Chapter 5 - The Butcher’s Table
The glass of the mudroom window didn't blow out; it spider-webbed into a blinding frost of white fractures under the impact of three high-caliber rounds.
Maeve didn't wait to see if the fourth would punch through the titanium core. She grabbed Declan under the armpits, dug the worn heels of her cheap sneakers into the slick slate, and pulled with a guttural scream that tore her throat raw.
He was nearly two hundred and twenty pounds of dead weight, soaked in freezing rain and blood. Her lower back flared with agony, her muscles screaming, but she dragged him across the service corridor and into the industrial kitchen, kicking the swinging door shut behind them.
The house shuddered. Downstairs, the emergency alarm began to wail—a deep, rhythmic Klaxon that vibrated through the floorboards.
Declan was barely conscious, his head lolling against her knee as she dropped him beside the stainless-steel butcher block. His breath was coming in short, wet gasps. Pink froth was bubbling steadily from the ragged puncture beneath his armpit.
Punctured lung.
Maeve’s mother had been an emergency room triage nurse at Boston City Hospital for twenty years before cancer took her. When you grew up in a triple-decker apartment with a nurse who worked the gang shift, you didn't learn nursery rhymes; you learned how to treat stab wounds with what was in the pantry.
"Stay with me, Declan!" Maeve slapped his cheek hard, leaving a smear of red across his pale skin. "Look at me! Don't you dare close your eyes!"
Declan’s dark eyes rolled down, trying to focus on her face. A cracked, bloody smile touched his lips. "You... you hit hard for a maid..."
"Shut up," Maeve ordered.
She sprinted across the kitchen, ripping open drawers until she found what she needed: plastic cling wrap, a roll of heavy silver duct tape from the utility cabinet, and a clean paring knife. From the top shelf, she grabbed a bottle of high-proof bourbon Roman kept for deglazing sauces.
She dropped to her knees beside him, ripping his flannel shirt open with both hands, sending buttons skittering across the floor.
The wound was ugly. The bullet had entered just below his fifth rib, punching through the muscle and nicking the pleural space. Every time he breathed, air was getting sucked into his chest cavity, crushing his lung from the outside.
She uncorked the bourbon with her teeth, spit the cork across the room, and dumped half the bottle directly into the hole.
Declan let out an ungodly roar, his back arching off the floor, his massive hands grabbing her forearms so tightly she heard her tendons groan. The veins in his neck stood out like thick cords.
"Hold him!" a voice shouted.
Maeve spun around, the knife raised defensively.
Gabriel stood in the kitchen doorway.
His charcoal turtleneck was shredded at the shoulder, soaked in black engine oil and rain. Blood was dripping from a deep gash along his hairline, running into his left eye, but his face was an absolute, terrifying mask of adrenaline. In his hands was an Israeli-made submachine gun, smoking at the muzzle.
"You made it," Maeve breathed.
"They had three cars at the gate," Gabriel said, dropping the empty weapon onto the counter and sliding across the floor on his knees beside his brother. He didn't look at Maeve with suspicion anymore; his eyes were wild, locked on Declan’s graying face. "Declan. Dec, look at me."
"He has a tension pneumothorax," Maeve barked, pushing Gabriel’s hands away. "If I don't vent his chest, his lung collapses and his heart stops in two minutes. Hold his shoulders down!"
Gabriel blinked, stunned for a fraction of a second by the sheer authority in her voice. Then, without a word, he planted his full weight across Declan’s chest, pinning his thrashing brother to the floor.
Maeve folded a square of plastic wrap, slapped it over the bloody hole, and taped it down on three sides, leaving the bottom edge open.
"What is that?" Gabriel demanded.
"A flutter valve," Maeve said, her fingers flying with terrifying precision. "Air escapes when he exhales, but the plastic seals when he breathes in. It keeps the pressure from crushing his heart."
She pressed the tape down hard.
Declan took a massive, rattling gasp. The pink foam stopped bubbling. A long, shuddering wheeze escaped his chest as the trapped air hissed out from beneath the plastic flap.
The color slowly began to seep back into his lips. His grip on Maeve’s arm relaxed, his hand falling limp against the floor.
"He’s stabilizing," Gabriel whispered, looking up at Maeve with an expression that bordered on reverent shock. "Where the hell did you learn to do that?"
"South Boston," Maeve said, wiping sweat and blood from her forehead with the back of a bloody forearm. "Now where is Roman?"
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. The panic in his eyes hardened into cold, lethal iron.
"They boxed his car in on Route 9," Gabriel said, rising to his feet and checking the magazine of a fresh pistol he pulled from the small of his back. "Vincenzo Moretti took him alive. They want the access codes to the Atlantic shipping channels. If Roman doesn't give them up by midnight, they're going to dump his head on our front gate."
"How long do we have?" Maeve asked, standing up.
"Forty minutes," Gabriel said, looking at the heavy kitchen door. Outside, the wail of the security sirens was beginning to stutter as the emergency generator failed. "And the Moretti crew just cut the main power lines at the road. We have six shooters coming up the service drive right now."
Maeve looked at the stove.
The cast-iron skillet was still roaring hot, the butter and garlic she had prepared for the lobster bubbling into a dark, smoking brown syrup. On the prep table sat three full gallons of industrial ammonia and two jugs of concentrated chlorine bleach she had brought up from the laundry to clean the basement drains.
"Gabriel," Maeve said softly.
Gabriel stopped near the door, glancing back at her. "What?"
Maeve reached out and turned the gas burners on the commercial range to maximum. The blue flames roared to life, licking the bottom of the heavy copper hoods.
"You have six shooters outside that door?" Maeve asked, her green eyes reflecting the fire of the stove.
"Yes."
"Do you have gas masks?"
Gabriel froze. His eyes darted from her face to the yellow jugs of bleach and ammonia sitting beside the sink.
A slow, terrifying, utterly psychotic smile spread across his bruised face.
"In the gun safe in the pantry," Gabriel whispered. "Two military-grade M50s."
May you like
Maeve grabbed the first jug of bleach.
"Get them," she said. "And tell Declan to hold his breath. We're going to show the Morettis what South Boston smells like."
