Chapter 5 - The Back Alleys of Cedar Hollow
The rear exit of Miller’s Bakery led out onto a narrow gravel loading dock surrounded by towering stacks of dried firewood and empty flour sacks buried under three inches of fresh snow.
"Out," Rocco commanded, shoving Maeve toward the open door. "Move."
"My grandfather's records—the safe is inside—"
"If you go back in there, you won't live long enough to open it," Rocco snapped, his eyes darting up and down the dark alleyway.
A rusted blue Ford pickup truck sat idling by the bulk bins—one of the delivery trucks Maeve used for morning runs, its engine chugging clouds of white exhaust into the frozen night air. The keys were still hanging from the ignition toggle on the steering column.
Rocco didn't hesitate. He grabbed Maeve around the waist, lifted her effortlessly off her feet, and dumped her into the passenger seat of the truck before she could argue. He vaulted into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut, and threw the manual shifter into reverse with a violent crunch of gears.
The truck lurched backward, its rear tires spinning furiously against the ice before biting into the gravel, spraying frozen shale against the brick wall of the bakery just as the back door of the shop flew open with a loud bang.
Victor Cole stood in the doorway, a silenced automatic pistol already raised in his right hand.
Puff. Puff.
Two suppressed rounds punched through the tailgate of the Ford with a dry, metallic thip-thip, the bullets burying themselves in the dashboard inches between Rocco and Maeve’s knees. Shards of plastic rained down over the floor mats.
Rocco stomped the accelerator to the floor. The old V8 engine roared like an angry bear, the truck fishtailing violently into the narrow alleyway as he cranked the steering wheel hard to the left, spraying snow and mud into the darkness.
They rocketed out onto Maple Street, tires screeching against the iced asphalt, heading away from the town center and straight toward the winding logging roads that climbed up into the jagged, unmapped timberlands of the ridge.
Beside him, Maeve sat rigid, her hands gripping the edges of the dashboard so hard her knuckles were bone-white. She wasn't screaming. Small-town resilience was a hard metal forged in winters that killed livestock and broke pipes; she was terrified, but her mind was already working the angles.
"Where are you going?" she shouted over the screaming roar of the transmission. "That road goes up to the old logging camp! It's a dead end in the winter—the state hasn't plowed past the old quarry since November!"
"Good," Rocco said, his eyes locked on the twisting beam of the headlights cutting through the falling snow. "That means he won't be able to turn around either."
"You're insane," she breathed, staring at the sharp profile of his jaw in the dashboard light—the hard line of his cheek, the cold, calculating focus in his eyes. "You're a criminal. You're one of them—the kind of men my father warned me about before he took off."
"Your father wasn't running from himself, Maeve," Rocco said flatly, shifting down into second gear as the truck took a hairpin turn with a terrifying slide. "He was running from the same men who are behind us right now."
Maeve froze, the blood draining from her face entirely. "What are you talking about?"
"Ray Kesler—the driver who died last week? Before he worked for my family, he drove supply trucks for the union up here in the nineties. He knew your father. He knew about the ledger your grandfather kept hidden behind the bakery oven."
Maeve stared at him, her mouth parting in shock. "My grandfather's ledger? That was just old receipts—tax records from the lumber days—"
"It wasn't tax records," Rocco said, his voice dropping into a cold, lethal cadence. "It was the distribution log for every dollar skimmed from the West Virginia coal trusts by my uncle Gino thirty years ago, before he moved his operations to Boston. Your grandfather had the receipts. Ray helped him hide them. And my uncle has spent twenty years trying to find them so he can bury anyone who knows the source of his original capital."
The truck bounced violently over a cattle guard, its suspension groaning as they climbed higher into the dark, towering pines of the mountain. Behind them, two yellow pinpricks of light appeared around the hairpin turn below—headlights tracking their climb with terrifying, methodical persistence.
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Victor Cole wasn't losing them. He was hunting them.
And as the snow began to fall heavier, wrapping the mountain in a blinding white shroud, Rocco knew they were running out of road, out of time, and out of miracles.
