CHAPTER 14 DECLAN #2
The beige chime box was mounted above the closet door. Its plastic cover lay in the canvas bag beside Aidan's prisoner, cracked along one side. The visible cavity was empty except for dead wires and dust. Vale's men had already opened it.
Nora looked at the empty box, and for one terrible moment the hope left her face.
The prisoner laughed through blood. "Too late."
I put my gun against the side of his head. "Speak again and you'll lose the shape of your mouth."
Nora took one step closer to the closet. Then another. Her eyes narrowed, and something in her steadied.
"He didn't hide it there."
The prisoner stopped smiling.
Aidan's grin appeared, quick and mean. "There she is."
"Dad hated obvious places," Nora said. Her hand lifted toward the wall beside the chime. "He opened the box with me watching because he wanted me to remember the wrong part first. He always did that with keys. Showed me the shiny key ring, then taped the spare under the table."
"Nora," I said softly, because the prisoner had gone still.
She heard my warning and did not stop. "The sound didn't die in the box. It died in the wall. He disconnected the striker, then shoved something behind the mounting plate. The screw stuck because he put it back over a bump."
I looked at the chime housing. One lower screw sat crooked, painted over in old beige. Vale's men had removed the cover and emptied the easy hiding place. They had missed the wall behind it.
"Aidan," I said.
He dragged the prisoner farther from the closet and planted a knee between his shoulder blades. "Comfortable down here, sweetheart?"
Nora reached for the crooked screw. Her fingers trembled from adrenaline and blood loss. I caught her hand before she could tear the bandage open.
"Let me."
"You don't know how he did it."
"Then guide me."
The apartment went tight and quiet around those words. Her gaze dropped to my hand around hers. I had meant to stop an injury. My fingers had wrapped over her knuckles, careful around the bandage, and my thumb rested where her pulse beat too fast.
Her pulse struck me through cloth and skin.
I let go before I forgot there were enemies breathing in her living room.
She swallowed. "Use a flat head. Slowly. The screw is stripped on the left. If you rush it, it breaks."
Aidan's tool roll hit the floor beside me. I chose the smallest flat-head driver and worked the painted screw loose while Nora stood at my shoulder. Her breathing brushed the back of my neck once. The sensation nearly split my focus, so I anchored on the screw, the wall, the job.
Paint cracked. The screw turned. Behind the metal mounting plate sat a narrow cut in the plaster, packed with cotton and covered by a piece of old medical tape gone yellow at the edge.
Nora made a small wounded sound.
I stopped. "What?"
"Saint Brigid tape," she whispered. "He came home with rolls of it. Said hospitals charged too much for things they wasted."
The tape peeled back with a dry whisper. Inside the cotton sat a flat brass disc smaller than a quarter, a folded strip of paper sealed in plastic, and a black memory card wrapped in foil. The brass disc had a tiny bell stamped on one side and 14C scored on the other.
My earpiece crackled before I spoke. Cormac had been listening through Aidan's open comm. "Tell me you have it."
"We have something," I said.
Nora reached past me and touched the folded strip before I could stop her. Her fingertip paused on the plastic. "That's Dad's handwriting."
"Read it," I said.
Her eyes moved over the old ink. Her face changed in pieces, first confusion, then pain, then a fear so cold it cleared every other sound from the room.
"It says, Bell opens the sick door. Harp hides the living one. If they take Rina, wake the dead ringer."
Aidan stopped moving.
Cormac's voice sharpened. "Repeat the name."
"Rina," Nora said. "It says Rina."
The prisoner under Aidan began laughing again, softer this time, like pain had become worth it. "You found the pretty piece. Vale wanted that one."
I crouched in front of him. His eyes skipped from me to Nora, then away. Fear had finally arrived. It looked good on him.
"Where is Vale?"
"You think he tells runners?"
I drove two fingers into the broken place at his wrist. He convulsed against Aidan's hold, breath punching out of him.
"Where is Vale?"
"Harp," he spat. "Bell rings home. He said the dead girl would open the living door. I don't know more. I swear."
Nora had gone very still behind me. I hated that phrase. Dead girl. Living door. Vale and Mercer used people as hinges and keys and routes, and Thomas Brooks had tried to leave his daughters one small tool sharp enough to cut back.
"Cormac," I said.
"I'm pulling The Black Harp feeds now." Keys snapped under his voice. "Basement corridor is unstable. Finn's comm is live but breaking. Harkin's room still shows guarded. Rina's holding room is... wait."
The pause opened my chest with a knife.
"Cormac."
"Rina's camera is looping," he said. "Same four seconds. I can't see inside."
Nora looked at me. The apartment light caught her face, washed her in the pale yellow of a home already violated. She should have been farther from this. She should have had a life where a broken chime meant a landlord complaint, not a dead father's war reaching through plaster.
A shrill burst of sound cut through the room.
The old doorbell rang.
Nora flinched into me. I moved by instinct, arm across her waist, dragging her behind my body as Aidan slammed the prisoner flat. The chime box was open. Its wires hung loose. It had no cover, no striker, no reason to make a sound.
The bell rang again.
Cullen's voice tore through comms. "Movement outside. Two at the rear, one on fire escape."
Aidan swore. "They followed the signal."
The brass disc in my hand had warmed against my palm.
Nora's fingers closed around the back of my coat. She did not hide her face. She leaned around me, staring at the exposed wall, and her voice came out thin but steady.
"That's not this apartment."
"What?"
"The sound is coming through the box, but it's not from here." Her grip tightened. "Dad said good nurses knock and bad men ring. Bell is ringing from the sick door."
Cormac's voice hit the line at the same time. "Declan, the counterkey just opened a buried label in Mercer's bridge. Old site name: Harp Lower, medical hold, Rina access."
A third ring cut through the apartment.
Then Finn came on, breathless and furious. "Declan, we have a breach at The Black Harp. Basement medical corridor. Rina's gone."
Nora's fingers dug into my coat.
I closed my fist around Thomas Brooks's dead ringer and looked at the window where a shadow moved on the fire escape.
Vale had not sent men to steal the key.
He had sent them to make us turn it.