Chapter 14 - Cold Storage
The vast interior of the warehouse was cloaked in shadows, broken only by the yellow sweep of two tactical flashlights moving across the far wall.
Poured across the freshly laid concrete floor was a dark, glistening sheen of fuel, pooling around the wooden framing of the newly installed prep islands. In the center of the room, tied to a structural iron support beam with heavy industrial zip-ties, was Elena Morales. Her banquet uniform was torn at the shoulder, and a strip of heavy duct tape was plastered across her mouth.
Standing over her were two men in dark windbreakers. One held a five-gallon plastic jerrycan, sloshing fuel against the wooden studs; the other stood with a heavy chrome road flare held loosely in his left hand, an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth.
"That's enough, Leo," the man with the flare said, his voice flat and bored. "Soak the main electrical panel. When the FDNY sifts through the ashes, they'll say the wiring on these cheap non-profit stoves sparked the whole block."
"Drop the flare," Vincent’s voice rang out through the rafters, cold and lethal as a falling blade.
The man with the flare froze. His companion dropped the plastic can, reaching beneath his jacket for a weapon.
*Crack.*
Vincent fired once. The bullet smashed into the concrete three inches in front of the reaching man’s steel-toed boot, kicking up a shower of white-hot stone and dust that ricocheted through the silence.
"The next one goes through your femoral artery," Vincent said, advancing from the shadows into the faint light. He held the Colt with two hands, his stance completely locked, his eyes dead and unblinking. "Take your hands out of your coat, fingers splayed, and drop to your knees."
The man who had dropped the gas can immediately raised his hands, shaking violently, and dropped onto the wet, fuel-soaked floor.
The man with the flare, however, was older. He didn't drop. Instead, he smiled, his thumb resting lightly against the ignition ring of the emergency flare.
"Rossi," the older man sneered. "I thought you were still hiding behind that coffee pot in Greenpoint. Victoria said you’d come sniffin' around if the girl slipped her leash."
"Put the flare down, Miller," Vincent said.
My heart seized at the name. *Miller.*
"Not Greg Miller," Vincent said without taking his eyes off the man. "His uncle. Bobby Miller. The man who supplied the guns to my father’s diner thirty years ago."
"Small world, ain't it, kid?" Bobby Miller chuckled, though his eyes darted nervously toward the open loading dock doors where Frankie’s shadow blocked the light. "Your old man wouldn't play ball. Now this little broad wants to play city reformer. You Rossis never learn that the people who own the land own the people who walk on it."
Miller tightened his grip on the ignition ring. "You shoot me, Vincent, this flare hits the deck. Ten gallons of aviation gas go up in half a second. You, me, your little chef, and the snitch all burn together."
"Then we burn," Vincent said, not lowering the barrel by a single millimeter.
I didn't think. I didn't plan.
My eyes swept the darkness to my right. Three feet away, resting on a wooden crate left behind by Mateo’s framing crew, was a heavy four-pound steel mason’s hammer.
I moved with the silence of someone who had spent four years dodging sudden violence in cramped spaces. The fuel fumes burned my lungs, but I didn't cough. While Bobby Miller kept his eyes locked on Vincent’s gun, anticipating a shot, I stepped across the shadows, grabbed the rubberized handle of the hammer, and lunged.
I brought the flat steel face of the hammer down with every ounce of strength in my body—not at his head, but directly across his extended left wrist.
*Crack.*
The bone snapped with a sickening pop. Bobby Miller howled in agonizing shock, his fingers opening involuntarily as the heavy chrome flare dropped harmlessly toward the fuel-soaked floor.
May you like
Before it could strike the stone, Vincent lunged forward, caught the flare in mid-air with his left hand, and shoved the barrel of the Colt .45 hard beneath Miller’s chin, driving the older man backward against the brick wall until his feet dangled six inches off the ground.
"Move," Vincent snarled at the second man on the floor, "and I blow his spine through the masonry."
