Chapter 2 - The Silent Trail
The rain began again as the black Mercedes sedan slid through the iron gates of the mansion. It was a heavy, warm rain that did not cool the air but turned the streets into slick, black mirrors. Roderick sat in the back seat, his face shadowed, his hands resting on his knees.
Beside him, Domino sat on the leather seat. The cat had slipped into the car before Cyrus could shut the door, and Roderick had not had the heart to throw him out. The animal seemed to belong to this night—black, silent, and smelling of old gardens and damp earth.
"She left twenty minutes ago," Cyrus said from the driver's seat. "The blue sedan took the expressway down to Claiborne, then cut through the underpass. She’s heading deep into the lower end."
Roderick watched the city change through the tinted glass. The grand, columned mansions of the Garden District faded into the narrow, crowded shotguns of the Tremé, and then into the dark, decaying industrial skeletons of the Ninth Ward. Here, the streetlights were broken, their glass shattered by rocks or bullets. The only illumination came from the green and red neon of cheap liquor stores and the occasional barrel fire where men huddled under blue plastic tarps to escape the downpour.
This was the New Orleans most tourists never saw—the New Orleans that Roderick controlled but rarely visited. It was a place of hunger and rust.
"Pull over here," Roderick ordered as they approached a dead-end street lined with rusted corrugated metal warehouses.
"The transponder is active three blocks ahead," Cyrus said, dimming the headlights. "Near the old cotton press."
"We walk," Roderick said.
He stepped out of the car. The humidity hit him like a wet wool blanket, carrying the stench of stagnant river water and diesel fuel. He didn't wear a coat, only his dark suit and his leather gloves. Domino hopped out after him, his paws making no sound on the wet gravel.
They moved through the shadows of the abandoned buildings. Roderick’s eyes, trained by years of hunting in the dark, picked out the details of the street. A discarded syringe in a puddle. A broken crate from a shipping line he owned. A dog barking somewhere in the distance, its voice flat and hollow.
Up ahead, parked in the weeds beside a collapsed brick wall, was the blue sedan.
The hood was still warm. The driver’s side door was unlocked.
"There," Cyrus whispered, pointing toward a small, two-story wood-frame house tucked between two massive concrete warehouses.
The house was ancient, its gray cypress siding warped by a century of Mississippi River moisture. The windows were covered with thick, dark curtains that allowed no light to escape. But as Roderick approached, he could see the faint, yellow flicker of a lantern through a gap in the front door’s rotting frame.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out his weapon—a cold, silver revolver with an ivory grip that had belonged to his father. He did not cock it. In his world, the sound of a gun cocking was a negotiation, and tonight, he was not negotiating.
Domino ran ahead, slipping through a gap in the rotting porch stairs.
Roderick stepped onto the porch. The old wood groaned slightly under his weight, but the sound was swallowed by the steady roar of the rain on the tin roof of the warehouse next door.
He reached out and pushed the door.
May you like
It was not locked.
It swung open with a slow, heavy creak, revealing a narrow hallway that smelled intensely of rubbing alcohol, boiled vinegar, and the metallic tang of dried blood.
