Chapter 54

"Hold pressure here, Elias," Raphael ordered, his voice cutting through the tense air of the clinic as he shoved a sterile gauze pad directly into the ragged wound on Marcus’s shoulder. "If this bleeds another minute, he goes into hemorrhagic shock."

Elias dropped to one knee beside them, his large, calloused hand instantly pressing down with absolute, unyielding force over the pad. "Marcus, you stupid bastard. Who did this?"

Marcus hissed through clenched teeth, his face slick with cold sweat as he stared up at the ceiling. "Kovacs... and the rest of the eastern block boys. They took the armory last night. They think you abandoned the throne, Elias. They want the remaining routes back, and they figured a message delivered through my chest would make it clear."

"Kovacs is an idiot with a gun, not a tactician," Elias said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling growl that vibrated in the small room. "He couldn't run a lemonade stand, let alone the eastern routes."

"He doesn't have to be smart if he has numbers," Marcus gasped, coughing up a fine mist of blood that speckled Raphael’s pristine surgical apron. "He's got twenty men moving south tonight. They tracked my car all the way up the coastal highway."

Raphael didn't stop moving his hands, deftly threading a curved needle with synthetic suture material while blood pooled warm and slick around his fingertips. "Marcus, stop talking or you’re going to choke on your own blood. Your subclavian vein is partially torn, and I need absolute stillness to stitch this before it collapses."

"Let him talk, Raphael," Elias countered sharply, his dark eyes locking onto the dying enforcer with cold calculation. "Marcus, give me names. Who else backed Kovacs?"

"Vance... and the supply handlers from the docks," Marcus whispered, his eyes fluttering dangerously close to shutting. "They think you're vulnerable out here playing country doctor. They're coming for the estate, Elias. Tonight."

Raphael yanked the suture tight, tying off the knot with a sharp, practiced flick of his wrist. "The bleeding is controlled, but he’s hypothermic. Elias, we need to get him onto the hydraulic table in the back room and hook him up to the IV line immediately."

Elias grabbed Marcus by the collar and belt, lifting the heavy man effortlessly as if he weighed nothing at all, carrying him toward the inner sanctum while Raphael snatched up the instrument tray. "Move, Marcus. You're not dying on my floor today."

"Drop him on the steel," Raphael instructed, already ripping open an IV saline bag and spiking it with practiced speed. "Strap his arms down. His blood pressure is eighty over fifty. If he crashes, I'm cracking his chest right here."

Marcus groaned as the cold saline hit his veins, his pale eyelids flickering open again. "You... you actually went soft, boss. You're saving my life in a bait shop."

"I'm keeping you alive so you can tell me exactly where Kovacs is hiding his reserves," Elias replied flatly, securing the leather restraints around Marcus's wrists with cold efficiency. "Raphael, stabilize him. I’m going to make a phone call."

Raphael slammed the tourniquet down on Marcus’s arm to draw blood for a rapid panel, his eyes fixed on the digital monitor bleeping steadily against the wall. "Don't leave the building, Elias. If Kovacs’s men tracked Marcus here, they're already closer than you think."

Elias paused by the doorway, his silhouette blocking the harsh fluorescent lights of the back room. "They're about forty miles out if they took the coastal highway, but there's an old logging pass through the ridge. If they know this territory, they could be at the edge of town by midnight."

"Then we have less than two hours to prep," Raphael said, tearing open a fresh pack of antibiotics and injecting them directly into the IV line. "And we can't do it alone. The town council meets at the local diner on Thursdays. Mayor Higgins is probably still there."

"You want to pull the local fishermen into a syndicate war?" Elias challenged, stepping back into the room, his jaw tight. "That’s the exact opposite of why we moved to this rock."

"I'm not asking them to fight a war," Raphael snapped, finally looking up from the monitor, his gaze flashing with cold, uncompromising authority. "I'm telling you that the people in this town know every back road, logging trail, and hidden cove between here and the ridge better than any city enforcer with a GPS. If Kovacs rolls into town, these fishermen will spot them before they even hit the town line."

Marcus let out a weak, wet chuckle from the table. "Good luck with that, doc. They think Elias is just a wealthy recluse with a bad attitude."

"They think he’s the man who set his broken ribs last winter and saved his daughter's hand from an infected net-tear two months ago," Raphael countered, ripping off his blood-stained gloves and tossing them into the biohazard bin. "They trust me. And by extension, they trust the man standing beside me."

