CHAPTER 2 DECLAN
The message sat bright on Nora Brooks's phone while she held her father's box against her chest and tried to look like the floor under her had not shifted.
Tell Nora the third lock was cute.
Cute meant close. Cute meant the bastard knew the old lock, the second lock, the third lock, and the order she had paid to have them put in. Cute meant he was watching her fear ripen and enjoying the time it took.
I wanted his teeth in my hand.
Nora stared at the screen from two steps away. Her knuckles had gone pale around the cardboard box. The baseball bat hung in her other hand, low now, but not forgotten. Good. Fear had not emptied her. It had sharpened her, and she was still standing.
"Give me my phone," she said.
"In a minute."
"That was not a request."
The hallway outside her door stayed quiet. Too quiet for this building. Mrs. Alvarez's television had stopped murmuring through the wall, or Nora's fear had swallowed it. I listened past her breathing, past the radiator's tired knock, past the traffic hissing on wet pavement below.
One set of footsteps in the stairwell. Slow. Heavy. Familiar.
I lifted my chin toward the bedroom. "Put the box on the bed. Stay where I can see you."
"You have a talent for making every sentence worse."
"Practice."
Her mouth tightened. Even scared, she looked ready to throw something at my head. The bat first, probably. Then the box. Then every word she could find.
The footsteps reached the landing. I kept my gun low against my thigh and moved to the side of the door, where the wall gave cover and the gap beneath the frame gave me a thin strip of hallway light.
Three soft taps came against the wood.
"Reeve," Aidan Murphy said from outside.
Nora's eyes snapped to me. "Another one?"
"Mine."
"Of course. They travel in sets."
I unhooked the chain and opened the door with my shoulder braced behind it.
Aidan stood in the hallway with rain darkening the collar of his coat and one hand tucked near his right side.
Behind him, the hall was empty. The stairwell door had settled shut.
A brass screw from Nora's lock lay near the baseboard, bright against old dust.
Aidan's gaze flicked past me to Nora, then to the damaged frame. "North stair is clear. Roof access was taped on the inside. Fresh. Back alley door had a shim in the strike plate."
Nora inhaled sharply behind me.
I did not turn. "Who was in the black car?"
"Finn. He saw a man cross from the deli side ten minutes before she came up. Gray cap. Delivery bag. Wrong shoes for a delivery man. Finn moved after him, but the man cut through the laundromat and out the service rear."
"Camera?"
"Deli camera died at nine fourteen. Laundromat owner says his system's been down since Tuesday. He looked surprised when Finn explained that it wasn't."
"Hold the stairs," I said. "Nobody comes up without my say."
Aidan nodded and took position at the landing.
I closed the door and set the chain again. Nora had not moved to the bedroom. She stood in the living room with her father's box clutched tight, eyes bright with rage.
"Roof access," she said.
"Yes."
"Back alley door."
"Yes."
"A man in a delivery bag." Her voice cracked around the last word, then steadied. "And the car downstairs was your man, who lost him."
"Finn didn't lose him. He kept him moving. Different job."
"The job was to let a stranger reach my apartment?"
That landed because it had teeth. One man on light coverage was meant to watch and call, not turn her building into a shooting range while civilians slept behind thin doors. It was true. It would still sound like an excuse.
"The job changed tonight," I said.
"After my door was opened. Lucky me."
I held her phone out. She watched my hand like she expected a trick, then took it fast enough that her fingers brushed mine. The contact was small. It still hit wrong. Warm skin, cold fingertips.
She tucked the phone close to her body. "Are you going to tell me what is happening now?"
"After I clear the apartment."
"You already looked."
"I looked fast. Now I look properly."
"And I stand here being grateful?"
I glanced at the bat. "You can stand there being armed."
A little of her anger flickered. It did not become a smile. It was too early for that. Too much fear under the skin. Still, she lifted the bat a few inches, as though remembering she had it.
"Fine," she said. "But if you touch my underwear drawer, I hit you."
"I have survived worse."
"You haven't survived me annoyed."
I looked at her then, longer than I should have. Her hair had come loose around her face. Her coat was still on, one button hanging by thread, grocery dust on one sleeve. She was trying to joke while standing in a room a stranger had entered to scare her.
My chest tightened. I turned away before she saw it.
The intruder had touched little and disturbed enough.
"Doorway," I said.
"I am in the doorway."
"Stay there."
"Do you ever get tired of hearing yourself issue orders?"
