Chapter 7 - THE TIMEX WATCH
For one terrifying heartbeat, my father’s eyes locked with mine in the dim rafters.
If he kept looking up, Martha would follow his gaze immediately.
My dad had worked forty years in a noisy machine shop with men twice as rough as Victor Novak.
He didn’t gasp, and he didn’t call my name.
Instead, he doubled over on the crate, clutching his left arm and groaning loudly toward the concrete floor.
“My nitro,” my dad wheezed, sagging against Elena’s shoulder. “Lady… in my right pocket… if I keel over before Moretti gets here, you lose half your leverage.”
Elena caught on instantly, her nurse’s instincts kicking in even with her wrists bound together in front of her.
“His pulse is spiking!” Elena shouted at Martha, leaning over him to block my dad’s face from view. “Let me reach into his jacket pocket or he’s going to arrest right now!”
Martha hesitated, taking a half-step closer while her brother Victor shifted his grip on the iron wrench.
That half-step was all Luca needed.
Above us hung the heavy iron chain pulley used for hoisting boat engines out of the slip.
Luca didn’t waste a bullet from twenty feet up where a stray spark could ignite the kerosene on the floor.
He braced one foot against the catwalk rail, kicked the iron release lever on the hoist gear, and rode the counterweight cable straight down to the warehouse floor.
Two tons of rusted iron chain dropped with a deafening roar between Martha and the kerosene can, kicking up a cloud of dust and knocking the silver lighter straight out of Martha’s hand.
It skidded across the wet concrete toward the edge of the slip.
Before the echoes even died in the tin roof, Luca hit the floor running and drove the butt of his Glock across Victor Novak’s jaw.
The big man went down like a felled oak.
“Nobody move!” Arthur Bellini screamed, swinging his revolver wildly from Victor toward Luca.
Up on the catwalk, I scrambled down the iron maintenance ladder, my shoes slipping on the grease-slick rungs as I dropped the last four feet to the concrete right behind my father’s crate.
I grabbed a rusted putty knife off a workbench and began sawing frantically at the plastic zip-tie around Elena’s wrists.
“Dad!” I gasped, my fingers trembling as I reached into his flannel pocket for his tiny brown bottle of nitroglycerin pills. “Put this under your tongue—hurry!”
My father slipped the tiny white tablet under his tongue, his rough, calloused hands still tied behind the crate as he leaned his forehead against my temple for one fierce second.
“What the hell are you doing here, Emmy?” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re supposed to be home in bed.”
“I could ask you the same thing about fixing snowblowers,” I choked out, slicing through Elena’s zip-tie just as a gunshot cracked through the warehouse.
I flinched, pulling Elena down behind the crates.
Nobody had been hit—Luca had kicked Arthur’s wrist upward just as the old man fired into the corrugated ceiling.
With one brutal twist, Luca disarmed Vanessa’s father and shoved the sixty-five-year-old alderman flat against the side of the black town car, pinning him there with the barrel of his own revolver pressed under his chin.
“You killed my brother,” Luca said, his voice so quiet it raised the hair on my arms over the lapping sound of the canal water. “Six years ago, Arthur. My father treated you like blood, and you had Dante’s brakes cut over dock fees.”
Arthur’s face was purple, sweat pouring down his temples as he stared down the barrel of the gun.
“He was going to take the manifests to the federal prosecutor!” Arthur spat, his voice shaking. “Your brother wanted to turn the whole shipping company clean! If he had handed those files over, your father and I both would have died in a federal penitentiary!”
From the floor, Vanessa let out a raw, broken sob against her ropes.
“He was twenty-six, Dad!” Vanessa cried, tears cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “And when you found out Elena was pregnant, you told Victor to make sure she never made it out of county hospital!”
Wait.
Behind Luca’s back, Martha Novak hadn’t run for the door.
In the chaos of the gunshot, she had crawled on her hands and knees across the concrete toward the water’s edge—right where the silver lighter had landed three feet from the trail of kerosene.
Her fingers closed around the metal flint wheel.
“Luca, behind you!” I screamed.
Martha flicked her thumb down on the wheel.
A spark flared yellow in the dark.
I didn’t have a gun, and I was ten feet too far away to reach her.
Without thinking, I yanked my father’s steel-cased Timex watch off my wrist by its broken leather strap and hurled it with everything I had at the edge of the pier.
No—not at Martha’s hand.
At the brass lever of the bilge-wash fire hose mounted on the dock post six inches above her head, already pressurized from the harbor pump.
Wait—the watch didn’t hit the lever; it smashed straight into Martha’s glasses as she lunged forward, knocking her off balance just enough that Elena—now free of her ropes—dove across the concrete and kicked the lighter straight into the black water of the canal with a hiss.
Luca spun around and grabbed Martha by the collar of her gray wool coat before she could scramble after it.
For the first time in seven months, the prim bun on top of Martha Novak’s head came undone, her gray hair falling wildly around her face as she glared at Luca with pure, venomous hatred.
“Go ahead and shoot me, Moretti,” Martha hissed, breathing hard. “It won’t save the girl’s father, and it won’t save Dante’s brat.”
“Your brother is unconscious on the floor, Martha,” Luca said coldly. “And you’re out of matches.”
Martha laughed—a dry, bitter sound that made my stomach turn cold.
“Why do you think the steel door was padlocked from the outside?” Martha whispered, nodding toward the entrance of the shed. “Victor and I weren’t the only ones coming here tonight. Who do you think gave me your bedroom keypad code at five-fifteen so I could erase the alley cameras while Clara brought the boy inside?”
Luca froze.
Slowly, I turned my head toward the folding chair where Vanessa Bellini was tied.
“I didn’t!” Vanessa cried immediately, shaking her head frantically. “Luca, I swear on my life I didn’t give her your code! I was at the hair salon until five-thirty!”
Martha smiled thinly.
“Not her,” Martha said softly, looking straight past Luca toward the dark water of the canal slip. “The person who called the third mechanic on your security team twenty minutes ago and told him where your brownstone in Little Italy was.”
Suddenly, Luca’s cell phone vibrated inside his coat pocket.
He pulled it out with his left hand without taking his eyes off Martha.
On the screen was a text message from Marco’s phone.
May you like
Not a call.
A picture of the Little Italy brownstone’s back kitchen door—standing wide open, with my broken silver Saint Christopher rosary lying on the floorboards beside an overturned teacup.
