Chapter 4 - The Safehouse On The Coast
Forty-eight hours later, the rain was coming down in long, gray sheets over the coastal cliffs of Point Harbor, thirty miles north of the city.
Detective Miller's personal sanctuary was a small, weather-beaten wooden house sitting on a rocky bluff overlooking the dark Atlantic Ocean. It was a lonely place, smelling of salt, cedar wood, and old tobacco. It was the home of a man who had buried his wife ten years ago and had spent the decade since surrounded only by cold case files and memories.
Bruno sat by the floor-to-ceiling living room window, his nose almost touching the cold glass, watching the dark waves crash against the black rocks below.
His rear hip had been wrapped in a fresh white bandage by a trusted veterinary surgeon Miller had paid out of his own pocket. The dog moved with a slight limp, but his strength was rapidly returning.
Miller sat in an old leather armchair near the stone fireplace, a glass of bourbon in his hand and an encrypted police laptop resting on his knees.
The news on the screen was chaotic.
Following the failed assassination attempt in the hospital room, the Marcone family had descended into full-scale civil war. Tony's loyalists, led by an old-school street captain named Paulie "The Bear" Varga, had launched a ruthless purge of Marco Rossi's faction. Two warehouses in the railyard district had been burned to the ground; three of Marco's top lieutenants had been found dead in an abandoned quarry.
Marco Rossi had gone into deep hiding, protected by a small army of hired mercenaries and the rival Moretti crew.
The phone on the coffee table buzzed.
Miller picked it up. "Yeah?"
"It's Tony," the voice on the other end was rough, hollowed out by pain, but clear as a bell.
"You should still be in the ICU, Marcone," Miller said, taking a sip of his drink.
"I left the hospital an hour ago," Tony replied flatly. "I'm at my estate in the hills. The doctors gave me enough painkillers to knock out a horse, but I'm standing."
"Marco is cornered, Tony. The FBI is issuing an arrest warrant for him in the morning based on the forensics we pulled off that suppressed pistol."
"The feds won't find him," Tony said, his tone dropping into a icy, terrifying register. "He's at the old grain silo near the north docks. It's the only property he owns that isn't under his real name. He's preparing to board a cargo ship heading to South America at midnight."
Miller rubbed his face with his hand. "Don't do this, Tony. Let us take him down. You do this, and I'll have to put out a warrant for you too."
"He tried to kill my dog, Miller," Tony said simply. "He tried to put a bullet in the only thing in this world that never lied to me. The law doesn't have a sentence heavy enough for that."
There was a long silence on the line.
Beside the window, Bruno suddenly turned his head. His ears perked up straight, his dark nostrils flaring as he caught a subtle scent on the air draft coming through the floor vents.
A quiet growl began to build in his chest.
Miller caught the movement in his peripheral vision. "Bruno?"
Before Miller could stand up, the front living room window blew inward in a massive shower of glass, wood splinters, and blinding light.
A flashbang grenade detonated in the center of the hardwood floor.
BANG-FLASH!
The force of the explosion threw Miller backward over his armchair, his ears ringing with a deafening screech, his vision rendered completely white.
Through the smoke and shattered glass, four men in black tactical gear and heavy ski masks stormed through the ruined window frame, their short-barreled automatic rifles raised.
Leading them was Marco Rossi.
"Find the dog!" Marco roared through the smoke, his face twisted in psychotic fury. "Kill the dog! I want his head on Tony's front porch before midnight!"
One of the masked mercenaries stepped forward, his rifle pointed at Miller, who was struggling on the floor to draw his service revolver from his holster.
"Move and you die, cop!" the mercenary yelled.
From out of the dense smoke above the fireplace, a black bullet of muscle and fur dropped from the ceiling rafters.
Bruno had jumped from the top of the stone mantle.
He slammed onto the mercenary's shoulders, bringing the heavily armed man down onto the splintered floorboards with immense force. The rifle went off, sending a burst of wild rounds into the wooden ceiling beams.
"Shoot it! Shoot the damn dog!" Marco screamed, pulling a nickel-plated pistol from his belt.
Bruno turned his gaze toward Marco.
Despite the smoke, despite the blinding flashes, despite the agonizing pain in his healing hip, the dog recognized the voice that had ordered the ambush on the dark avenue.
He launched himself across the room.
Marco fired twice in blind panic.
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One bullet tore through the flesh of Bruno's front shoulder, but the dog didn't stop. He didn't even slow down. The momentum of ninety pounds of pure, unadulterated vengeance slammed directly into Marco's chest.
They both crashed through the low wooden railing of the back deck, falling six feet down onto the wet, rocky ground below in the pouring rain.
