Chapter 10 - The West Pier Ambush
The rain had turned into a blinding, horizontal sheet of gray sleet by the time Arthur hauled himself out of the basement hatch and sprinted toward his dented sedan parked in the gravel driveway. The vehicle's engine sputtered twice before catching with a desperate, metallic wheeze. He threw the car into reverse, spraying gravel across the lawn, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator.
The drive down to the west pier took fourteen minutes of heart-stopping terror, navigating unlit coastal roads with his headlights cut to avoid detection. When he finally coasted the sedan to a halt behind a rusted shipping container near the old cannery docks, the salt-heavy air smelled intensely of rotting kelp and diesel exhaust.
A single halogen lightbulb swung violently in the wind above the rotting wooden loading dock, casting erratic beams across the black, churning waters of the bay. Moored to the rotting pylons was a weathered white yacht rocking aggressively against the swell.
Arthur killed the engine, sliding silently out of the car door. He kept low against the rusted corrugated metal of the shipping containers, his ruined grey suit soaked through to his skin, shivering violently from the bone-chilling coastal wind.
Through a gap in the stacked cargo crates, he spotted them.
Marcus stood near the gangplank of the yacht, holding a thick rope line in one hand while smoking a cigarette. Two syndicate thugs stood nearby, their bulky frames silhouetted against the harsh amber deck lights. And sitting huddled together on a wooden pallet near the edge of the pier were Leo and Maya, shivering violently in their damp clothes, wrapped in a coarse wool blanket.
"Daddy!" Maya shrieked suddenly, catching sight of Arthur darting between the containers.
Marcus spun around instantly, his hand dropping to the holster at his belt with terrifying speed. "Get him!" he roared to the two thugs.
Arthur didn't hesitate. He charged out from behind the containers just as the first thug lunged toward him. Ducking under a wild haymaker, Arthur drove his fist upward with every ounce of remaining adrenaline into the man's solar plexus. The thug gasped, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed hard onto the splintered wooden planks of the dock.
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The second thug drew a heavy combat knife, flashing the steel blade under the swinging halogen light as he lunged forward, slashing a vicious arc through the freezing air that narrowly missed Arthur’s throat by a fraction of an inch.
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