Chapter 17 Cayce #2
He nods once, like a man who has decided to buy a house after living in it for twenty years. “We bring her home,” he says. “Then we burn down his fucking world.”
“Plan,” I say, because if I don’t make a list I’ll break the next thing I touch.
Tiernan arrives at the door without knocking because we are long past knocking, and I messaged on my way, told him to meet me here. He looks me up and down—salt, shirt half-buttoned wrong, a cut I don’t remember getting on my hand—and then nods at Don Marco. “Sir.”
“Come in,” Don Marco says.
Pru is behind Tiernan because of course she is. She’s in a hoodie and boots and a face that looks like it could file for a restraining order against patience. She should look ridiculous in this room. She looks like a problem being solved.
“Don’t start without me,” she says. “She’s my best friend.”
“You’re not invited,” Tiernan says on reflex.
“Invitation extended,” Don Marco says, sharp enough to cut. “Caterina has made Prudence a part of this family.”
Pru shoots Tiernan a look that says I win and moves to the end of the desk like she owns the acre of carpet her boots just conquered. “What do we have?”
“Resort footage,” I say, sliding the phone across. “Nico and two we don’t recognize. Security post was clear; either a payoff or a timing trick. Boat at the south dock. No running lights. We’ve put Customs on alert without names. They were out ten minutes after the cut.”
Pru watches the grainy clip once and goes very, very still. “I’m going to kill him,” she says in a tone that belongs in a much quieter room.
“You’re going to sit where I tell you and do what I say,” Tiernan answers, equally quiet.
“You’ll need me,” she says, not looking at him. “You don’t know his face like I do. You don’t know how he plays the game.”
“She does,” Don Marco murmurs, eyes still on the paused frame where Nico is smiling like a boy stealing fruit. He looks at me. “He won’t hurt her,” he says, and I can hear the faith he wants to have tearing itself into rags. “Not…that way. He thinks he loves her.”
“He’ll hurt her because he thinks he loves her and she won’t feed into it,” I say. “We don’t bet on his restraint. We bet on our speed to get to her.”
Tiernan begins to lay out pieces on the desk like a patient dealer: a chart of the island chain, a list of private slips attached to Moretti properties, two potential spots where a man who wants to hide a boat would park it and still make a phone call.
He checks his watch. “We get eyes on the air first. Then docks. Then safe houses on the east side. They won’t come north. We still own too much of it.”
“He’s vain,” Pru says. “He’ll want her to see a view and think that he can give it to her forever.”
Don Marco points at the chart. “Here,” he says, tapping a cove with a rental property that hasn’t been rented in a year. “It’s got a terrace he thinks is romantic. The code hasn’t changed.”
Tiernan’s phone lights. He reads, nods. “Rafferty has the marina cam,” he reports. “Black hull, two outboards, no lights. Matches. They cut south-southeast right away. We have a ghost wake. Weather’s flat—easy run.”
“Boats on station,” I say. “And a plane.”
“Already in the air,” Tiernan says. He looks at me and then at Don Marco. “We do it clean.”
“Clean,” Don Marco agrees. He looks older than he did ten minutes ago and more dangerous for it. He lifts his eyes to me. “You’re going to want to kill my nephew yourself.”
“I am,” I say.
“You won’t,” he says. “Not tonight. Not in front of her. You bring my daughter home. Then we decide what to do with the boy who borrowed my last name.”
I don’t answer. He stares. I nod once. It’s the only concession he’ll get and the only one he needs.
Pru leans in over the map, finger out. “If he’s stupid and in love, he’ll want to talk before he moves. He’ll want to convince her. That buys us an hour.”
“Or it loses us ten minutes,” Tiernan counters. “We move now.”
“We move now,” I say. “And we move as if we’re already ten behind.”
Don Marco reaches for the crucifix on the wall and doesn’t take it down. He isn’t that man. He squares his shoulders instead. “This is on me,” he says, not asking for forgiveness, not performing. “My blindness. My blood.”
“Your blood goes to sleep in my bed every night,” I say. “We fix this and then we talk about penance and how to make it right.”
He breathes once, grateful for the order of things. “Then go. Bring her home.”
Tiernan is already walking. Pru is already texting. Rafferty’s name pops on my phone with a pin and a time. I pocket the device and look at Don Marco one last time.
“I told you Blackvine was his,” I say. “I didn’t tell you all of it. I’ll give you every ledger after she’s out.”
“You’ll give me the names,” he says.
“All of them,” I say. “And you’ll decide which part you want to burn yourself. And the rest I’ll crush under my boot and drown in the harbor.”
He nods like a man who has been handed the weight he thought he wanted but didn’t, and will carry it anyway because that’s what responsible men do.
We hit the steps at a run. Outside, the November air bites clean. Tiernan’s already calling down to the dock; Pru is already threatening a pilot with creative violence if he doesn’t get wheels up.
When the car door slams and the engine growls, the only thing in my head is a white bikini, a paper umbrella, the way her eyes cracked open when I asked about the rosary, and the sound the patio doors made when they betrayed the room.
Blackvine was built to teach boys what happens when you think you can take from men who own the ledger. Tonight, I teach a different lesson: what happens when you take from a man who keeps his promises.
I’ve kept this one since a vent whined over a drain and a kid named Grady laughed through a split lip.
I’m coming.