Chapter Five
The call came at eleven forty-seven, and Chesapeake was already on his bike before Beltway finished talking.
"Costa's moving. Eight men—four in boats, four in trucks. They're hitting the Essex marina in twenty minutes."
"Tess?"
"Still on her boat. I've got eyes on the marina entrance, but I can't get there before they do."
Chesapeake twisted the throttle and felt the Harley surge beneath him. "I can."
He took the back roads, cutting through Dundalk's industrial sprawl at speeds that would've gotten him killed if he'd been anyone else. But he knew these roads the way he knew the bay—every pothole, every blind curve, every shortcut through lots that didn't officially exist.
Fifteen minutes. That's all he had.
The marina was dark when he pulled in, killing his headlight before he hit the lot. Tess's boat was still at her slip, cabin lights glowing soft through the windows. She hadn't heard anything. Didn't know what was coming.
He was off the bike and onto the dock before the engine stopped ticking.
"Tess." He kept his voice low, but the urgency carried. "Tess, open up."
The cabin door swung open, and she was there in shorts and a tank top, her father's pistol already in her hand. Her eyes went wide when she saw him, then narrowed.
"What—"
"No time." He grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the cabin, ignoring the way her body tensed against his grip. "Costa's coming with eight men. They'll be here in five minutes, and they're not coming to talk."
"My boat—"
"Will still be here tomorrow. You won't be if we don't move."
For a second, he thought she'd fight him. Saw the stubbornness flash in her eyes, that same backbone that had made her tell Serrano's people to go to hell.
Then she shoved the pistol into her waistband and nodded once.
"Where?"
"My boat. End of the commercial dock."
They ran.
Chesapeake kept his hand on her back, guiding her through the dark marina with the certainty of a man who'd spent his life navigating by feel. His boat was where he'd left it—a twenty-four-foot bay runner, fast and shallow-drafted, built for exactly this kind of work.
He jumped aboard and had the engine turning over before Tess cleared the gunwale. She landed hard, caught herself on the console, and he felt a flash of something hot when she didn't stumble—just planted her feet and grabbed the rail like she'd been born on a deck.
Headlights swept the marina entrance.
"Down," Chesapeake said, and Tess dropped without argument, pressing herself against the deck as he eased the boat away from the slip.
No running lights. No navigation display. Just the rumble of the engine at idle and the dark water opening up ahead of them.
He cleared the marina mouth as the first truck pulled into the lot. In his peripheral vision, he saw men piling out, saw the boats being launched from trailers at the public ramp. Eight men, just like Beltway said. Coming for a woman who'd already slipped through their fingers.
Chesapeake pushed the throttle forward and let the bay swallow them.
The Chesapeake at night was a different animal than the bay he ran during daylight hours. No markers visible, no reference points, just black water and blacker sky and the instincts of a man who'd been reading these channels since before he could drive.
He ran without lights because lights would give them away. Ran by memory and feel, cutting through shallows that would ground any boat with a deeper draft, threading channels that didn't show up on any chart because they'd been carved by currents, not surveyors.
Behind them, he heard engines.
Costa's boats, fanning out from the marina, running their spotlights across the water like searchlights hunting an escaped prisoner.
They were fast, but they didn't know the bay.
Didn't know that the channel they were following dead-ended in a sandbar a quarter mile ahead.
Didn't know that the open water they were heading for was riddled with crab pot floats that would foul their props if they kept that speed.
Chesapeake cut east, hugging the shoreline where the water was barely three feet deep. His boat skimmed over bottom that would've torn the hull off anything heavier, and he felt Tess shift beside him, rising from her crouch to watch the pursuit lights falling behind.
"They're going the wrong way," she said.
"They're going the only way they know." He didn't look at her, kept his eyes on the water and his hands on the wheel. "Costa's crew runs the harbor. Deep water, shipping channels, dock approaches. They don't know the shallows."
"And you do."
"I've been running this bay since I was twelve years old." He cut the wheel hard, banking into a channel so narrow the marsh grass brushed both sides of the hull. "There's not a cove or a sandbar or a hidden channel between here and the Eastern Shore that I haven't worked."
Tess was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was different—less defensive, more curious.
"Crabbing?"
"My father's boat. Then mine, until—" He stopped. Shook his head. "Until it wasn't."
She didn't push. He appreciated that.
The marsh opened up ahead, and Chesapeake throttled back as they approached a spit of land that looked like nothing—just grass and mud and a few scraggly trees.
But there was a dock hidden in the shadows, and behind it, the dark shape of a fishing shack that hadn't seen a legal catch in twenty years.
He brought the boat alongside and killed the engine.
Silence. Total, complete, broken only by the lap of water against the hull and the distant cry of a night bird somewhere in the marsh.
"Where are we?" Tess asked.
"Safehouse." He stepped onto the dock and reached back for her hand without thinking. She took it without thinking, and the contact sent a jolt up his arm that had nothing to do with adrenaline. "The club uses it for bay operations. We'll be safe here until I hear from Dredge."
She climbed onto the dock beside him, and for a moment they stood there in the dark, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her skin, could smell salt and diesel and something underneath that made him want to lean in and find out what it was.
"Costa's going to trash my boat," she said. Not a question.
"Probably." He didn't sugarcoat it. She deserved better than lies. "They were coming to hurt you, Tess. The boat was just the excuse."
"And now?"
"Now they're running around the bay in the dark, pissed off and empty-handed." He felt his mouth curve despite the situation. "Costa's going to have to explain to Serrano how a charter captain and one biker vanished off the water like ghosts."
Tess stared at him, and in the faint moonlight, he could see something shifting in her expression. The wariness was still there, but underneath it—respect, maybe. Recognition.
"You know this bay," she said.
"Better than I know anything else in my life."
"So do I." She held his gaze, and there was challenge in it now, that backbone flaring up again despite everything.
"I've been running these waters since I was ten years old.
I know channels you've never seen. Shallows that don't show up on any chart.
Coves where the current does things that would make you think the bay was haunted. "
He felt something shift in his chest. Not surprise—he'd known she was good the moment he saw her patch that hull. But hearing her claim the water the way he claimed it, with that same fierce possessiveness...
It did something to him.
"Is that so?" he said, and his voice came out lower than he intended.
"That's so." She stepped closer, and he could see the pulse jumping in her throat, could feel the electricity crackling in the air between them. "You got us out tonight. I'll give you that. But next time we're running?"
She poked a finger into his chest, and the touch burned through his shirt like a brand.
"I'm driving."