Chapter 3
Blizzard had been hunting the same military history for six months.
Mountain Warfare: Lessons from the Hindu Kush had been out of print for a decade, too obscure for major retailers, too specialized for most used shops. He'd tracked copies to three different stores across the South Side without luck.
Callahan's Books in Bridgeport was his fourth attempt.
He pushed through the door and stopped just inside, letting his eyes adjust to the dim interior. Two floors of chaos—shelves crammed at odd angles, stacks of paperbacks on every horizontal surface, the particular dust-and-paper smell of a place where books came to live forever.
His kind of mess.
A cat watched him from a shelf marked MYSTERY, orange fur and suspicious green eyes. Blizzard met its stare without blinking. The cat looked away first.
"Can I help you find something?"
The voice came from behind a counter stacked with more books than seemed structurally sound. The woman who emerged was mid-thirties, auburn hair loose around her shoulders, reading glasses pushed up on her head like she'd forgotten they were there.
Pretty, in a soft way. The kind of pretty that didn't demand attention but rewarded it anyway.
"Military history," Blizzard said. "Looking for something specific."
"Upstairs, back corner. The section's a little disorganized—I'm still working through the previous owner's system." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Let me know if you need help."
He nodded and headed for the stairs, but his attention wasn't on the books anymore.
The woman's hands had been steady when she emerged from behind the counter. But when the front door chimed behind him—just a customer leaving—those same hands had flinched. Subtle. Controlled. The kind of reaction you learned to hide after too many repetitions.
Someone had taught her to be afraid.
Blizzard climbed the narrow stairs and found the military section exactly where she'd said—back corner, cramped between naval history and aviation. The shelves were overstuffed, spines crammed together without apparent logic, and he had to tilt his head sideways to read half the titles.
He found the book in twelve minutes.
Mountain Warfare, first edition, spine creased from actual reading. Someone had underlined passages and made notes in the margins. Blizzard flipped through, recognizing several of the highlighted sections as lessons he'd learned the hard way in terrain that killed men who didn't pay attention.
Twenty dollars. Worth ten times that.
He tucked it under his arm and took his time walking back downstairs, cataloging details as he moved.
New security cameras in the corners—cheap wireless models, recently installed based on the clean mounting brackets.
A cot visible through the back room doorway, blanket rumpled, pillow dented.
A baseball bat leaning against the wall beside the register.
Someone was sleeping here. Someone was scared enough to arm themselves with sporting equipment.
The woman looked up when he approached the counter. That flinch again when his boots hit the bottom stair, quickly suppressed.
"Find what you were looking for?"
"Yeah." He set the book on the counter. "You've got a good collection."
"The previous owner had forty years to build it. I'm just trying not to mess it up." She rang up the sale, her movements efficient despite the tremor Blizzard could see in her fingers. "Twenty even."
He handed her a twenty and watched her make change with hands that shook when the front door chime sounded behind him.
Just the mail carrier. But she'd gone pale anyway.
"Quiet neighborhood," Blizzard said, keeping his voice flat, neutral. A comment, not a question.
"Usually." She handed him his change without meeting his eyes. "Thanks for coming in."
Dismissal. Polite but firm. She wanted him gone.
Blizzard took his book and left, but he didn't go far.
He circled the block on his bike and parked in the shadow of a closed auto shop with a clear sightline to the bookstore's entrance.
Two men sat in a black sedan across the street. Engine off, windows cracked despite the November chill. One of them held a phone to his ear. The other watched the bookstore's front door with the patient focus of a predator waiting for movement.
Surveillance. Professional enough to be inconspicuous, sloppy enough to sit in the same spot for hours.
Blizzard memorized the plate and the faces, then rode back to the compound to run them through Scout's databases.
The results came back in two hours: Glen Mrazek and a partner named Devlin Horak. Both connected to Arthur Dante's fencing operation. Both with assault charges that never stuck and intimidation complaints that went nowhere.
Arthur Dante. Blizzard had heard the name—a fencer who'd operated on the South Side for two decades, patient and methodical, using legitimate storefronts as fronts for stolen merchandise. Not Wolf business, usually. Dante kept his head down and didn't cross territorial lines.
But the bookstore was in Bridgeport. That was Wolf-adjacent territory.
And the woman with the shaking hands and the baseball bat was sleeping in her store because someone had made her afraid to go home.
Blizzard went back the next day.
Different book this time—a history of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir that he'd been meaning to read anyway. He found it in eight minutes, brought it to the counter, and watched the woman's hands tremble when she rang him up.
"Back again," she said. Not quite a question.
"Good selection."
"You read fast."
"Not much else to do." He took his change and his book. "Nice cat."
A flicker of something crossed her face. Protectiveness, fierce and immediate. "His name's Hemingway. He doesn't like most people."
"Smart cat."
Blizzard left and parked down the block, watching the sedan that had returned to its spot across the street. Same men. Same routine. Status report to someone who wanted to know the woman's every move.
Day three, he bought a paperback thriller from the dollar bin and learned the woman's name was Wendy.
He overheard it when a regular customer called out a greeting. Morning, Wendy. Got anything new in romance?
Wendy. It suited her. Soft, warm, the kind of name that belonged to women who made you tea and asked about your day.
Except this Wendy had purple shadows under her eyes and a death grip on her coffee cup. This Wendy was running on caffeine and fear, sleeping in a room full of books because her home didn't feel safe anymore.
The cat jumped onto the counter while Wendy was helping another customer, and Blizzard found himself staring into those suspicious green eyes again.
"Don't like strangers?" he asked quietly.
The cat blinked. Yawned. Looked away with feline disdain.
"He's warming up to you." Wendy appeared beside the register, her smile a little more real today. "That's practically an endorsement. Hemingway hates everyone."
"Good judge of character."
"The best." She glanced at the thriller in his hand. "Different section today."
"Branching out."
"You've been in three days in a row."
"You've got a good store."
Something flickered in her expression—suspicion, curiosity, maybe a little hope. Like she wanted to believe he was just a customer who really liked books, but couldn't quite make herself trust it.
Smart woman.
"Dollar fifty," she said.
He paid and left, and the sedan was still there. Mrazek behind the wheel this time, phone pressed to his ear, eyes tracking Blizzard as he walked to his bike.
Yeah, Blizzard thought, meeting that stare without flinching. I see you too.
Day four, he arrived before the store opened.
Parked across the street with a clear view of the back alley, watching as Wendy unlocked the rear entrance at 8:30 and disappeared inside. Lights came on in sequence—back room, then main floor, then the front display windows.
She was systematic. Careful. The routine of someone who checked every shadow before she felt safe.
At 8:45, Mrazek's sedan rolled down the block and parked in its usual spot. The morning shift, then. Someone else probably watched overnight.
Blizzard cataloged the patrol patterns. The check-in calls. The moments when Wendy was visible through the windows versus hidden in the stacks. The vulnerability of a woman alone in a store with a glass front door and a baseball bat for protection.
Arthur Dante wanted something from her. She'd refused. And now Dante's men were circling, patient as vultures, waiting for her to break.
It was a solid pressure campaign. Methodical. The kind of sustained harassment that didn't leave bruises but crushed spirits.
The kind of campaign that worked on people who didn't have anyone in their corner.
Blizzard pulled out his phone and texted Alpha: Got something. Church tonight.
Then he walked into Callahan's Books to buy another book he didn't need, because he wasn't done watching the woman with shaking hands and fierce eyes learn his reading habits.
Wasn't done watching her at all.