Chapter Five
The phone buzzed at eleven-fourteen, and Nail knew before he answered that the night had just gone sideways.
"Talk to me."
"Troy Mercer." Beltway's voice was clipped, urgent. "Eight men, four vehicles, rolling toward Canton right now. They're not coming to talk."
Nail was already moving, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair. "How long?"
"Twenty minutes, maybe less. They're coming from Dundalk, taking surface streets to avoid cameras."
"The garage?"
"That's the target. Mercer's crew is armed and pissed—word got back about what you did to his drivers this afternoon. They're coming to take the bays whether she agrees or not."
Nail hit the compound lot at a run. His bike roared to life and he was moving before the engine finished warming up, tearing through Fell's Point toward Canton with Beltway's voice in his ear through the Bluetooth.
"I'm twelve minutes out," Nail said. "Get me backup."
"Cull and Formstone are en route, but they're coming from Federal Hill. Fifteen minutes minimum."
Too long. Mercer would have Sadie before backup arrived.
Nail pushed the bike harder, weaving through late-night traffic, running yellows that turned red in his mirrors. The harbor fog was rolling in thick, softening the streetlights into halos, and he navigated by memory as much as sight.
Canton materialized out of the mist. Row houses and corner bars. The waterfront blocks he'd known since childhood.
He killed his headlight two blocks from the garage and coasted into an alley across the street. Through the fog, he could see lights on in Morrow's—Sadie working late, probably still trying to fix the damage Fisk's crew had done.
No sign of Mercer yet. He had minutes, not more.
Nail crossed the street at a jog and slipped through the back lot, moving quiet past the dumpsters and the chain-link fence that separated Morrow's from the nail salon next door.
The back door was locked, but he'd memorized the layout that afternoon—three bays, office to the left, coffee station by the workbench.
He knocked. Three sharp raps.
"Sadie. It's Nail. Open up."
Silence. Then footsteps, and the door cracked open to show Sadie's face, suspicious and oil-streaked.
"It's almost midnight. What—"
"We need to go. Now."
"Excuse me?"
"Eight men are on their way here to take your garage by force." He pushed past her into the shop, eyes scanning for anything she'd need. "We have maybe five minutes before they arrive. You can argue with me or you can move."
She stared at him for half a second. Then something hardened in her face, and she grabbed a jacket off the hook by her workbench.
"The Civic's still on the lift. I was in the middle of—"
"Leave it."
"I can't just—"
"Sadie." He turned, and whatever she saw in his face stopped her argument cold. "I will carry you out of here if I have to. We're leaving. Now."
For a moment he thought she'd fight him anyway. That stubborn jaw set like concrete, those mechanic's hands balled into fists at her sides. But she wasn't stupid—he'd known that the second she'd walked into Flynn's. She'd asked for help because she knew when she was outmatched.
"Fine." She grabbed a flashlight from her bench. "But if those idiots touch my tools—"
"They're going to touch everything. That's why we're not being here when they arrive."
He led her out the back door, into the lot, and froze.
Headlights. Three blocks up, moving slow. Four vehicles in convoy, creeping through the fog like sharks circling blood.
"Go." He grabbed her hand—didn't think about it, just grabbed—and pulled her toward the alley that ran behind the row of shops. "Stay close, stay quiet."
They moved through the dark with the sound of engines growing behind them.
Nail navigated by instinct, cutting through gaps between buildings that most people didn't know existed.
Years of bar-hopping through Canton, years of learning every shortcut and back door, every alley that connected to every other alley.
"Where are we going?" Sadie's voice was low, controlled. No panic. He filed that away.
"Fell's Point. I've got a safehouse."
"You've got a safehouse?"
"I've got a lot of things." He pulled her left, through a loading dock behind a closed restaurant. "Stay close."
Behind them, he heard the screech of brakes. Doors slamming. Someone shouting.
They'd reached the garage. Found it empty.
Nail picked up the pace.
Canton's waterfront blocks blurred past—the harbor on their right, row houses on their left, fog thick enough to taste. Sadie kept up without complaint, her hand still locked in his, her breath coming fast but steady.
His phone buzzed. Beltway.
