way out instead. But here, with Moran’s gun on him and nowhere to run, the arithmetic was brutal.

“The list is compromised,” Vance said, trying to find a thread to pull. “He’s already given it to the matron. She’s not here. You’re chasing a ghost.”

“The cipher is in his head,” Moran replied, jerking his chin at Jack. “And the registry is in your satchel. So I’ll have both before I judge the victor.” He fired a shot into the deck plates at Vance’s feet, the ricochet screaming off into the dark. “Fight.”

Vance lunged first, driven by desperation and rage. He came at Jack low, shoulders down, trying to tackle him into the railing. Jack sidestepped, catching Vance’s coat and using his momentum to slam him into the boiler housing. Metal rang with the impact, and Vance grunted, his grip on the satchel loosening for a heartbeat.

Jack dove for it.

Vance’s boot caught him square in the ribs, and Jack went down hard, the wind knocked out of him. Parrish—Vance—was on him in an instant, fist swinging. Jack took the first blow on the cheekbone, tasted blood, and rolled, bringing his knee up into Vance’s gut. Vance doubled over, and Jack scrambled to his feet, grabbing a fistful of Vance’s collar and hauling him up.

“You killed Anna Jackson,” Jack hissed, inches from Vance’s face. “You murdered her for a ledger.”

Vance’s laugh was wet and broken. “I did what I was paid to do. She was a liability. So was your sister’s friend. They all were.”

From the shadows, Margaret made a sound—small, wounded. Jack didn’t have time to look at her. Vance twisted, driving an elbow into Jack’s jaw, and the two of them crashed to the deck, rolling toward the edge of the catwalk. Below them, the furnaces roared, their iron mouths gaping with heat.

Moran watched, still as a statue, the revolver trained on the pair. His men had moved closer, boxing them in.

“Enough,” Moran said after a moment. “You’re both worthless. Kill him, Vance, or I’ll kill you.”

Vance’s hands found Jack’s throat. Jack clawed at his wrists, his vision darkening at the edges, the heat of the furnace searing his back through his coat. He heard Margaret scream something, and then—

The boiler gave a sound like a whale sighing before it dies. A low, groaning hiss that built into a shriek of escaping steam. Moran’s eyes went wide, and he turned, shouting a warning to his men, but it was already too late.

The iron door of the nearest furnace blew outward in a storm of fire and shrapnel. The blast threw Jack and Vance apart, hurling them in opposite directions. Jack slammed into a pipe and felt something crack in his ribs. The world went white and red, and then the noise was everywhere—a deafening roar of ruptured metal and roaring steam.

Moran’s men were gone, swallowed by the eruption. Moran himself stood outlined against the inferno for one frozen moment, his revolver raised, before a chunk of falling ironwork struck him from above. He crumpled without a sound, the gun clattering away into the darkness.

“Jack!” Margaret’s voice cut through the chaos. She was on her knees, reaching for him. He pushed himself up, coughing black smoke, every breath a knife.

Vance was beside the ruined furnace, struggling to his feet, clutching his satchel to his chest. Blood ran from a gash across his forehead, dripping into his eyes, but he was alive. He looked at Jack with a hatred that burned hotter than the fire behind him.

“We’re not done,” Vance said, his voice barely audible over the hiss of escaping steam. Then he turned and disappeared into the smoke, limping toward the far ladder.

Jack tried to go after him, but his legs buckled. Margaret caught him before he hit the deck.

“Let him go,” she said, her voice fierce. “We can’t catch him like this.”

“He has the pages,” Jack rasped. “He’ll get to a boat and we’ll lose him forever.”

“He’s wounded. He’ll bleed.” She looked past him, at the gushing rent in the boiler, at the water now beginning to sheet across the deck plates. The explosion had done more than kill Moran. Somewhere below, the hull had given way. Cold Atlantic water was beginning to pour in, flooding the compartment floor with a rising, hungry tide.

“Listen to that,” Jack said, coughing again. “We don’t have long before this whole room is under. And if Bell set his charge for midnight with the phosphorus in the same hold—” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

Margaret’s face was pale and streaked with soot. She reached into her coat and pulled out the ledger case, its brass corners still gleaming in the firelight. “Then we stop Vance before he reaches the boats, and we stop Bell before midnight.” She looked at Jack with a determination that cut through the smoke and the chaos. “One of us has to survive that. We’re not going to let it be Vance.”

Jack pulled the brass key from his pocket—Adelaide’s key, the one to the Boston evidence locker. He pressed it into Margaret’s palm. “If I don’t make it off this ship, you see that key delivered to the authorities. The cipher is in my head. If I die, I’ll write it on the back of my hand in my own blood if I have to. You get that ledger and you bury Vance’s employer so deep he never sees daylight again.”

Margaret closed her fingers around the key, her eyes bright with something that might have been fear or fury. “You’re not dying tonight, Jack. I didn’t drag you out of that lifeboat to watch you sink.”

She helped him to his feet, and together, they limped toward the ladder that Vance had taken, the water rising fast around their ankles, the heat of the shattered boiler at their backs, and the clock ticking toward midnight somewhere above them.