Devil's Due: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 0) by Andrew Warren Page B

Satra's investigation?
    The sirens were just around the corner now.   Caine took a few steps backwards, then turned and walked into the thick darkness that surrounded the burning building.   Within a few seconds, he was gone, lost in the shadows.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    Caine rolled the heavy wood door of the boathouse open and looked inside.   Behind the door, darkness stared back at him.   The pier had no lights of any kind, and only the moon illuminated the grounds after the sun set.   At the moment, the moon was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, leaving the boathouse shrouded in darkness.
    He had rented the boathouse under an assumed name, and he had used a cut out from one of the local street gangs to pay the owner in cash for the year.   There was nothing to tie the property back to him.   Still, he clicked on a small Maglite and swung the brilliant, tiny beam through the interior, checking every shadowed nook and cranny for intruders.
    The dark, musty wood shack was empty.   He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.   Taking a length of chain that hung from the inner wall, he looped it around the door handle and slid a heavy duty combination lock through the chain links.   He was confident no one would be able to enter without making enough noise to warn him first.
    An old fishing boat sat in the center of the boathouse, upright and perched on a single-unit dry rack.   It was about twenty feet long and looked to be in terrible shape.   A lumpy crust of barnacles coated its hull, and years of salt corrosion and neglect had stripped away the paint. It would have cost a small fortune to refit the vessel and make her sea-worthy again.   But Caine didn't care about that.
    He had no intention of ever putting this rotting carcass of a boat in the water.
    Caine grabbed a small utility ladder and dragged it over to the edge of the boat.   He climbed up the ladder and hopped onto the main deck.   The floorboards flexed and groaned under his feet, but they supported his weight.
    He stepped into the small cabin at the stern of the boat.   The beam from his flashlight filled the cabin with a soft, warm glow.   Kneeling, he felt along the floorboards until he located the tiny pressure plate he had installed between two of the boards.   He pressed the catch, until he heard it click, and felt one of the floorboards lift a fraction of an inch.
    Using his fingernails, he was able to pry it up, revealing a metal door, hidden beneath the floor.   He removed several more floorboards, each one exposing more of the metal hatch.   Finally, he removed the last board, and a small numeric keypad came into view, mounted next to a thick metal handle.   The object was a safe.   Its door faced up towards him.
    Caine typed a series of letters and numbers into the keypad.   A small light next to the safe's handle turned green.   Caine grabbed the handle and pulled.
    The heavy metal door lifted up, revealing its contents.   The glow of the halogen bulb glinted off the metal stocks and barrels of a small arsenal of modern weaponry.   A variety of pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and knives were neatly arranged in the safe, along with several other bags of supplies and an assortment of ammunition.
    Caine had stashed the equipment here in case his old friends at the CIA ever came looking for him.   Now, he would put it to use for another purpose.
    He began to select weapons and lift them from the safe, laying them out on a small workbench that ran along one side of the cabin.   After a few minutes, he stood back, and surveyed the gear on the bench.
    First up were a pair of SIG P226 pistols chambered in 9mm.   Next to them sat an H&K MP7 submachine gun with folding forward grip and retractable shoulder stock.   Several extended capacity magazines were stacked next to the weapon.   Finally, he set a Spyderco Paramilitary 2 folding knife with a blackened steel blade down on the bench, along with a sharpening stone.
    He