Chapter Seven
Dredge's boat was still two hundred yards out when Chesapeake heard the other engines.
Three of them. Coming fast from the north, running lights blazing like they'd stopped caring about stealth. Costa had finally found the point, and he was done playing hide and seek.
"Get inside," Chesapeake told Tess. "Now."
"I can help—"
"Inside." He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the shack, his grip harder than he intended. "There's a crawlspace under the floor. Get in it and don't come out until I tell you."
Her eyes flashed with that stubborn fire he was starting to crave. "I'm not hiding while you—"
"You're not hiding. You're staying alive." He pushed her through the door, his body blocking the entrance. "I can't fight and protect you at the same time. Give me one less thing to worry about."
Something shifted in her expression. Understanding, maybe. Or trust.
She disappeared into the shack.
Chesapeake pulled out his phone and sent a single text to Dredge: Company. North approach. Ten plus.
Then he moved.
The crab pot lines had been his first project that morning while Tess slept.
Thirty yards of rope strung across the channel approach at prop depth, anchored to submerged pilings that didn't show above the waterline.
It wouldn't stop Costa's boats, but it would slow them down—force them to cut their engines and drift while they untangled the mess.
That was all he needed.
He positioned himself in the marsh grass twenty feet from the dock, his Glock in one hand and a gutting knife in the other. The mud sucked at his boots, familiar and grounding. He'd spent half his childhood wading through muck like this, checking trap lines and learning the bay's secrets.
Now those secrets were going to kill men who should've stayed on dry land.
Costa's boats came around the point in a V formation, engines roaring, spotlights cutting through the darkness. Ten men, maybe more—Chesapeake counted heads as they approached and felt nothing but cold calculation.
The first boat hit the crab lines.
The propeller screamed as rope wound around the shaft, jerking the boat sideways. The driver cursed and killed the engine, but the damage was done—the boat drifted into the path of the second, and both of them ground to a halt in a tangle of hulls and thrashing water.
The third boat tried to swing wide, but the channel was too narrow. Its hull scraped bottom and stuck fast in the shallows, thirty feet from the dock.
"Move! Move!" Costa's voice carried across the water—stocky, ex-bouncer, the man who'd put a hole in Tess's boat and left a dead cat on her deck. "Get to shore!"
Men started jumping over the sides, splashing into water that came up to their thighs. The marsh bottom grabbed at their feet, slowing them down, turning their charge into a staggering stumble through mud and grass.
Chesapeake smiled.
The first man to reach solid ground took a bullet in the kneecap and went down screaming. The second caught the gutting knife in his thigh as Chesapeake rose from the marsh grass like a ghost.
Chaos erupted.
Gunfire cracked through the night—wild shots from men who couldn't see their target in the dark.
Chesapeake moved through the grass, low and fast, using the terrain the way he'd used it his whole life.
These men were dock workers and bar bouncers, muscle that operated on pavement and concrete.
The marsh was a different world, and he was its native predator.
He dropped two more before they even saw him—one with a shot to the chest, another with the knife across his throat. The body splashed into the water, and the men around it started firing at shadows.
An engine roared from the south.
Dredge.
The harbor diver's boat came around the opposite point like a battering ram, cutting off the retreat to open water. Cull stood at the bow, his massive frame silhouetted against the running lights, and Stevedore was already firing before the boat stopped moving.
Costa's men were trapped.
The fight turned into a slaughter.
Chesapeake pushed through the marsh toward the boats, stepping over bodies and through water that was turning dark with blood.
Cull had come ashore and was working through the survivors with brutal efficiency—the sergeant at arms didn't bother with guns when his hands would do the job.
Stevedore covered him from the boat, picking off anyone who tried to run.
Costa.
Chesapeake scanned the chaos until he found him—the stocky figure struggling through the shallows toward one of the grounded boats, trying to reach the engine, trying to escape.
Not tonight.
Chesapeake caught him ten feet from the boat, tackling him into the knee-deep water. They went down in a thrashing tangle of limbs, and Costa came up swinging—fast for a big man, desperate in a way that made him dangerous.
Chesapeake took a fist to the jaw and felt his vision blur. He rolled with the blow, using the momentum to pull Costa deeper into the marsh where the footing was worse. The ex-bouncer stumbled, his boots sinking into mud that had trapped better men than him.
"You're dead," Costa spat, blood streaming from a cut on his forehead. "Serrano's going to gut you and that bitch—"
Chesapeake hit him in the throat.
Costa gagged, his hands flying to his neck, and Chesapeake was on him before he could recover. He drove the big man down into the marsh, one hand wrapped around his throat, the other pressing the gutting knife against his belly.
"You put a hole in her boat," Chesapeake said, his voice calm despite the blood pounding in his ears. "You left a dead cat on her deck. You scared her clients. Cut her fuel lines. Made her afraid in her own home."
Costa's eyes were bulging, his face turning purple as he clawed at Chesapeake's grip.
"She's not afraid anymore." Chesapeake leaned closer, close enough to see the terror in Costa's eyes, the understanding that this was the end. "And neither am I."
The knife went in smooth and easy, angled up beneath the ribs the way his father had taught him to dress a catch. Costa's body jerked once, twice, then went still.
Chesapeake let him fall.
The marsh water closed over Eddie Costa's face, and the man who'd terrorized a charter captain on Killers' water sank into the mud where he belonged.
Silence fell over the point.
Chesapeake stood in the shallows, blood on his hands and his knife, his breath coming hard. Around him, the marsh was littered with bodies—some floating, some sunk, none of them getting up. Dredge and Cull moved through the carnage with practiced efficiency, checking pulses and collecting weapons.
"Chesapeake." Stevedore's voice carried from the boat. "We clear?"
"Clear." He wiped his blade on his jeans and waded toward the dock. "How many?"
"Eight down. Two ran into the marsh—Cull's tracking them."
Eight. Plus the two Cull would find. Costa had brought ten men to take one charter captain.
Now he was fish food, and so were most of his crew.
The shack door opened, and Tess stepped out onto the dock.
She was pale, her hands trembling slightly, but her eyes were steady as they found him in the darkness. She looked at the bodies in the water, at the blood on his hands, at the knife still dripping in his grip.
She didn't flinch.
"Is it done?" she asked.
Chesapeake climbed onto the dock, leaving wet footprints on the weathered boards. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see exactly what he was—what he'd done, what he was capable of.
"Costa's dead," he said. "He won't hurt you again."
Tess's gaze dropped to his bloody hands, then rose to meet his eyes.
"Good."
Something cracked open in Chesapeake's chest. He'd expected fear. Revulsion. The look that civilians got when they saw what men like him really were.
Instead, he got acceptance. Understanding. The steady gaze of a woman who'd survived her own wars and wasn't about to judge him for surviving his.
"We need to move," Dredge called from the water. "Serrano's going to know about this by morning. The compound is the only safe place now."
Chesapeake nodded but didn't look away from Tess. "You ready?"
"For what?"
"To meet the rest of my family."
Tess glanced at the bodies floating in the marsh, at the brothers cleaning weapons and tossing guns into the bay, at the blood that was even now washing away with the tide.
"I think I'm starting to understand what family means to you people."
Chesapeake felt his mouth curve despite everything.
"You have no idea."
He reached for her hand, and this time she was the one who laced her fingers through his. They walked down the dock together, stepping over blood and spent brass, toward the boat that would carry them to Fell's Point.
Behind them, the marsh kept its secrets the way it had kept secrets for three hundred years.
Eddie Costa's body would never be found.