CHAPTER 6 DECLAN
Cormac's voice turned Nora's kitchen colder than the broken window.
I kept my hand off Nora because she had already lost too much ground tonight.
Her apartment door hung open. Her kitchen had Stone men in it.
Her father's handwriting sat on the table under a light that made the paper look older than grief.
If I touched her again without asking, even to steady her, I would become one more man deciding what her body needed before she did.
That did not stop the need from hitting me hard.
She sat at the little kitchen table in a borrowed coat and a protective vest she hated, her fingers spread on either side of Thomas Brooks's letter. The vest made her look smaller. I disliked that so much my molars pressed together.
"Say it again," she said.
Cormac remained on speaker. "East River Records has a box under your father's name. Harrow Lane tried to access it tonight. Whoever went there had authorization papers for the first desk. They failed when the clerk requested the passcode. After that, men came here."
Nora's eyes did not leave the receipt. "Because they thought Dad left the passcode in my apartment."
"Yes," Cormac said.
The word moved through her like a hand around her ribs. She breathed through it anyway. Brave girl. Terrible girl. The worst thing I could want was a woman who stood up straighter every time the world took another swing.
"What did they try?" I asked.
Paper shifted on Cormac's end. "Thomas Brooks's date of birth. Nora's date of birth. Isabella's. The last four digits of a phone number attached to his old clinic account. All failed."
Nora finally raised her head. Her face had gone pale except for two angry spots high on her cheeks. "The answer isn't in a date. Dad hated passwords that were dates. He said lazy people deserved to be hacked."
Aidan, standing by the stove with gloves still on, glanced toward me. He knew better than to speak. The line in Nora's voice belonged to a family kitchen, a dead father, a memory nobody had a right to touch with dirty hands.
"Do you know what he meant by Isabella's forgotten question?" I asked.
"If I knew, I would have already said it."
The snap came fast. Then her mouth tightened, regret and fear fighting behind her eyes. She did not apologize. Good. Panic did not need manners.
"Fair," I said.
That surprised her. It pulled her attention to me, and for one dangerous second the whole room quieted around her stare.
My phone buzzed against my palm. Finn. I checked the message and looked toward the hall. The driver had been secured. One of the men from the building had started talking around his own blood because pain made cowards religious.
"Aidan," I said. "Pack only what Nora named and the envelope contents. Photograph the room first. Seal her laptop, the green shoebox, the grocery bag, the hospital folder, and the letter. Mrs. Brooks handles the originals unless Cormac needs copies."
"Understood."
Nora's brows pulled together. "Mrs. Brooks?"
"You want them to treat your father's things with respect," I said. "They will treat you with it too."
Her lips parted. A little color came back into her face, and my chest took the blow like a fist. I had said too much. Or maybe I had said exactly what I meant, which was worse.
Cormac cleared his throat through the speaker. "Declan, East River closes public access at seven. Private retrieval can be arranged by appointment. Harrow Lane may try again before morning."
"Then they lose men before morning."
"Gabriel would prefer information before bodies."
"Gabriel can have both."
Nora's gaze dropped to my hands. There was blood at the edge of one cuff.
I had missed it. Her eyes fixed there for a breath too long, and heat crawled under my skin for all the wrong reasons.
I could stand in an alley with a gun and a man on his knees without blinking.
One woman seeing a smear on my sleeve made my body want to step back and hide.
"Is it yours?" she asked.
"It isn't."
"That is supposed to make me feel better?"
"It usually does."
The corner of her mouth trembled. Fear had been running too long and found a crack. I wanted to put my thumb there and hold her together. I wanted to put every man who had brought that look to her face in the ground beneath my shoes.
Both wants arrived together. Neither belonged in a kitchen with her father's letter on the table.
"We need to move," I said. "Your apartment is done for tonight."
Her chin lifted. "Done?"
"Compromised. The lock, the fire escape, the hallway, probably the building cameras. I can post men here, but I won't let you sleep behind a door someone already learned how to open."
"You won't let me."
There it was. The edge. The terms she had fought for standing up between us with teeth. Behind her, Aidan froze over a roll of evidence tape.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to make it clean and ugly. I wanted to tell her I would pick her up, put her in my car, and take the consequences of her anger later because angry and alive beat reasonable and dead every time.
