CHAPTER 15 NORA
The dead doorbell kept ringing through the wall of my old apartment, and Declan's arm stayed locked across my waist like he could hold the sound away from me by force.
A shadow crossed the fire escape window. Rain ran down the glass in crooked lines, turning the shape outside into a smear of black coat and metal. Declan saw it a breath after I did, but my body had already moved. My hand grabbed the back of his coat and pulled.
"Window," I said.
He turned with me instead of against me.
The gun came up in his hand. The shadow ducked before the glass burst inward, and the first bullet tore through the cheap curtain rod above the sink.
Plaster dust jumped from the wall. Aidan swore from the living room floor, one knee still planted on the prisoner.
Declan shoved me behind the hallway corner. His back hit my chest for half a breath, all heat, blood, smoke, and hard muscle, then he moved. Two shots cracked through my apartment. The sound slammed into my ribs. Outside, someone grunted and hit metal hard enough to rattle the fire escape ladder.
The bell rang again.
It came through the open chime box above the closet, wrong and thin and far away. The wires still hung loose. The brass disc in Declan's fist gave off a faint tremor, or maybe my fear had moved into my eyes and hands and made everything shake.
"Rear door has company," Cullen barked over the comm. "Two trying basement access. We can hold them for a minute. Maybe less."
"Aidan," Declan said.
"On it." Aidan yanked the prisoner up by the zip tie around his wrists. The man choked on a laugh and blood. "Move, sunshine. You try to run, I break something fresh."
Declan's eyes cut to me. "Can you move?"
My knees wanted to fold. My apartment smelled like gun smoke, burnt plastic, damp wool, and the lavender soap Isabella had bought me because she said my building always smelled sad.
My father's note sat in my coat pocket, folded inside old plastic, close to my hip. Rina's name pressed there like a hand.
"Yes," I said.
His gaze dropped to the red at the edge of my bandage. Heat climbed into his face, fast and violent, then vanished under the field-cold look he wore around other men. He hated the blood. I saw that before he buried it.
"Behind my left shoulder," he said.
"I remember."
The corner of his mouth tightened, almost a smile and gone too quickly to keep. "Good."
Good. One small word from him hit worse than the gunfire. My pulse kicked beneath the bandage, foolish and alive, while the bell rang a fifth time from a door that wasn't here.
Aidan dragged the prisoner toward the hallway.
I bent for the framed photo on the floor before anyone could stop me.
The glass had cracked across Isabella's smile.
I tucked it under my arm because Vale's men had already taken too much from this room.
My home could be broken, searched, emptied, and wired for someone else's war, but they didn't get to leave my sister facedown on the floor.
Declan saw the photo and said nothing. He only shifted his body so his coat covered me from the window.
The hall outside my apartment flickered with bad fluorescent light. Mrs. Alvarez's door was shut, but I could hear her television turned loud behind it. Weather report. A cheerful woman promising morning rain. The ordinary voice made my throat close harder than the gunfire.
"Cullen," Declan said into the comm, "third-floor hall clear?"
"Clear front. Rear stairs busy. Two down, one slipped."
"Fire escape?"
"One hanging. Might be breathing."
"Let him think about his choices."
Aidan snorted. "You get poetic when women shoot at us."
"Move."
The prisoner twisted in Aidan's grip when we reached the stairwell.
Blood ran down from his mouth to his collar.
His eyes kept finding me, then the pocket where Thomas's note sat.
He was afraid of me now, which made no sense.
I had no gun. My arm hurt, and my legs felt full of water. Still, his fear steadied me.
"Why does Vale want Rina?" I asked.
Declan glanced back. "Nora."
"He's alive and talking. We don't have long. Ask him now."
The prisoner spat on the stair, red and thin. "She was built in. That's all I know. Mercer built some people into the system."
My stomach turned. "People aren't built into systems."
"Tell Mercer that," he said.
Aidan slammed him face-first into the wall. "Wrong tone."
The stairwell light buzzed above us. Declan moved close to the prisoner's ear, voice low. "Rina opens what?"
"Medical hold," the man rasped. "Old donor wing. A sick room with no chart. Vale said the pretty one opens it because Mercer made her clean. He said the Brooks girl wakes it if the pretty one runs. I don't know what that means."
The Brooks girl.
The words hit the hollow place under my ribs.
Thomas had written my name into this without writing it down.
Little one knew which bell never to answer.
