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“He’ll have other guys,” Susan said. “He might have to reach out to other distributors to get them, but there are always soldiers who are willing to make a name for themselves by doing the dirty work for a boss as powerful as Cline. The guys we took out just leave open spaces for these men to prove themselves. If you ask me, the first order of business for Cline will be getting rid of those men who are holed up and injured.”

“He’s going to kill his guys just because they got hurt?” I looked at Susan. I remembered Cline’s words: So what does a guy do when all his men have proved to be useless to him?

“I think you can bet on that,” Susan said. “When your men fail you, you clean house.”





CHAPTER SEVENTY





“DRUG LORDS DON’T offer health insurance,” Susan said. “While the injured men are out of action, they’ll need to be paid to keep quiet or they’ll be easy pickings for cops who want to question them, make offers.”

I gripped my head, squeezed my eyes shut. Cline was right. I hadn’t won; I’d just put more people in his firing line.

“You don’t know this for sure,” I said to Susan. “You’re just guessing.”

“Think about it.” She shrugged. “We’ve got Turner and Russ approaching the house in the middle of the night, armed and hostile. If we can’t prove attempted murder, we can at least go for weapons charges, assault, breaking and entering. With their records, which are likely to be extensive, they’ll do serious time. Then there are Bones and Simbo, who will be charged with kidnapping, assault, and attempted murder for what they did to Clay. Some or all of them will trade what they know about Cline for a better deal.”

“They could get a lot of time off for being helpful,” Malone mused. “They could argue that Cline intimidated them and coerced them into coming for us. They might get by with no jail time, or they could make a play for a minimum-security prison and witness protection after.”

“But surely Cline’s not going to come for them himself,” I said. “He’s a coward. He hasn’t stepped out from behind his thugs since we’ve known him.”

“He hasn’t had to,” Nick said. “But if we’re right, these guys are just liabilities now. They better have security on their hospital-room doors. And not the local cops either. We know they’re dirty.”

The table fell silent. A group of young women were crowded around the old jukebox nearby, laughing and play-fighting over the music choices. Their happiness stood in stark contrast to the mood of the people around me.

“There are going to be more deaths,” I said. I felt the truth of it in my bones. “Unless we stop Cline ourselves somehow, those four men are on the chopping block.”





CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE





NICK AND SUSAN ordered dinner, but I couldn’t eat. I stood on the deck outside the bar and looked at the lights of Gloucester and the soft slope of the hill toward the water where the blinking port lights guided men home from the sea. I thought about Doc’s words, his warnings about me suddenly removing the master of pain from the town and leaving the addicts who relied on him in the lurch. There would be men on the boats who used Cline’s products to get through the relentless hours and backbreaking work of lobster and crab fishing off the coast, the brutal life they led trying to feed their families on the shore. How many people would be left desperate and sick if I took Cline out of the equation? And how long would it be before someone else took his place, preying on the young, the hurting, the hungry of our town with his deadly cocktails? I was deep in my thoughts when Malone appeared beside me, his face a welcome light cutting through my brooding.

“I don’t know what you’re doing sulking out here,” he said. “I’d be in there with that lady if I were you.”

“Who? Susan?”

“‘Who? Susan?’” he repeated, imitating me. He laughed. “I’ve seen you looking at her, Bill. I’ve seen her looking at you. I’ve been dodging fireworks across the table all night.”

I felt heat creeping into my collar. “Is it really that obvious? I guess Nick must know, then. Maybe they all know.”

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t—” I laughed, feeling stupid. “I don’t know! I’ve kissed her once. With everything that’s been going on, I haven’t even had the chance to ask her if … if it was just a random moment or … ” I opened my hands. “She said she’d wanted me to. But what does that mean? Was she talking about right then or has she been thinking about it for longer?”

“Look at you.” Malone grinned. “You can’t even talk about it!”

“I can’t talk about it,” I agreed, trying to cool my cheeks with the palms of my hands. He leaned on the rail beside me, and for a moment we looked just like we had years ago, two patrol cops marking time at the end of a night, watching boats in the city harbor.

“You remember that bomb threat we caught at the Meritage?” he asked, already grinning at the memory. I did. Malone and I had been newly assigned partners on patrol, tasked with assisting the Secret Service for the visit of an ex-president to Boston for Veterans Day. The president had been rushed out of the restaurant halfway through his spaghetti marinara when someone spotted a brown paper bag another diner had left under one of the nearby tables. A bomb threat had been called in to the president’s hotel that morning, so the Secret Service agents were taking no chances. The entire building and half the waterfront were evacuated. Malone and I were told to go up to the restaurant and check that everyone was out, and like an idiot, I got curious about the package and decided to see if I could get a glimpse of what was inside the bag.