"They're at the garage. Mercer's pissed—he's got guys searching the surrounding blocks."
"We're heading northwest. I need a route to the Fell's Point safehouse."
"Cut through the old shipyard on Thames. I'll have the apartment unlocked by the time you get there."
Nail adjusted course, pulling Sadie down a side street that dead-ended at a chain-link fence. He found the gap he remembered from a hundred midnight walks and held it open for her.
"Seriously?" She looked at the narrow opening, then at him.
"Unless you want to explain yourself to the eight men who just took over your garage."
She went through. He followed.
The old shipyard was a maze of rusted equipment and forgotten infrastructure, but Nail knew it like he knew his own bar. He'd walked these paths drunk and sober, learning the territory because territory was power and knowledge was survival.
"You know this area well." Sadie's voice was steadier now. Observing.
"Grew up here." He guided her around a collapsed loading crane. "My father's bar was two blocks from the compound. I learned to walk on Fell's Point cobblestones."
"And to run through abandoned shipyards in the middle of the night?"
"That came later."
They emerged onto Thames Street, the fog parting just enough to show the familiar brick facades of Fell's Point. Two more blocks and they'd be safe.
"In here." Nail steered her toward a darkened storefront—a bar that had closed six months ago, victim of the same economic currents that killed half the small businesses in Baltimore. The apartment above it was club property, maintained for exactly this kind of situation.
The door was unlocked, just like Beltway promised. Nail pulled Sadie inside and up the narrow stairs, not releasing her hand until they were in the apartment with the door locked behind them.
Then he stood there, breathing hard, and watched her take in their surroundings.
It wasn't much. One room with a bed against the wall, a kitchen that was really just a counter and a hot plate, a bathroom through the door on the left. The windows looked out over Thames Street, currently dark and quiet, the fog pressing against the glass like something alive.
"Safehouse." Sadie said it flat. "This is where your club stashes people?"
"This is where my club keeps people alive." He moved to the window, checking the street below. Empty. "Mercer doesn't know about this place. Neither does Fisk. You're safe here."
She laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.
"Safe." She sat down hard on the edge of the bed, and for the first time since he'd grabbed her hand in that back lot, she looked shaken. "I just lost my garage. Everything I own is in that shop—my tools, my uncle's equipment, forty years of—"
"You didn't lose anything." He turned from the window. "Your shop is still there. Your tools are still there. Mercer took a building, not a business."
"Easy for you to say."
"It's not." He crossed the small room and crouched in front of her, putting himself at eye level. "I know what it's like to watch someone take what your family built. I know what it costs."
She met his eyes, and something passed between them—recognition, maybe, or understanding. Two people who'd inherited things worth protecting and learned the hard way that protection required more than stubbornness.
"We're going to get your garage back," he said. "Fisk isn't keeping it. Mercer isn't keeping it. You're going to walk back into Morrow's with your head up and your name on the door. I promise you that."
Her jaw worked. That stubborn set he was starting to recognize as her default state.
"You make a lot of promises for a bartender."
"I keep them, too."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders.
"There's a Civic on the lift," she said. "Mrs. Patterson's. I was doing a brake job."
"Okay."
"I left the drain plug out. If those idiots lower the lift without checking, they're going to flood my shop with brake fluid."
Nail stared at her. She stared back.
And then, despite everything—the chase through Canton, the safehouse, the eight armed men currently occupying her family's garage—she smiled. Small and tired and fierce.
"If they ruin that Civic, I'm billing you."
"I'll take it out of Mercer's hide."
Her smile flickered wider, just for a second. Then it faded, and she looked around the small apartment with eyes that were already calculating, already planning.
That was his mechanic. Give her a problem and she'd find a way to fix it.
Nail stood up and moved back to the window. Below, Thames Street was still quiet. The fog was thickening, turning Fell's Point into a ghost of itself.
Tomorrow they'd figure out the next move. Tonight, he'd keep her safe.
His mechanic.
The thought settled into his chest like something that had always been there, waiting to be noticed.
He didn't examine it too closely. Some things were better left alone until you were ready to deal with them.
But he watched her reflection in the dark window—tired, oil-stained, already thinking three steps ahead—and knew that ready was coming faster than he'd planned.