Chapter 11 - The Glassworks at Midnight
The green Crown Coach slipped onto the back logging roads, running without headlights beneath the cover of the dense forest canopy. Arthur sat in the passenger well with a heavy shotgun across his knees, while Thomas drove by memory, his hands familiar with every curve and frost heave in the forgotten county asphalt.
In the back, Lily was fast asleep on a pile of wool blankets, clutching the small brass washer Arthur had given her like a treasured coin.
""The Glassworks,"" Thomas said quietly, his eyes fixed on the dim path ahead. ""That’s what she meant by the glass house.""
""Built in 1912,"" Arthur murmured, checking the chamber of his weapon. ""Covered four acres of the waterfront. Marcus used to use the basement boiler rooms as an emergency union archive. He knew every ventilation shaft and storm drain under that floor. If he’s hiding there, they can't flush him out without leveling the structure.""
""That's why they need Lily,"" Thomas said, the pieces locking into place with terrible clarity. ""Marcus won't come out for his own life. He won't even come out to save the evidence. But he will come out if he hears his daughter cry.""
They crested the final ridge overlooking Blackwood. Below them lay the decaying skeleton of the industrial district. Dominating the shoreline was the colossal silhouette of the old glass manufacturing plant—a cathedral of rusted iron framing and thousands of shattered glass panes reflecting the distant city lights like jagged mirrors.
Blackwood was completely quiet, save for the rhythmic foghorn sounding out in the bay. Around the perimeter of the Glassworks, Thomas counted three idling vehicles, their parking lights glowing like predatory eyes in the industrial gloom.
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""We can't drive through the front gates,"" Thomas said, easing the vintage bus into the deep shadows of an abandoned rail loading dock. ""They'll shoot the tires out before we cross the tracks.""
""We don't use the gates,"" Arthur replied, pointing his pipe toward a rusted steel culvert pipe opening into the drainage ditch beside the road. ""Marcus built an overflow tunnel thirty years ago. It comes up right inside the furnace floor.""
