Chapter 5 - The Safehouse in the Pines
For forty miles, neither of them spoke.
The interior of the Mercedes was a luxury oasis of dark leather, heated seats, and the soft, blue glow of the dashboard instrument panel. Aubrey sat curled in the passenger seat, the climate control blowing warm air across her shivering limbs, though the chill inside her bones had nothing to do with the weather. She stared down at her hands. They were stained with black coffee soot and a small smudge of Victor’s blood near her wrist.
Beside her, Leo drove with a calm, mechanical precision. His right hand remained on the steering wheel, while his left hand pressed a clean white handkerchief against a shallow graze on his temple that he hadn't mentioned.
"You're shaking," he said finally, his voice regular, as if they were returning from a late-night dinner party rather than an execution attempt.
"I... I burned a man," Aubrey whispered, her voice trembling. "I threw the pot. I heard his skin."
"You saved my life," Leo said simply. He didn't look at her; his eyes remained on the dark, tree-lined highway ahead. "If you hadn't thrown that coffee, Victor would have put two rounds in my skull before I could reach the piece. You didn't start the fire, Aubrey. You just redirected the heat."
"Who are you?" she asked, turning her head to look at his profile. "The men... they called you Leo. They said you ran the city."
"My name is Leo Vance," he said. "And the men who came tonight work for Carmine Marcone. Carmine used to be my underboss. He thinks because I’m getting older, I’ve gotten soft. He thought he could catch me on my weekly trip to visit my mother's grave in the valley. He was wrong."
He turned the heavy steering wheel, guiding the car off the state highway onto a narrow, unpaved gravel road that wound deep into a dense forest of white pines. The branches hung low, scraping against the armored roof of the car like skeletal fingers.
At the end of the road sat a long, low-slung cabin built of dark timber and fieldstone. It had no lights, no windows facing the road, and looked completely abandoned. But as the Mercedes approached, a massive steel garage door concealed by artificial ivy slid upward, swallowing the car into a brightly lit subterranean bunker.
The door rolled down behind them, sealing them into a room filled with spare tires, gun racks, and stacks of wooden crates labeled in cyrillic text.
Leo turned off the engine. The silence inside the bunker was absolute.
"This is the clearing," Leo said, turning to look at her. "Nobody knows about this place except my attorney and my driver, and my driver is currently dead in a ditch off Route 9. You're safe here, Aubrey."
May you like
She opened her door, her legs shaking so badly she had to hold onto the leather seat to keep from collapsing onto the concrete floor. Leo walked around the car, his movements steady despite the long night. He reached out, his large hand supporting her elbow with a surprisingly gentle touch.
"Come inside," he said. "We need to look at that heel, and then we need to talk about your new salary."