"Do you ever follow the first one?"
"Not when it comes dressed like a threat."
I opened the drawer she had warned me about with two fingers and looked only at the back panel, the underside, the runners. Clear. I did the same with the nightstand, the closet floor, the window frame, the small vent above the door.
Thomas Brooks's box had left a dust mark on the shelf.
It had been moved down, opened or checked, then placed back in a hurry.
The intruder had not taken it because taking it would have told us what mattered.
Touching it told Nora something worse: her father was no longer safely dead and beyond their reach.
My hand curled once at my side.
"What?" Nora asked.
"He moved the box."
"I know that."
"He wanted you to know."
Her face changed. The anger stayed, but grief came through it hard and quick. She looked down at the box on her bed, at the name written across the lid in Isabella's careful hand.
"Why?"
"Because your father left something they want."
"They?"
The word sat between us with teeth. I could feel Gabriel's voice in my head telling me to keep her calm. I could feel Isabella's too, sharper, telling me not to lie to her sister.
Nora's eyes lifted to mine. "Do not make me ask twice."
I liked that about her.
It was inconvenient as hell.
"Someone connected to Hale's old network," I said.
Her grip tightened on the bat. "Victor Hale is ruined."
"Hale is visible. The men behind him have money, lawyers, and security teams. They don't disappear because one CEO lost his chair."
The color drained slowly from her face. She swallowed and looked toward the living room, toward the door with its damaged lock.
"Isabella told me it was finished."
"She told you the part she could bear to tell you."
Nora's head snapped back. "Careful."
Good. Even with the room wrong and her father dragged into a threat, she still had steel for her sister.
"I am," I said. "That was me being careful."
Her phone rang before she could answer. Isabella's name lit the screen.
Nora stared at it, jaw tight.
"Answer," I said.
"So she can hear your voice and panic?"
"She is already panicking. Now she gets facts."
"You are allergic to comfort."
"Facts keep people alive longer."
Nora answered and put the phone to her ear. "Bella, I'm fine."
I almost laughed. She was standing in a breached apartment with a bat, a moved evidence box, and two fresh threat messages, and she opened with the oldest lie in the city.
Isabella's voice came through thin and frightened. "Nora, Declan called Gabriel. What happened?"
Nora glared at me. "Declan has been busy."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
A pause. Isabella did not believe her. Smart woman.
Nora looked down at the floor. "Someone opened my lock. Maybe more than once. They moved Dad's box."
Silence cut through the line. I watched Nora's face while Isabella absorbed it. The anger drained from Nora for a second, leaving the younger sister underneath, the one who did not want to scare the woman who had already survived too much.
"Bella," Nora said softer, "breathe. I'm okay."
I stepped back toward the living room and called Gabriel from my own phone. He answered before the first ring finished.
"Report."
His voice was low, steady, rougher than it had been before surgery. Recovery had not made him gentle. It had made everyone around him more careful. He hated that.
"Professional entry," I said. "At least two visits. New damage staged for Nora to find. Old mark on the first lock. Roof access taped. Back door shimmed. Possible delivery disguise. Threats sent to her phone. Thomas Brooks named. The box was moved."
A silence. It was not empty. Gabriel's silences had always had hands.
"Is she hurt?"
"Shaken. Armed. Angry."
"So not broken."
"No."
The word slipped out before I could turn it into something else. Gabriel heard it. Of course he did.
"Who?"
"Cormac needs the number. Aidan found the back door altered. Finn has a partial description. I want building footage and the neighbor's doorbell feeds before they vanish."
"Take them."
I looked toward the bedroom. Nora was still on the phone with Isabella, her shoulders tight, her voice low. She had the box on the bed now, one hand resting on the lid like someone might try to pull it from under her palm.
"She is not going to leave easily," I said.
"She leaves anyway."
"If I drag her out, Mercer or whoever is moving behind this gets the exact picture he wants. Stone enforcer takes Brooks sister from her apartment after a break-in."
"Cormac is here. Put him on speaker."
A softer rustle came through the line. Then Cormac Doyle's voice entered, calm in the exact way that irritated every violent man in the city.
"Send me the number and screenshots."
"Already coming."
I sent the messages while he spoke.
"Hale had three remaining donor shells still trying to cut themselves loose from CrownShield. Mercer Health Fund is the one with private security payments we could not place. Small amounts, spread through event vendors and records storage."
Mercer. The name hit like a lock turning the wrong way.
"Elias Mercer," I said.