Chapter Sixteen
It took Beltway three hours to find Jesse Ward.
The kid wasn't hiding. That was the thing that made Chesapeake's blood run cold with fury—the little bastard wasn't even trying to lay low.
He was sitting in a waterfront bar in Dundalk, drinking cheap beer and bragging to anyone who'd listen about how he'd sunk some bitch's boat and burned her daddy's papers while she hid in Fell's Point like a scared little girl.
Chesapeake heard the report and felt something inside him go very, very still.
"Sharkey's Bar," Beltway said, spreading a hand-drawn map across the chapel table. "Corner lot, two exits. Front door faces the street, back door opens onto an alley that runs down to the water."
"How many with him?"
"Two. The rest of Serrano's crew is scattered—nobody wants to be the next body that turns up floating." Beltway tapped the map. "Ward's young and stupid. He thinks burning those charts made him a legend. He's telling war stories to anyone who'll buy him a drink."
"Then let's give him a better story to tell." Chesapeake looked around the table. Cull was already checking his knife. Dredge sat silent and ready. "Cull, you take the back. Make sure nobody runs. Dredge, you're with me on the front."
"What about me?"
Tess's voice came from the doorway. She stood with her arms crossed, her eyes still red-rimmed but hard as flint.
"You're staying here."
"Like hell I am." She pushed off the doorframe and crossed to the table. "You promised I could be there when he paid. I'm holding you to it."
Chesapeake's jaw tightened. Every instinct screamed at him to refuse—to lock her in the compound where Ward couldn't touch her, where no stray bullet or lucky punch could take her from him.
But he'd made a promise.
"You stay in the truck until I come get you." He held up a hand when she started to argue. "That's not negotiable. Ward dies tonight, and you'll see it happen. But you're not walking into that bar while bullets might fly."
Tess held his gaze for a long moment. Whatever she saw must have told her this was the line he wouldn't cross, because she finally nodded.
"Fine. But the second it's clear—"
"You'll be there." He reached out and cupped her face in his hand, his thumb tracing her cheekbone. "I promise."
They rode out twenty minutes later—Chesapeake and Dredge on bikes, Cull in the truck with Tess and Beltway.
The evening traffic was light, and they made good time through the industrial sprawl of Dundalk, past the ghost of Bethlehem Steel and the working-class neighborhoods that had grown up in its shadow.
Sharkey's Bar sat on a corner lot three blocks from the water, a dive with neon beer signs in the windows and a parking lot full of pickup trucks. The kind of place where working men drank away their paychecks and nobody asked questions about the noise coming from the back room.
Chesapeake parked his bike a block away and approached on foot, Dredge at his shoulder.
"How do you want to play this?" Dredge asked.
"I'm going to walk through the front door." Chesapeake rolled his shoulders, loosening muscles that had gone tight with anticipation. "Ward's been running his mouth about burning a dead man's charts. Let's see how brave he is when he's looking at the man who's going to make him answer for it."
"And if his friends get stupid?"
"Then you handle them." Chesapeake met his brother's eyes. "Ward is mine."
Dredge nodded once. "Understood."
They reached the bar, and Chesapeake didn't slow down. He pushed through the front door like he owned the place, letting the wood slam against the wall hard enough to make every head in the room turn.
Jesse Ward sat at a table near the back, two other men flanking him. He was young—maybe twenty-seven, with the lean build of someone who'd gotten by on speed and viciousness instead of size. His eyes went wide when he saw Chesapeake's cut, and his hand dropped toward his waistband.
"Don't." Chesapeake's voice cut through the bar noise like a blade. "You reach for that gun, you die with your hand on the grip. Your choice."
The bar had gone silent. A dozen working men sat frozen at their tables, beers halfway to their lips, watching the scene unfold like it was television.
Ward's hand stopped moving.
"I know who you are," he said, and there was a tremor in his voice that he was trying hard to hide. "You're the one who's been protecting that charter bitch."
"Wrong answer." Chesapeake walked toward him, slow and steady, each step deliberate. "Try again."
Ward's friends were shifting in their seats, eyes darting toward the back exit. One of them started to stand.
Dredge's hand landed on his shoulder and pushed him back down. "Stay."
The man stayed.
"I'm the one whose woman you threatened," Chesapeake said, stopping three feet from Ward's table. "I'm the one whose territory you violated when you sank that boat. And I'm the one who's going to make you answer for burning charts that took a man forty years to draw."
Ward's bravado was cracking. Chesapeake could see it in the sweat beading on his forehead, the way his eyes kept flicking toward the back door.
"Serrano told me to send a message," Ward said. "I was just following orders."
