Read Chapter 33: The Last Voyage

The warehouse smelled of salt and diesel and the particular rot of wet rope. Elias Voss stood over a crate of Canadian whiskey with his coat open, a cigar burning between two fingers, and he talked about the sea like it was a ledger.

"One run," he said. "Fifty thousand cases through Halifax, down the coast, into the Sound. You've done smaller. You know the channels. My boats, my crews, my product—but your waters, your men, your timing."

Jack sat on an overturned barrel, his left hand pressed against his ribs where the bandage had gone stiff and brown. He'd stopped changing it two days ago. The wound had stopped weeping, which meant either it was closing or it was festering beneath the surface. He couldn't tell anymore. The fever came in waves, hot and cold, and he'd learned to hide the shiver by shifting his weight.

"You're asking me to lead a parade," Jack said. "Fifty thousand cases doesn't move quiet."

"No. It moves loud." Voss tapped ash onto the floor. "That's the point. Every cop from here to Boston knows the Capones move volume. They'll expect a cut. You make sure they get one. Generous. Upfront. The kind of number that makes a man forget what questions to ask."

Jack understood. The run wasn't just about the money—though God knew he needed it. It was about buying the silence that would let him move against Frank without the whole federal apparatus collapsing on his head. Burke was sniffing around. A bribe hadn't worked. But a demonstration of power, a show of force that made the local precincts rich overnight—that would buy a different kind of protection. The kind that looked the other way.

"The money's not enough to cover everything," Jack said. "Them. Us. The O'Malleys are paid, but my reserve's dry. I've got nothing left if Frank hits us before the boats come back."

Voss smiled. It wasn't a warm expression. "Then don't get hit. That's the trick, isn't it? My employer doesn't invest in losers, Malloy. He invested in you because you win. So win."

The plan was simple on paper. Three boats. Two as decoys, moving openly down the coast with enough product to look like the prize. The third, smaller, hugging the shallows, carrying the real cargo worth enough to buy a small army. They'd run at night, using the fishing schedules as cover, and Coleman's contact in the harbormaster's office would make sure the Coast Guard patrols had engine trouble until dawn.

Jack had done runs like this before. Smaller. Tighter. He knew the water between Halifax and the Red Hook piers the way he knew the scars on his own hands.

He didn't tell Voss that Frank would be watching. That Frank had eyes everywhere, and that a run this big was exactly the kind of bait his brother would want to snap.

---

They left at dusk.

The sky was the color of a bruise, purple and yellow at the edges, and the wind carried the smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet. Jack stood at the helm of the smallest boat—a forty-footer called the *Marjorie*, named after some captain's dead mother—with Foley at his side and two of Voss's men below deck with the cargo. The decoys had gone out an hour earlier, running bright and loud, visible from the piers.

Jack's boat moved dark. No running lights. The engine tuned low.

Foley watched the horizon behind them. "We've got company."

Jack didn't turn. He'd felt it—that prickle at the back of his neck that came from years of knowing when something was wrong. "How many?"

"Two. Maybe three. Running dark like us."

Of course. Frank had learned. He'd stopped sending his loud muscle and started sending men who knew how to wait.

Jack's jaw tightened. The fever made his thoughts slow and syrupy, but underneath it, a cold clarity had settled in. He'd known this run would draw attention. What he hadn't expected—what he should have expected—was that Frank would be smart enough to shadow without engaging.

"They're waiting for the exchange," Foley said. "They'll hit us when we're loaded down and slow."

"No." Jack shook his head. "They'll hit us when we're coasting out. When we think we're safe and the product's on board. When we've got nowhere to run and a hull full of whiskey that can't take a bullet."

Foley was quiet for a moment. Then: "So we don't go."

"We go." Jack turned the wheel slightly, adjusting their bearing toward a stretch of water he knew well—a shoal field where the channel narrowed between rocks that could tear a hull open if you didn't know the path. "But we change the plan."

He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded map, worn at the creases, marked with his own hand. He'd drawn it years ago, when he was still a kid working the docks, memorizing every hazard and shortcut between New York and Maine.

"There's a cove about two miles north of the exchange point," he said. "Hidden from the channel. Big enough for our boat, not for theirs. We bring the cargo in there, stash it, and leave the *Marjorie* anchored as bait."

Foley stared at him. "You want to give them the boat?"

"I want to give them the *idea* of the boat." Jack's voice was rough, strained. The fever was climbing. He could feel it in his bones. "They think they've caught us. They board, find a few cases, think we dumped the rest. Then we come at them from behind while they're celebrating."

"That's a risk."

"That's the play." Jack coughed, the sound wet and rattling, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looked at his palm, there was a thin smear of red.

Foley saw it. His face went hard. "You need a doctor, Jack."

"After. One thing at a time."

---

They made the cove in the dark hours before midnight.

The water was calm here, sheltered by granite walls that rose thirty feet on either side. Jack cut the engine and let the boat drift, the hull scraping softly against a sandbar he'd marked on the map. The cargo—thirty crates, each one worth more than Jack had made in a year on the docks—was unloaded by hand, passed from man to man in a chain that left them all sweating and silent.

When the last crate was hidden beneath a tarp in the rocks, Jack turned to Voss's men.

"You two stay with the cargo. Foley, you're with me."

Voss's senior man—a heavyset Italian named Ricci—shook his head. "We came for the delivery. The delivery happens at the point."

"Change of plans." Jack's hand went to the pistol at his belt. He didn't draw it. He didn't need to. The look in his eyes was enough. "The delivery happens tomorrow, after Frank's men are dead in the water. You want to argue, argue with the sharks."

Ricci held his gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded once, a tight motion, and turned toward the crates.

Jack climbed back aboard the *Marjorie*, Foley close behind. The boat was lighter now, riding higher in the water. He started the engine, kept it low, and guided them back out of the cove toward the open channel.

"They'll see us coming," Foley said.

"That's the point."

Jack set a course for the exchange point, slow and steady, a target waiting to be shot. Behind them, through the darkness, he could just make out the shapes of Frank's boats, patient and silent, following the bait.

The wound in his side had gone from a dull ache to a sharp, stabbing pain that made him want to double over. He didn't. He held the wheel and watched the horizon and waited for the moment when the trap would spring shut.

But as they rounded the point and the exchange site came into view, Jack saw something that made his blood run cold.

There, anchored in the open water, was a third boat. Bigger than Frank's. Federal markings on the hull. A searchlight sweeping slow across the surface.

Burke.

The agent had found them.

And behind them, Frank's boats were closing in.