The girl opens. Dead girl. Living door. Men had been shaping my childhood into a key while I was learning spelling lists and hiding hospital bills under couch cushions because Isabella cried when she saw them.
Declan's hand closed around the prisoner's nape. "Who came for Rina?"
"A woman," he said. "Gray coat. Nurse face. She knew the lower corridor code."
Aidan's expression changed. "Maeve's packet?"
Declan's jaw moved once. "Could be."
The basement door below us thudded from the outside. Cullen shouted. A gunshot answered him, muffled through concrete.
Declan pulled me down one step. "Questions later."
The service stairs spat us into the laundry room. The old machine was still spinning, the red sock turning and turning behind scratched glass. A body lay half across the rear door, one of the Stone men I had seen outside. Reese. His hand was pressed to his side, teeth bared, eyes open.
"Still here," he grunted when Declan reached him.
"Good man." Declan's hand went to Reese's shoulder, hard and brief. "Cullen?"
"Rear alley. Two gone quiet. One running east."
"Let him run to someone we can follow."
Reese looked at me, then at the photo under my arm. His face tightened with pain. "You all right, Miss Brooks?"
Miss Brooks. A Stone man bleeding on a basement floor asked if I was all right while men who wore hospital colors had used my father, my sister, Rina, Harkin, and God knew how many others as doors.
Something hot rose in me and burned through the shaking.
"I'm alive," I said. "Don't move your hand. Keep pressure there."
His eyes flicked to Declan, checking the order through him. I hated that I waited too.
Declan looked at Reese and said, "Do what she said."
Reese obeyed.
The room tilted around that small thing. My words had moved through Declan and landed in a man's hands. The old Nora from before Gabriel's house, before Bell, before Thomas's hidden note, would have stepped back from that kind of power. My feet stayed planted.
Aidan pushed the prisoner toward Cullen at the rear. "Package for Cormac. Comes with charming manners and one broken wrist."
"Cormac will write him a thank-you note," Cullen said.
Declan took my elbow, gentle around the bandage. "Car. Now."
"The Black Harp," I said.
His face closed. "You go back to Gabriel's house."
"Rina's gone. Finn called you. Harkin is there. Thomas wrote her name. You heard the prisoner."
"I also heard gunfire above your head."
"And I got down."
His fingers flexed once at my elbow. A muscle jumped near his cheek. "That doesn't make it acceptable."
"I am not asking you to like it." My voice shook at first, then found bone.
"You said if I saw something you missed, I should say it.
Here it is. Rina is the living door. Vale wanted the dead ringer turned because something at The Black Harp needs both.
Her and me. If you lock me away, you may save me and lose whatever my father died trying to protect. "
Rain hissed beyond the open rear door. Men moved in the alley, Stone shapes with guns and hard eyes. Declan stood close enough that I could see blood dried in the lines of his knuckles and a tiny cut at his jaw he had not noticed.
"You think I don't understand that?" he asked.
The roughness in his voice stripped the fight out of my next breath. He wasn't dismissing me. He was trying to survive the thought of taking me anywhere near the next door.
"Then understand this too," I said. "If Rina is alive, she is scared. If Vale has her, he won't wait. If she ran, she may have left something only another woman outside your world would notice. Let me look. Let me help."
Aidan, curse him, chose that moment to mutter, "She's not wrong."
Declan's eyes stayed on me. "You take one step I don't permit, I carry you out."
"I know."
"You argue with me inside a breach, I hand you to Aidan and he sits on you."
"Rude," Aidan said.
"Accurate," I said, and Declan's mouth did that almost-smile again.
It vanished when Cormac came through the comm. "Declan, Gabriel says bring Nora to the townhouse. He also says if she refuses, don't waste time arguing in a stairwell while Vale's people regroup. His words were harsher. I have softened them for morale."
Declan looked toward the alley, then back at me. "Car. Black Harp. You stay between us."
I nodded before he could change his mind.
The drive from my apartment to The Black Harp felt shorter than it had any right to feel.
The city blurred past in wet streaks and red brake lights.
I sat in the back between Declan and Aidan again, the cracked photo on my lap, Thomas's note in one pocket and the brass disc sealed in an evidence sleeve in Declan's hand.
Declan had given the memory card to Cullen for a separate car to take to Cormac. He did not say why. He did not need to. One copy could be lost. One car could be hit. One person could be taken. That was Stone thinking, and I hated how quickly I understood it now.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Isabella's name lit the screen.
Declan saw it. "Answer."
I put it to my ear. "Bella."