Chapter 39 - The Scent of Burning Cedar
The heat broke on the third night, bringing with it a sudden, suffocating stillness.
There was no wind. The surface of the sound was flat as black obsidian, reflecting the sliver of a crescent moon that hung low over the eastern barrier islands. In the marsh, even the frogs had fallen silent.
I woke at three in the morning to the smell of smoke.
It wasn't the sweet, resinous scent of oak from my stove, nor the crisp tang of marsh grass burning in a seasonal brushfire. It was the sharp, acrid reek of treated timber and diesel fuel.
I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart instantly surging into my throat.
Through the bedroom window, the southern horizon was glowing with an unnatural, pulsating orange light.
I threw on my boots and a flannel shirt, grabbed the heavy iron flashlight from the nightstand, and ran out onto the porch.
Out on the water, half a mile down the creek toward Julian’s boatyard, a column of thick, black smoke was rising into the night sky, illuminated from beneath by violent tongues of roaring flame.
"Julian!" I screamed, the sound swallowed by the dead air.
I jumped into the truck, tore down the gravel lane, the tires kicking up stones that clattered against the undercarriage like gunfire. My mind raced in terrifying loops. Julian’s boatyard held three hundred gallons of marine fuel and four dry-docked wooden trawlers. If the fire reached the fuel shed, the entire spit would be wiped clean off the map.
I reached the boatyard in less than three minutes.
The workshop was completely engulfed. Massive cedar beams were groaning under the intense heat, collapsing into the interior in showers of golden sparks. In the driveway, Julian was desperately dragging a high-pressure water hose toward the fuel tanks, his face blackened with soot, his shirt soaked in sweat and water.
"Julian!" I yelled, leaping from the truck and grabbing the secondary hose connected to the salt-water pump.
"Get back, Clara!" he coughed, his voice ragged from the smoke. "The pump's losing pressure! Someone cut the intake line!"
"What?"
"The line was cut with an axe!" he shouted, turning the nozzle to spray down the exposed side of the diesel reservoir. "This wasn't an accident! Somebody threw a road flare through the shop window!"
Before I could process the words, the sound of a vehicle engine roared from the dark tree line behind the boatyard.
A pair of high-beam headlights slammed on, blinding us with blinding, halogen light. The engine revved—a heavy, supercharged V8—and the vehicle tore out from the pine shadows, accelerating violently down the narrow dirt track toward the county highway.
As the truck tore past the glow of the burning workshop, I caught a fleeting glimpse through the driver’s side window.
It wasn't a stranger.
Sitting in the passenger seat, her face pale, distorted with a hysterical, manic grin, was Hannah.
And behind the wheel was a man with a heavy, scarred jaw, wearing a dark leather jacket—the distinct, brutal silhouette of the Montreal syndicate collectors Eleanor claimed she had bought off.
Hannah hadn't accepted the plea deal. She had never intended to do community service. She had run to the only people she knew who had more guns than the state of North Carolina.
"Clara!" Julian’s shout pulled me back as a support timber collapsed inside the shop with a deafening, explosive roar. "Help me with the valve! Now!"
I lunged forward, throwing my entire weight against the iron wheel of the cutoff valve, shutting off the flow of diesel before the fire could leap the gap. We fought the flames for two agonizing hours, coughing, burning our hands, dousing the embers with buckets of brackish water until the volunteer fire truck from town finally rumbled down the lane, sirens wailing against the gray dawn.
The workshop was a charred skeleton. The air was thick with the stench of ruin.
Julian collapsed onto an overturned crate, his hands blistered, his face covered in soot, staring at the smoking ashes of the business his grandfather had built.
I stood beside him, my chest heaving, the pocket knife he had given me heavy and cold in my jeans.
The war hadn't ended in the Richmond boardroom.
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Eleanor had lied to me. She hadn't bought the debt to save the family name. She had used the Vance liquidation to settle her own offshore accounts, leaving the Canadian syndicate holding an empty bag—and Hannah had led them straight to the only Vance who was still standing out in the open.
***