"Serrano's not here." Chesapeake leaned down, bracing his hands on the table, putting his face inches from Ward's. "Serrano sent you to do his dirty work, and now you're going to die for it while he sits in his marina counting money. How does that feel?"
"You can't—this is a public place—"
"I can do whatever I want." Chesapeake's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "You burned a dead man's charts. His daughter watched you turn forty years of work into ashes. You bragged about it in a bar like it made you someone."
He straightened up, and his hand closed around the back of Ward's neck.
"Let me show you what it actually made you."
Ward went for his gun.
Chesapeake was faster.
He slammed Ward's face into the table hard enough to crack wood, then hauled him up and drove a fist into his stomach that doubled him over.
The gun clattered to the floor. Ward's friends lunged out of their seats, but Dredge was already moving—one went down with a knee to the groin, the other with an elbow to the temple.
The bar patrons scattered toward the walls, giving the violence room to breathe.
Chesapeake dragged Ward toward the back door, one hand fisted in his collar. The kid was gasping, trying to fight, but he was outmatched and he knew it. Every punch he threw was clumsy, desperate. Every attempt to break free just made Chesapeake's grip tighten.
They burst through the back door into the alley, and Cull was waiting.
"Clear," the sergeant at arms said, his face expressionless in the dim light. "Nobody's coming."
"Good." Chesapeake threw Ward against the alley wall and watched him crumple. "Go get Tess."
Ward's head came up at the name. "No—wait—"
"You wanted her to be afraid." Chesapeake crouched down, grabbing Ward's jaw and forcing him to meet his eyes. "You wanted her to cry over what you took from her. Well, she's done crying. Now she's going to watch you answer for it."
Footsteps in the alley. Tess appeared around the corner, Cull at her shoulder, and stopped when she saw Ward slumped against the wall.
Her face was pale. Her hands were shaking. But her eyes were steady, fixed on the man who'd burned her father's legacy.
"This him?" she asked.
"This is him."
Tess walked forward until she was standing over Ward, looking down at him the way you'd look at something you'd scraped off your boot.
"Those charts were my father's life," she said quietly. "He spent forty years mapping this bay. Every channel, every current, every secret spot where the fish ran thick. And you burned them like garbage."
"I was just—Serrano told me to—"
"I don't care what Serrano told you." Her voice was ice. "You chose to do it. You chose to stand there and watch them burn. You chose to brag about it in a bar like it made you special."
She crouched down, her face inches from his.
"It didn't make you special. It made you a target."
She stood up and stepped back, her eyes meeting Chesapeake's.
"He's yours."
Chesapeake nodded once. Then he turned back to Jesse Ward, and the last thing Serrano's youngest enforcer saw was the calm certainty in the eyes of a man who'd run out of patience.
The kill was quick. Brutal. Efficient.
Chesapeake didn't drag it out, didn't make it theatrical. He'd promised Tess she could see Ward answer for what he'd done, and she had. The rest was just cleanup.
When it was over, he stood in the alley with blood on his hands and Ward's body at his feet.
"Dredge."
His brother appeared at his shoulder. "Yeah?"
"The two inside. Find out what they know about Serrano's operation. His buyers, his delivery schedule, whatever they can give us."
"And if they can't give us anything?"
Chesapeake looked down at Ward's body. "Then they join their friend."
Tess was waiting by the truck when he finished washing the blood off his hands at a spigot behind the bar. She didn't speak as he approached—just opened her arms and let him fold her against his chest.
"It's done," he said into her hair.
"I know." Her voice was muffled against his shirt. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me." He pulled back far enough to meet her eyes. "He hurt what's mine. There was never any other ending."
The ride back to the compound was quiet.
Dredge had gotten what they needed from Ward's friends—Serrano's buyers were getting restless, demanding product that wasn't coming.
The delivery schedule was blown. The marina was hemorrhaging money, and the man who'd built an empire on moving contraband through the Chesapeake was running out of options.
No land muscle chief. Costa was dead.
No boat captain. Vega was at the bottom of the harbor.
No enforcer. Ward was cooling in a Dundalk alley.
Serrano had nobody left between himself and the Killers. Nobody left to send when he wanted someone intimidated or eliminated. Nobody left to hide behind when the war finally came to his door.
Chesapeake pulled into the compound lot and killed his engine.
The endgame was coming. Serrano had to know it. Every move he made from now on would be desperate, and desperate men were dangerous.
But they were also sloppy.
Chesapeake climbed off his bike and looked up at the compound—at the lights in the windows and the brothers moving through the courtyard and the woman waiting for him on the steps.
Serrano had no land muscle, no boat captain, and no enforcer left between himself and the bay.
All he had was time.
And that was running out.