Chapter 8 - The Trap at the Docks
"Take her through the laundry chute," Roman commanded, grabbing Mara by the upper arm and pulling her toward the rear service corridor of the third floor. "It drops into the linen room on the ground floor. There’s a grey utility van parked near the boiler room. The keys are under the driver’s mat. Drive straight to the precinct on South Broad. Don't look back."
"What about you?" Mara cried out, her arms wrapped tightly around Ivy, who had woken up from the noise and was now sobbing silently against her neck, her small face buried in Mara’s hair.
"I’m going to clean my house, Mara," Roman said, his eyes turning into two pieces of black flint as he looked down the long hallway toward the stairs. "Go. Now."
Mara didn't look back. She scrambled through the small wooden hatch of the service chute, holding Ivy against her chest like a shield. The slide down the metal pipe was fast, dark, and smelled of stale starch and bleach. They hit the heavy canvas basket at the bottom with a thud that knocked the wind from her lungs.
She didn't stop to catch her breath. She burst through the boiler room door into the gray, misty morning light. The utility van was exactly where Roman said it would be. She scrambled into the driver’s seat, found the keys beneath the rubber mat, and threw the vehicle into reverse just as two men in dark cashmere coats rounded the corner of the garage.
The drive through the flooding streets of New Orleans was a nightmare of hydroplaning tires and blinding rain. But she didn't go to the precinct on South Broad.
Mara looked in the rearview mirror at Ivy, who was sitting on the floor of the van, clutching her velvet blanket, her eyes wide with a terrifying comprehension.
"We’re going to Algiers Point, Ivy," Mara said, her voice steadying as the survival instinct her grandmother had beaten into her took over. "We’re going to the place where the dirt can't find us."
She drove the van onto the Canal Street ferry, the old iron boat groaning as it pushed through the yellow waters of the Mississippi River toward the West Bank. She parked the vehicle in an abandoned boat repair yard near the levee, walking the remaining three blocks to her grandmother’s old cottage.
The house was small, its white paint peeling under the humidity, its porch supported by rotted cedar posts. But when she pushed the front door open, the scent of lavender was there, thick and permanent, waiting for them like a fortress.
She sat Ivy down on the old kitchen table, opening her grandmother’s journal to the final page. There was a secondary address written in the margin—an old warehouse at Pier Nine that belonged to Foster Dry Cleaning, the company her father had run before it collapsed.
Her phone rang. It wasn't an unknown number this time. It was Roman’s line.
May you like
But the voice on the other end wasn't Roman’s baritone. It was a sharp, nasal purr that belonged to Julian Falco, the younger nephew of the North Side syndicate.
"You have a very pretty daughter, Ms. Ellison," Julian said, his laughter dry through the speaker. "And Roman is currently tied to a chair in his own dining room, bleeding all over his expensive rug. If you want him to see the sunrise, you bring that leather binder to Pier Nine in thirty minutes. Alone."