Elias stared at Raphael for a long, silent moment, the hard lines of his face softening just fractionally before hardening back into resolve. "Get Marcus stable. I'm going to see the Mayor."

"Take the truck, and take Maeve's old satellite phone from the desk drawer," Raphael ordered, already reaching for a fresh pair of surgical gloves. "If Kovacs's scouts are using radio frequencies, we need to intercept them before they reach the estate."

"I'll be back before the hour is up," Elias said, turning sharply on his heel and disappearing through the clinic doors into the rainy night.

Marcus turned his head slowly on the steel table, his bloodless lips curving into a grim smile. "You really changed him, Doc. The old Elias would have put a bullet in my head for bleeding on his clean floor and walked away."

"The old Elias wasn't smart enough to realize he had something worth protecting," Raphael muttered, adjusting the IV drip rate as the monitor's rhythmic beep filled the quiet room. "Now shut your eyes, Marcus. If you go into cardiac arrest while he's gone, I won't hesitate to crack your ribs all over again."

Twenty minutes later, the heavy front door of the clinic rattled violently, not with the kick of an intruder, but with the steady, familiar knock of heavy work boots on the porch. Raphael drew the hidden sidearm from beneath the counter, his thumb clicking off the safety as he crept toward the curtained doorway.

"It's open," Raphael called out, keeping the barrel pointed low but steady toward the threshold.

The door swung inward, revealing not Elias, but Mayor Higgins, a weathered man in a thick wool coat holding a shotgun broken open over his arm, flanked by three local fishermen carrying heavy flashlights and iron crowbars.

"Evening, Dr. Raphael," Mayor Higgins said calmly, wiping his muddy boots on the clinic's welcome mat as if he were dropping by for a routine checkup. "Elias told us there’s some trash blowing in from the city trying to litter our harbor tonight."

Raphael lowered the weapon slowly, letting out a sharp breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "He reached you fast."

"Elias didn't have to say much," Higgins replied, stepping further into the clinic and casting a sharp glance toward the back room where Marcus lay hooked to the monitors. "We saw three black SUVs take the old logging pass twenty minutes ago without their headlights on. That’s not how tourists drive through our town."

"They're coming for the estate, but they'll stop here first to secure supplies or look for Marcus," Raphael said, stepping out from behind the counter. "We need to set up a triage point and a blockade before they hit the main street."

"Blockade?" Higgins spat, a grim, humorless smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Son, this is a fishing town. We don't do blockades. We drop heavy timber across the logging pass and let the tide take care of whatever’s left on the lower road."

Before Raphael could respond, the satellite phone on the front desk buzzed violently, its harsh digital ring echoing off the bare walls of the clinic. Raphael snatched it up on the second ring, pressing it hard against his ear. "Talk to me."

“Raphael,” Elias’s voice came through the speaker, tight, fast, and underscored by the distant roar of idling truck engines. “They bypassed the ridge. They’re coming down the main coastal road right now. Four vehicles. Heavily armed.”

"Where are you?" Raphael demanded, his eyes locking onto Mayor Higgins, who was already cocking his shotgun with a heavy, metallic clack.

“I’m half a mile out, cutting them off at the old lighthouse bend,” Elias said, the sound of wind and rain howling fiercely in the background. “Get everyone out of the street. Kovacs isn't here to talk terms. He brought enough firepower to burn the whole damn town down to get to me.”

Raphael slammed the phone down onto the counter, his clinical detachment fracturing instantly as the reality of the impending clash closed in around them. "Mayor, your men need to fall back to the town hall. Elias is engaging them at the bend."

Higgins didn't budge an inch, his weathered face hardening like granite as he pumped his shotgun firmly. "Doctor, you patched up my grandson's leg when the county hospital turned us away for lack of insurance. This isn't just Elias's fight anymore. This is our town."

Before Raphael could argue, a distant, concussive boom echoed from the direction of the coastal highway, shaking the front windows of the clinic so hard the glass spider-webbed outward in a flurry of cracks.

"That wasn't a tire blowout," Higgins muttered, leveling his weapon toward the shattered front door. "That was a grenade."

Raphael grabbed his heavy trauma pack off the shelf, throwing the canvas strap over his shoulder with lethal precision. "Then let's go. Because if Elias takes a hit out there, I’m the only one who can put him back together."