CHAPTER 5 NORA #2
The drive back to my building took less than twenty minutes.
It felt longer because the city outside the tinted window was too normal.
People hurried under umbrellas. A delivery cyclist cursed at a cab.
Steam lifted from a grate near a corner store.
New York kept moving while my apartment sat open with Stone men inside and Mercer's men bleeding or handcuffed somewhere below it.
I kept the phone in my lap. Declan stayed on the line for the first half of the drive, giving clipped updates.
"Fire escape latch damaged. Kitchen window held. Service door forced, but Aidan cut him off in the stairwell. Bedroom looks untouched. Aidan found the grocery bag and the green shoebox. Brown envelope recovered. Laptop secured."
Recovered.
I stared at the word in my head and made it mean what I needed. Still here. Still his. Still mine.
When we reached my block, a black SUV blocked one end and another sat angled at the other.
Mrs. Alvarez stood behind the lobby glass in a pink robe with a winter coat over it, her silver hair pinned up badly.
A Stone guard stood near her, keeping distance like Declan had taught them all a rule about frightened women and space.
She saw me and pressed both hands to her mouth. I reached for the door handle, but the guard beside me spoke before I could open it.
"Wait for Mr. Reeve."
"I know his name," I said.
"Yes, ma'am. Wait for Declan."
The correction landed harder than it should have. Mr. Reeve sounded wrong now. Declan. My own mouth had started the argument, but the guard's answer made my cheeks heat.
Declan opened the door from outside before I could decide whether to be embarrassed or angry.
He looked different in the wash of police-blue building lights and the yellow blink of my alarm panel through the lobby.
Bigger, maybe. Rougher. His coat was open, and there was a dark smear near his cuff that I did not let myself name.
His gaze moved over me once, fast and sharp. "You hurt?"
"I was in a car."
"Answer the question."
"Unhurt."
His jaw shifted. He stepped back and offered his hand, palm up, not grabbing. The restraint in it unsettled me more than force would have. I looked at his hand, then at my building.
"Glass on the kitchen floor," he said. "Stairs are clear. Mrs. Alvarez is safe. I need you behind me until I say otherwise."
"I need to speak to her."
"After."
"Declan."
My voice did something on his name. I heard it. So did he. His eyes came back to mine, and for a second the whole block narrowed to wet pavement, alarm light, and his hand waiting between us.
"After," he said, softer. "I give you my word."
I put my hand in his. His fingers closed around mine only long enough to help me out, then he let go. I should have been glad. My palm missed the heat before I could tell it to stop being foolish.
Inside, the lobby smelled like rain, dust, and the burnt-plastic bite of the alarm system. Mrs. Alvarez called my name, but Declan lifted one hand and she stopped. The guard beside her spoke quietly, and she nodded through tears.
My apartment door stood open on the third floor.
The sight hit me worse than the broken kitchen latch.
I had locked that door this morning, or yesterday, or some version of my life that already felt far away.
Now it gaped under the hall light with two Stone men posted outside and a strip of splintered paint near the frame.
The little brass number 3B hung crooked.
I stopped walking. Declan stopped with me. He did not tell me to move. He only shifted so his body stood between me and the open doorway without blocking my view.
"They didn't get in far," he said.
"Far enough."
"Yes."
That answer steadied me more than comfort might have. He did not argue with the violation. He did not make it smaller so I would be easier to manage.
I stepped inside behind him.
My home looked like itself and not itself.
The couch still sagged in the middle. The blue mug Isabella hated still sat on the coffee table.
My father's old sweater was folded over the armchair because I had been too sentimental to put it away and too ashamed to admit I still touched the sleeve on bad mornings.
But cabinet doors were open. The grocery bag of old mail sat on the table with gloved Stone hands beside it. My laptop had been placed in a clear evidence bag. The microwave had been pulled forward, and behind it lay a rectangle of cleaner wall where dust had hidden for months.
A brown envelope sat on the table. My name was not on it. Thomas Brooks was written across the front in my father's careful block letters.
My breath stopped where it was.
Declan looked at the envelope, then at me. "Do you know what it is?"
I shook my head.
Aidan stood near the kitchen, sleeves rolled, face set in a hard line. "Found it where she said. Sealed. We left it that way."
I looked at him. "Thank you."
He dipped his chin once. The respect in the gesture hurt because I was not ready for it.
Declan took a pair of gloves from his pocket and held them out. "You can open it, or Cormac can. Your choice."
My choice.
Those words did not fix the broken door or the photos or the men who had climbed toward my kitchen. They did not make this clean. But they put something back in my hands.
I took the gloves. The envelope paper was stiff under my fingers.
For one second I saw Dad at our kitchen table, writing my name on cheap birthday cards because he hated buying ones with printed messages.
His hand had been steady then. By the time he died, pain had turned his writing shaky.
This block script belonged to the before.
Inside were three things: a folded letter, a photocopy of a clinic access form, and a storage receipt from East River Records and Fulfillment. Declan leaned closer but did not touch me. On the back of the receipt, my father had written one line.
If anything happens, Nora knows the answer to the question Isabella forgot to ask.
The room dipped.
Declan's hand came to my elbow, firm and warm through the borrowed coat. "Sit."
This time, I did not fight him. I sank into the chair at my own kitchen table and stared at my father's handwriting until the letters blurred. Isabella had been the one with the files, the rage, the plan. I had been the sister she wanted protected from the ugliest parts of the truth.
But my father had left something for me.
"What question?" Declan asked.
I swallowed. My mouth tasted like old fear. "I don't know."
His grip eased but stayed there, his thumb still against the bend of my arm. He noticed and let go before I had to ask. The loss of contact made me colder.
A phone rang. Declan's. He answered, listened, and looked toward the open door.
"Say it," he said.
Cormac's voice came through faintly, precise even through the small speaker.
"East River Records has an active box under Thomas Brooks's name.
Box 14C. Access was requested tonight through a Harrow Lane authorization.
Denied at the first desk because the passcode failed. Someone was sent here to find it."
Declan's eyes met mine.
My apartment alarm had finally gone silent, but the quiet that replaced it felt worse.
"Nora," he said, "this wasn't only about what your father kept here. Mercer is looking for what he hid away."