Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
GIDEON
T he air inside the bait shop clings like old smoke and sea rot—thick, stale, with a trace of rust that scrapes at the lungs. Paint peels from the walls in curling strips, and the exposed beams above sag under years of salt and silence. I stand in the center, arms crossed, my stance loose but loaded, like a spring coiled beneath still water. My eyes lock on the man tied to the chair in front of me, gaze steady and cold.
Chas Warren looks worse than he did a few hours ago. His skin’s gone waxy, sickly pale beneath a sheen of sweat, and his once-pristine polo shirt clings to his frame like damp tissue—wrinkled, stained, and darkened at the collar and underarms. The zip ties around his wrists bite deep, the skin there inflamed, swollen, bruising to a sickly purple. He shifts in his seat with the twitchy movements of a man trying not to unravel but failing, anyway. The longer he sits there, the more the carefully curated mask of calm peels away—his veneer of control cracking, piece by piece, like old paint blistering under a blowtorch. There’s desperation behind his eyes now, the kind that doesn’t just hint of guilt—it screams it.
I don’t speak at first. I don’t have to. The silence stretches between us, thick and deliberate, like smoke from a fire we haven’t fully extinguished. It winds through the bait shop’s rafters and seems to wrap around Chas’ already fraying nerves, smothering the illusion of control he clings to. With each passing second, an invisible wire tightens the tension, squeezing breath and bluster from the man in the chair until only sweat, twitching fingers, and crumbling pretense remain. He sits straighter, tries to blink away the unease—but I see it. The way his throat bobs. The way his jaw works overtime trying to bite back fear. Silence has done more damage than fists ever could.
Deacon leans against the opposite wall, flipping through a manila folder with the detached ease of a man who’s seen worse and expects no surprises. “Financials are all there,” he says, his tone dry. “Shell accounts, offshore wire transfers, and enough falsified documents to bury a grand jury. That marina property? Purchased through a dummy corporation that doesn’t even have a working phone number. The surf shop? Pressured with fake code violations until the owner caved. And Maggie’s bakery? That was on the Granger hit list—scheduled for acquisition under eminent domain until someone got bold with sabotage. Too bold. Left a trail.”
Chas doesn’t react. Not in any way most people would. But I catch the change—the faint tensing of his shoulders, the way his nostrils flare like he’s caught a scent he can’t outrun. It’s the reaction of a man who gambled on bravado and is just now realizing the pot he wagered on won’t save him. He tries to keep the rest of his body still, tries to hold his expression flat, but the micro-tells give him away. His fingers curl tighter, white-knuckled, and his gaze flickers—not in confidence, but in calculation. The kind of look a cornered animal gives right before it turns feral. The walls are closing in, and now he can feel the air thinning.
I step forward with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator closing in—measured, grounded, each step an unspoken warning. My boots thud softly against the worn wood floor, a rhythm that echoes like a countdown. Shoulders squared, spine straight, my entire presence narrows into something colder, harder. Controlled, yes. But barely. There’s heat simmering under the surface—something old and dangerous—and every inch I close between us presses that weight tighter into the room.
“You knew what you were doing when you took the contract,” I say, voice even. “You knew what the Grangers were planning. You targeted her because she wasn’t one of us. Because she was human.”
Chas’ eyes flick toward Maggie. She sits on an old wooden crate in the room’s corner, her arms folded, posture deceptively relaxed. But her stillness isn’t passive—it radiates quiet authority. Her expression’s unreadable, but her eyes pin him in place like a specimen under glass. She doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t need to. Her silence coils tight, made of judgment and steel. I see the way it lands—hard and sudden. Chas stiffens, like something heavy just slammed into his chest, like he can’t draw a full breath. It shakes him more than any threat I could’ve ever thrown his way.
He squirms in his seat, trying to find a new angle, but the zip ties hold fast, biting deeper into his swollen wrists. His jaw clenches so tight the muscles twitch under his skin, and a bead of sweat rolls down his temple. The veneer’s cracking—he knows it, and so do we.