My hand flexed once at my side. I made it stop.
"The building is unsafe," I said. "You choose how you leave it. Walk with me now, or sit in the car while I finish downstairs and then we leave together. You do not stay here alone."
"That is still two choices you like."
"Yes."
Her eyes narrowed. "At least you're honest about it."
"I can be worse if it helps."
A breath of almost-laughter left her, so quick she seemed startled by it. The sound hit low in my stomach and stayed there.
"I want to talk to Mrs. Alvarez before I leave," she said.
"Two minutes in the lobby. Eamon beside the door. I stand where I can see the street."
"Three minutes. You stand far enough not to make her think she is under arrest."
Aidan found something fascinating about the tape in his hands. Cormac went silent on the phone.
"Three," I said. "If I move, you move."
"If you move for a real reason," she said.
The woman negotiated like she was standing in a market instead of a broken apartment surrounded by guns. My pulse answered before I could hate myself for it.
"If I move," I repeated, "you move. We can argue in the car."
"Fine."
She gathered the folded letter, the access form, and the receipt with careful hands. Aidan offered a clear folder. He did not step close. Nora took it from him, and the small nod she gave him made the man's posture straighten.
That was going to become a problem. Stone men were simple in some ways. Give them courage under fire and a woman who thanked them for respecting a dead man's envelope, and loyalty started growing roots before anyone approved it.
Downstairs, Mrs. Alvarez cried before Nora reached her.
The lobby lights flickered with old wiring.
Rain tapped against the glass door, and one of my men stood outside beneath the awning with his coat collar high, eyes on the street.
The building still smelled of alarm heat and wet wool.
Nora crossed the tile in the borrowed shoes Eamon had brought her and took Mrs. Alvarez's hands like she had not spent the last hour being hunted through paper and walls.
"I'm okay," Nora said.
Mrs. Alvarez shook her head. "Men were in the hall. I heard the door. I knew something was wrong. Your sister answered so fast, mija. So fast."
Nora's face changed at the Spanish endearment. Softer. Younger. The sight cut somewhere under my ribs. I turned slightly, giving them the angle of privacy she had asked for while keeping the street in view through the glass.
"You did the right thing," Nora said. "You called. You helped."
"You don't come back here tonight," Mrs. Alvarez whispered fiercely. "I don't care what pride says. Pride doesn't fix dead."
Nora blinked. Her fingers tightened around the older woman's hands. "I know."
She did not look at me when she said it. Somehow that made it heavier.
At the far side of the lobby, Finn stepped in from the rain and gave me one short nod. The driver was ready. The service-hall intruder was conscious. The fire-escape man had stopped cursing and started praying, either useful or afraid.
Nora saw Finn's nod. Of course she did. "What is it?"
"Downstairs business."
"About my father?"
Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself under her breath. Nora did not move. She held the clear folder against her chest and watched me with those too-direct eyes.
The answer I wanted to give her was safe. The answer I owed her was real.
"About the men who came for his things," I said.
"Then I hear it."
"You hear what I can give you without putting you beside a bleeding man."
"Declan."
My name in her mouth was becoming a problem I did not have a prayer of solving. I stepped closer before I thought better of it, close enough that she had to tip her head back. Her breath caught. Mine tried to follow.
"I will not put that in your head to prove I respect you," I said quietly. "There are ugly rooms you don't need to stand in. Give me ten minutes. I will come back with names, what they wanted, and what it means for Box 14C. If I lie by omission, you will know."
Her eyes searched my face. She was angry. She was afraid. Under both, a thin thread of trust pulled taut between us.
"My phone stays with me," she said.
"Yes."
"The folder stays with me."
"Yes."
"And if they say something about a question, a passcode, or my father, I hear the exact words."
"You have them."
Nora swallowed. "Ten minutes."
I looked at Eamon. "Car. Engine on. Doors locked. Mrs. Brooks inside with you and Aidan. Nobody opens the door except me or Gabriel."
"Got it."
Nora walked past me, then stopped. Her shoulder brushed my sleeve by accident or defiance. The contact burned through wool and blood and all the discipline I had left. She looked down at the smear on my cuff again.
"You should clean that before you come back," she said.
"Worried about me?"
"Worried about staining the upholstery."
The lie had teeth, but it was still a lie. I smiled before I could stop it.