Read Chapter 34: The Storm

The first slap of wind came sideways off the harbor, carrying salt and the smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet. Jack stood at the rail of the *Maggie Rose*, watching the sky turn the color of a fresh bruise to the south. Foley came up beside him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“That ain't a squall,” Foley said.

“No.” Jack squinted at the barometer mounted by the wheelhouse door. It had dropped three points since they'd weighed anchor. “That's a goddamn hurricane.”

The plan had been simple. Run the empty boat out to the exchange point, let Frank's boys think they were coming to meet Voss's ship, draw them into the open where Burke's federals would have no choice but to see what was happening. Let the law and the syndicate chew each other up. Jack and Foley would slip away in the dark, collect the hidden cargo from Ricci, and buy their protection money with whiskey that had never touched federal hands.

The sky had other ideas.

“We got to get back to the cove,” Foley said. “Get the cargo, get to harbor before she hits full.”

“The cove's got a shallow mouth. If she comes in from the southeast, we'll be pinned against the rocks.”

“Then where the hell do we go?”

Jack looked at the empty deck. The boat was bait, and the bait had become a liability. Frank's boats had peeled off an hour ago, running for shelter as the swell picked up. The federal cutter had turned north, heading for deeper water. Nobody was coming to the exchange point now. The trap had dissolved into the weather.

“We run for the sound,” Jack said. “There's a channel between the barrier islands. Water's shallow enough to ride out the wind if we anchor in the lee of the point.”

“That water's a graveyard in weather like this.”

“So is staying here. Move.”

They got the anchor up and the engine chugging as the first hard rain arrived, driven sideways like buckshot. The *Maggie Rose* was a solid boat, a converted fishing trawler with a deep keel and a heavy beam, but she was built for hauling cargo, not for fighting a hurricane. Every wave that slapped her bow sent a shudder through the deck plates that Jack felt in his teeth.

His side ached. The wound from Frank's knife had opened again during the scramble, and he could feel the warm seep of blood soaking through his shirt beneath his oilskin. He coughed and tasted copper. He spat over the rail and watched the red vanish into the gray chop.

By the time they reached the channel, the storm had found its voice. The wind screamed through the rigging like a living thing, and the rain came in sheets so thick Jack couldn't see the bow from the wheelhouse. Foley wrestled the wheel, muscles standing out on his forearms, jaw clamped tight.

“She's taking water!” Foley shouted over the wind.

Jack stumbled to the hatch and dropped below. There was six inches of seawater sloshing in the hold, rising fast. A seam had opened somewhere forward, old caulking giving way under the hammering of the waves. He found it—a split in the planking just above the waterline, opening and closing with each breath of the hull. He jammed a wad of canvas into the gap and braced it with a length of pipe, but it was a patch on a wound that needed stitches.

He climbed back up. Foley was fighting the wheel against a wave that had the boat broadside to the swell. The *Maggie Rose* rolled hard, tilted, hung there for a moment like she was deciding whether to come back or keep going down.

Then she righted herself, groaning like a dying animal.

“We got to beach her,” Jack said. “Now.”

“Beach her where? We're in the middle of the channel.”

“There's a sandbar about two hundred yards off the point. We run her up on that, she'll hold until the storm passes.”

“She'll break apart on a sandbar in this sea!”

“She'll break apart anywhere in this sea! At least on the bar we can walk away.”

Foley looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. He spun the wheel hard to port, and the boat staggered into the trough of a wave, riding it sideways toward the shallows. Jack could see the water changing color ahead, the deep gray of the channel giving way to the churned brown of the bar.

The boat hit hard. The bow rose, then slammed down, and Jack heard wood crack somewhere beneath them. The *Maggie Rose* shuddered, listed to starboard, and settled. Waves broke over the stern, but she held. She was stuck fast, wedged on the sand like a whale in the shallows.

Jack and Foley huddled in the wheelhouse as the storm raged around them. The wind howled, and the rain never stopped. Jack coughed again, and when he pulled his hand away from his mouth, it was red.

They rode it out through the night and into the gray pre-dawn. By the time the wind died to a hard gale and the rain let up enough to see, the *Maggie Rose* was a wreck. Her deck was torn, her wheelhouse glass had blown out, and she was taking water faster than the sandbar could hold her off. But they were alive.

Jack staggered onto the deck, looked at the ruin around them. The cove where Ricci and Voss's man waited with the cargo was five miles up the coast. He had no boat, no money, and no way to make the delivery Voss was expecting.

“What now?” Foley asked, his voice raw.

Jack looked at the sky. It was still churning, but the heart of the storm had moved on. He could see the sun trying to break through the clouds in the east.

“We walk,” he said.

---

The storm had done what Jack couldn't. When he reached the cove on foot, stumbling through the wreckage of the coastal road, he found the remains of the operation scattered across the beach. The smaller boat they'd used to stash the cargo was a pile of splinters against the rocks. Crates of whiskey were scattered everywhere, some broken, some still intact, saltwater soaking the labels.

But the liquor was the least of his problems. Ricci and Voss's man were gone. No bodies. No signs of a struggle beyond the storm's destruction. They'd taken what they could carry and run when the weather turned.

Jack stood in the rain-soaked wreckage and did the math. The cargo was half ruined. The Chicago deal was dead. Frank was still alive. His brother was still out there, somewhere. His wound was worse.

Foley came up behind him, breathing hard. “Ricci's tracks head south. He probably made for the rail line.”

“Let him go,” Jack said. “He doesn't matter.”

“Everything we had was on those boats.”

“No.” Jack turned away from the wreckage, started walking south. “Everything we had was in getting Frank to make a mistake. And the storm just gave him the same excuse to hide that it gave us.”

He walked faster, ignoring the pain in his side.

“If Frank thinks we're dead, he'll get sloppy. He'll come out of his hole to gloat. And when he does, I'll be waiting.”

The storm had taken his boats, his cargo, his money. But it had taken Frank's too. And desperation made men careless.

Jack was more desperate than Frank had ever been.