“What’s the endgame, Chas? What kind of name is that for a wolf, anyway?” I ask. “Are the Grangers planning to buy the whole damn coastline? Burn anyone who gets in the way?”
Still, silence.
But it’s not the silence of defiance anymore—it’s thinner, reedy, the kind of quiet that comes when words can’t compete with the freight train of realization. Chas’ breathing changes, faster now, more ragged, like each inhale scrapes past a weight in his chest. His knee bounces once before it stills. His fingers twitch again, subtly, then more obviously, betraying the storm starting to churn beneath the remains of his brittle exterior. The crack isn’t just showing now—it’s spreading, webbing out from the center of his calm like a windshield spidering after the first hard impact.
He glances up—but not at me. At Maggie. And when his eyes land on her, the last mask he wears begins to buckle. Because she’s not afraid. Because she’s still standing. Because he wasn’t supposed to lose to someone like her.
Chas twitches—a subtle, involuntary jerk of muscle along his shoulder, like a man realizing the temperature of the room has changed but refusing to name the cold settling in. His eyes dart briefly toward the warped floorboards, jaw flexing hard, lips pinched into a tight line as if biting back the next stray thought. His knee bounces again, the motion aborted halfway through as though he remembers he’s being watched. But it’s too late. The tell has shown. He’s fraying, and the fray is beginning to burn.
The twitch isn’t much—a flick of his fingers, a flex of his bound wrists against the zip ties that hold him—but I see it. Not just defiance anymore. Frustration. Panic. The kind of jittery, edge-fraying fear that creeps in when confidence starts to rot. Sweat gathers at Chas’ temples, and he blinks rapidly, jaw grinding like he’s chewing on regret and swallowing down whatever scraps of control he has left.
His gaze skates back to Maggie. It doesn’t linger—he can’t seem to hold it. But the flicker is enough. I catch the stutter of his breath, the way his pupils flare just a little wider. It’s like her presence rattles him. Not just because she remains standing when she should be buried, but because her sharp, steady gaze shows she has already analyzed the situation and found him wanting. There’s no fragility in her presence, no crack to exploit. Just coiled intelligence and quiet confidence, the kind that makes predators hesitate and gamblers fold. Chas blinks fast and looks away, but the damage is done. He’s shaken. And she hasn’t even spoken.
Chas laughs, but it cracks down the center, fraying at the edges. “You think this ends with me giving you what you want? That the Grangers won’t just rebuild somewhere else?”
Maggie rises from the crate with a slow, deliberate precision that sends a ripple through the stale air of the bait shop. She doesn’t rush—she prowls, each step measured, her feet brushing the weathered floorboards as if testing the ground before claiming it. There’s a newfound command in the way she moves, like her bones have learned a different rhythm, her instincts coaxed closer to the surface with every breath. Her eyes never leave Chas. When she finally stops, standing only a few feet from him, the weight of her silence hits harder than any accusation. Chas flinches—just barely—but it’s enough. He’s already unraveling, and now she’s the one pulling the thread.
“No,” she says softly. “I think it ends with you realizing you already lost.”
His jaw ticks. His eyes jump back to me, then to Deacon, flicking with the nervous energy of a man whose bravado is coming apart thread by thread. He opens his mouth like he means to deliver some cutting retort—maybe a last jab—but nothing comes. Just a harsh exhale through his nose, ragged and thin. He slumps a fraction lower in the chair, his body no longer holding the pretense of confidence. The swagger, once so ingrained it clung like armor, begins to flake off in strips, brittle and hollow. The shine in his eyes dims, replaced by something rawer. And I see it then—what I’ve been waiting for. The tipping point. He’s beginning to buckle beneath the weight of his own facade.
He’s coming apart—and he knows it. The confidence he’s wrapped around himself like armor has thinned to gauze, and every second under Maggie’s unwavering stare strips another layer away. His pulse thuds visibly in his neck, each beat a countdown. The man is running out of thread, and everyone in the room can see the seams starting to split.
