Read Chapter 19: The Locket's Owner

The knock came at four in the morning, three quick raps against the door of the captain's cabin Elias had given him. Jack was awake before the second one landed, his hand already on the Colt he kept beneath the pillow.

"It's Molly's brother," came a voice he didn't recognize. "She's gone."

Jack threw the door open. A kid stood there—fifteen, maybe sixteen, soaked through with harbor fog, his cap wringing wet in his hands. He had Molly's eyes. The same pale green, the same stubborn set to his jaw.

"Tommy," Jack said. "Come in."

The kid shook his head, throat working. "They took her from the fish market. Two men, big fellas. Said if I went to the police, they'd kill her. Said you'd know who to see."

Jack's chest went cold. He reached for his coat, then stopped. "Did they leave anything? A note, a message?"

Tommy's hand went to his pocket. He pulled out a small chain of silver, delicate, with something dangling from it. He held it out, and Jack didn't need the light to know what it was. The locket. The one Molly had pressed into his palm three nights ago in the back room of the oyster bar, warm from her skin.

"For luck," she'd said. "And for remembering what you're fighting for."

He'd put it in his coat pocket, next to his heart. He'd taken it out to look at it a dozen times since. But two nights ago, when he'd changed into the dry clothes Elias had lent him after the storm, he'd left the coat hanging on a peg in the boathouse.

And someone had found it.

Jack took the locket. The chain was snapped clean, not broken—cut with a knife. He worked the clasp with his thumb. Inside was a tiny photograph of Molly and Tommy, squinting into the sun. And folded behind it, a slip of paper no bigger than his thumb.

He unfolded it. The handwriting was cramped, hurried.

*The old pier. Midnight. Come alone or she gets a swim in the harbor. — F.*

"Frank," Jack said. The name came out flat, dead.

Tommy's face crumpled. "You know who took her? You can get her back?"

Jack looked at the kid. Molly talked about Tommy like he was already a man, working the docks since he was twelve to keep the family fed after their father died. But standing here in the gray dawn, he was just a boy, scared out of his mind, looking to Jack for answers Jack didn't have.

"Yeah," Jack said. "I know who took her. And I'll get her back."

He sent Tommy home with instructions to stay there, to tell no one, not even their mother if he could manage it. Then he dressed in the dark, checked the Colt, and walked out to the headland where Elias was mending nets by the light of a kerosene lamp.

Elias took one look at Jack's face and set the net down. "Trouble."

"Frank's got Molly."

The old fisherman's jaw tightened. He'd lost two sons to the war. He knew what it meant when the men you loved were held in someone else's hands. "You want the boat?"

"No." Jack shook his head. "I need you to watch the cove. If I'm not back by morning, you get word to Gus Moran at the harbor."

Elias studied him. "You're going to walk into a trap."

"Probably."

"Then why?"

Jack turned the locket over in his palm. The silver caught the lamplight, warm against his skin. "Because she gave me this to remind me what I'm fighting for. And I've been so busy fighting Frank and Turner and the whole damn coast that I forgot the reason I started this in the first place."

He pocketed the locket. "I'll be back before sunrise. Have coffee on."

---

The old pier was a skeleton of rotted timber jutting into the harbor, abandoned since the war when a fire had gutted the warehouse at its head. Jack had used it twice himself, for offloads he didn't want tracked. It was a good spot for an ambush—one road in, water on three sides, nowhere to run.

He came in from the east, skirting the waterline, staying low behind the pilings of the burned-out warehouse. The moon was thin, half-hidden behind clouds, and the tide was running high enough to cover the sound of his boots on the wet sand.

He was fifty yards out when he saw the light. A single lantern, swinging from a hook on the pier's far end. And beneath it, two figures.

One was Frank.

The other was Molly. Her hands were bound behind her back, a strip of cloth over her mouth. Even in the dark, he could see the bruise rising on her cheekbone. Her eyes found his, and she shook her head, just once.

*Go,* she was saying. *It's a trap.*

Jack kept walking.

Frank stepped forward, hands spread in mock welcome. He looked older than Jack remembered, the lines around his eyes deeper, his suit rumpled. Laying low hadn't been kind to him. "Jack Malloy. My own baby brother. Back from the dead, coming to save his girl. It's like a penny novel."

"Let her go, Frank."

"Or what?" Frank's voice was light, almost amused. "You'll steal another truck? Sell my liquor back to me at a markup? You're a clever boy, Jackie. Always were. But clever only gets you so far when you don't have anything to lose."

"You're the one who's got nothing to lose. I've got a whole operation now. A channel the Coast Guard doesn't know exists. A partnership with Chicago." Jack let the words hang. "You're still running trucks down the same roads, paying off the same cops, fighting for scraps. I've outgrown you, Frank."

Something flickered in Frank's eyes. The amusement died. "You always did talk too much."

"I'm not here to talk." Jack took another step forward. "I'm here to take her home."

Frank laughed, and the sound was hollow. "You think I'm going to let you walk out of here? You humiliated me. You took everything I built and turned it into a joke. And now you've got Chicago sniffing around, ready to give you the whole coast on a silver platter." He shook his head. "No. This ends tonight. You're going to back off—leave the harbor, leave the cove, leave everything. Or she pays for your ambition."

Behind Frank, Jack saw movement. Two men slipping out of the shadows at the far end of the pier. He'd expected them. He'd counted Frank's crew—the ones he knew about, anyway.

"You're right," Jack said.

Frank blinked. "What?"

"I said you're right. I've been fighting you when I should've been building. I've lost men. I've lost cargo. I've lost sleep." Jack spread his hands. "Maybe you win. Maybe I back off. But first, let her go."

Frank's eyes narrowed, trying to read the play. "You're stalling."

"I'm not stalling. I'm offering." Jack reached into his coat, slow, and pulled out the locket. He held it up, and the lantern light caught the silver. "She gave me this. Said it was for luck. I figure she needs it more than I do right now."

He tossed it. It arced through the air, glinting, and Frank's eyes followed it instinctively. His men's eyes followed it. Molly's eyes followed it.

And in that half-second of distraction, Jack was already moving.

His hand closed around the Colt in his waistband. He fired twice, not at Frank, but at the men behind him—once, twice, the shots cracking flat over the water. The first man crumpled. The second staggered, grabbed his shoulder, and dropped his pistol.

Frank was already running, lunging toward Molly with a knife in his hand. Jack fired again, but Frank had her turned, using her as a shield. The bullet thudded into the rotten timber beside them.

"Back off or she dies!" Frank screamed.

Jack froze.

Molly's eyes met his. And in them, he saw something that made his chest ache. Not fear. Not anger. Something else entirely.

*Do what you have to do.*

Frank dragged her backward toward the end of the pier, where a motorboat was tied off. "This isn't over, Jackie. You want her back? You come and get her. But you'll come alone. Chicago doesn't care about you, brother. They care about what you can deliver. And when they find out you can't even protect your own girl—" He grinned. "Well. You know how these things go."

The boat's engine coughed to life. Frank shoved Molly into the hull and cast off, and the darkness swallowed them.

Jack stood at the end of the pier, the Colt smoking in his hand, the empty harbor stretching out before him.

The locket lay in the sand where it had fallen. He bent and picked it up. The chain was still snapped. But inside, the photograph of Molly and Tommy still smiled up at him.

He closed his fist around it and walked back toward the cove, the morning tide lapping at his heels.