Chapter 7 - THE OLD MILL BY THE WATER
The old timber mill sat like a rusted iron beast on the edge of the stagnant canal.
Rotting wooden piers jutted into the black water like broken teeth.
Weeds pushed through cracked asphalt, and corrugated tin rattled in the freezing autumn wind.
Adrian parked the stolen Charger inside an overgrown loading bay, completely concealed beneath drooping willow branches and rusted sheet metal.
He cut the engine.
The sudden silence was deafening.
Only the sound of rain tapping against the tin roof remained.
Adrian leaned his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes for three long seconds.
His breathing was shallow.
Emma opened her door and stepped out into the damp, sawdust-scented air.
She walked around to the driver's side.
She pulled Adrian's door open.
"Come on," she said gently. "Before you bleed out on stolen vinyl."
Adrian opened his eyes.
A faint, tired smile touched his lips.
"Demanding."
"Practical," she countered, offering him her arm.
He took it.
He was heavy, his strength waning as the adrenaline drained from his system.
She helped him through a low service door into the mill's former drafting office.
The room was remarkably dry.
Yellowed architectural drawings from the 1980s were still pinned to corkboards on the walls.
An old cast-iron woodstove stood in the corner, flanked by a stack of dry oak logs.
Emma found an antique kerosene lamp on a metal workbench.
She struck a match.
Warm amber light flickered to life, pushing the deep shadows back against the rough-hewn pine walls.
She helped Adrian sit on an old leather sofa that smelled of dry wool and cedar.
She knelt in front of him.
"Take off the jacket," she instructed.
Adrian peeled the ruined charcoal wool from his broad shoulders.
His white dress shirt was soaked with blood from his left collarbone to his bicep.
Emma unbuttoned his shirt with trembling fingers.
His chest was sculpted, scarred by past violence, skin pale and cold to the touch.
A deep, jagged furrow had torn through the meat of his left shoulder.
The bleeding had slowed, but the edges were angry and red.
"I need water and clean cloth," Emma murmured.
"There's an emergency supply chest beneath the floorboards behind the stove," Adrian said, his voice raspy.
Emma blinked, looking at him in shock.
"How do you know that?"
"Every old industrial facility along the canal was part of my grandfather's bootlegging network in 1932," Adrian explained, leaning his head against the sofa cushions.
"We bought this mill thirty years ago under a blind trust."
"You... you own this place?"
"Your grandfather leased the land from mine for a dollar a year, Emma."
Emma sat back on her heels, stunned by the invisible threads tying their lives together.
"Our families have known each other for ninety years?"
"Your grandfather was an honest craftsman," Adrian said softly.
"My family protected his lumber shipments from the South Side syndicates."
"He built the mahogany tables in my father's boardroom."
Emma shook her head in disbelief.
She stood up, walked to the stove, and pried up the loose pine floorboard.
Inside sat an airtight military surplus footlocker.
She opened the latches.
Inside were bottles of medical-grade alcohol, sterile bandages, suture kits, antibiotics, and two sealed bottles of aged bourbon.
She carried the medical kit to the sofa.
She poured bourbon over a clean gauze pad.
"This is going to hurt," she warned.
"I'm familiar with pain," Adrian said.
She pressed the pad firmly against the wound.
Adrian didn't scream.
He didn't pull away.
He simply clamped his jaw shut, his neck muscles corded like steel cables, and exhaled slowly through his nose.
His hand reached out and gripped her knee.
His fingers were burning hot.
Emma cleaned the wound with meticulous, gentle care, her touch surprisingly steady.
She threaded a curved suture needle with sterile nylon.
"You've done this before?" Adrian asked, watching her face in the lamplight.
"My brother raced motocross," she replied softly.
"He broke forty bones before he turned twenty."
"You learn how to close skin when you can't afford the emergency room co-pay."
She placed seven neat, tight stitches across the torn muscle.
Adrian watched her hands.
He watched the furrow of her brow, the concentration in her dark eyes, the soft curve of her lips.
"You shouldn't be here, Emma," he whispered.
"I know."
"You should be in an office arguing about olive sofas."
"The sofa looked like a radioactive squash," she retorted, tying off the final knot with surgical scissors.
She taped a thick pad of sterile gauze over his shoulder.
She leaned back on her knees, wiping her brow with the back of her forearm.
Her face was smeared with dirt and smoke.
Her hair was a wild tangle of dark curls.
Adrian reached up with his uninjured right hand.
His thumb traced the line of her jawline, resting softly against her cheek.
Emma stopped breathing.
The quiet inside the old mill was absolute.
"You saved my life twice tonight," Adrian said, his voice deep, gravelly, and full of raw emotion.
"First with sesame noodles."
"Then with a ventilation shaft."
"I was just trying not to get shot," she murmured, unable to look away from his dark eyes.
"No," Adrian said softly.
"You stayed."
"Most people run when the shadows get too close."
"You fought."
He leaned forward slightly.
The scent of bourbon and cedar enveloped them.
Emma didn't pull back.
Her hand came up to rest over his warm knuckles against her cheek.
May you like
Outside, the heavy thunder rolled across Lake Michigan, shaking the ancient timbers of the mill.
And then, from the canal outside, the low, rhythmic throb of a marine diesel engine vibrated through the floorboards.