Deacon doesn’t move, but his tone drops a notch, quiet and certain. “We’ve got a file headed to the FBI right now. Signed statements. Encrypted audio. Shell company transfers. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Chas finally looks up. “If I talk, I’m dead.”
“You don’t talk, you’re dead slower,” I say flatly.
His laugh is bitter, a rasp more than a sound. “You think I’m scared of you?”
“No,” I say, stepping in close, boots scuffing the old boards. “I don’t think you’re smart enough to be afraid of me. I think you’re scared of what happens when the Grangers realize you couldn’t handle one human woman and a bakery.”
That hits. He flinches—a sharp, involuntary jerk that betrays the split-second crack in his composure. His shoulders twitch, mouth flattening into a grim line as if he can will the reaction away. But it’s too late. Everyone’s seen it. His control—what little remains—is slipping through his fingers, one flinch at a time.
Maggie tilts her head, voice razor-sharp. “Sheila and Conrad Granger. They’re the ones pulling the strings.”
He doesn’t answer. His lips part, then shut again, as if the words are there, just beyond reach—but he can’t will them out. His gaze flicks between the folder in Deacon’s hand and the jagged steel calm in Maggie’s eyes, and for a split second, he looks like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing the fall is inevitable. A tremor passes through his shoulders. Not a quake, not yet—but the prelude to one. Even so, he says nothing. But in that silence, everything spills out. The guilt. The fear. The dawning realization that his empire, his immunity, has already crumbled. That silence? It’s not defiance. It’s the sound of a man coming undone under the weight of his own ruin.
“You helped them with fake credentials. You intimidated property owners. You sabotaged a business whose owner refused to sell. How far does it go, Warren?”
He swallows hard; the motion jerking down his throat like broken glass. His eyes dart to the folder in Deacon’s hands—sharp, twitchy, full of calculation. But there’s panic there too, barely concealed beneath the brittle sheen of his bravado. The kind of panic that bleeds through when instinct takes over and reason loses its grip. He can’t stop looking at the folder, like it holds the verdict already written in ink he can’t wash off. His lips part slightly, then press together again. No words. Just a quiet, sinking realization that the ground under him is gone—and he’s falling fast.
“Far enough,” he mutters. “There are call logs. Financials. You find those, you don’t need me.”
“But we have you,” I say. “And your testimony gets you protection. Maybe even a deal.”
There’s a long pause. Then he gives a single jerky nod. It’s not a gesture of confidence—it’s a fracture in resolve, the kind of involuntary motion that slips past the last defenses of a man realizing the fight is no longer his. A twitch masquerading as agreement. But it’s enough.
I exhale slowly, a long breath that rakes through my chest like gravel. The air in the bait shop doesn’t clear—it just settles, still dense with adrenaline and old smoke—but the moment cracks open enough to breathe. No release. Not yet. But the beginning of it. The weight hasn’t vanished. It’s only shifted, from anticipation to consequence, from confrontation to aftermath. And though the silence lingers, its shape has changed—it’s no longer the quiet before the storm. It’s the pause before justice.
I turn to Deacon. “Get that file to Rush. Tell him it’s time.”
Deacon nods, his jaw tight, and steps outside with purposeful strides, already pulling his phone from his back pocket. Through the warped pane of the bait shop window, I see him pace once before bringing the phone to his ear, his expression sharpening as the call connects. The wind off the water rustles his jacket, and even through the glass, I see the change—focused, intent, every muscle tensed like a fuse has just been lit. Inside, the air still buzzes with the crackling collapse of Chas’ composure. Outside, justice is being set in motion.
I look back at Maggie. She hasn’t moved, hasn’t so much as blinked—but something in her presence has altered entirely. With quiet ferocity, she fixes her storm-bright eyes on Chas; not rage, not defiance, but an unnerving clarity that cuts deeper than any threat. There’s no trembling, no tension. Just a stillness so precise it feels carved from steel. It’s not fire burning in her—it’s ice, hard and resolute. And it’s that calm, unflinching certainty that makes Chas visibly recoil, as if he’s just realized too late that the balance of power has turned—and she’s the one holding the line.