CHAPTER 3
NORA
The second bullet breaks the window behind us.
Glass spills across the sidewalk in bright, skittering pieces. The man on top of me moves before I understand what happened, one arm around my waist as he drags me behind the concrete planter.
His body covers mine with the efficient certainty of a decision made long ago.
I know his name.
Not his first name. Not yet.
But I saw Bellandi in the ledger, attached to my scheduled death, and now a man with black hair, a badly healed nose, and eyes so dark they seem colorless is shielding me from gunfire.
There are coincidences.
Then there is insult.
I shove at his chest. “Move.”
“Not until they do.”
Another shot strikes the planter.
The impact travels through the concrete into my shoulder blades.
The sedan reverses off the curb. Its engine rises, but the car does not leave. It turns at an angle that gives the passenger a better view.
The man beside me draws a gun from under his coat.
My mind begins cataloging useless details. Black handgun. Scar across his right palm. No tremor. A small cut near his thumb already bleeding, though I don’t know when it happened.
“You’re Bellandi,” I say.
His gaze remains on the sedan. “We can discuss that somewhere else.”
“So you are.”
The shooter leans toward the open window.
Bellandi fires once.
The windshield fractures on the passenger side, and the shooter disappears from view.
People are shouting now. Someone inside the building screams. A bus stops in the middle of the intersection, horn blaring.
Bellandi rises into a crouch and grabs my bag.
I grip the strap. “Give me that.”
“Come with it.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
His attention shifts past me.
Something changes in his face. Not panic. Calculation.
I follow his gaze.
Two men are moving toward us from the building entrance.
One is the man who crossed behind me. The other wears a navy overcoat and has his right hand inside it.
The sedan was not the whole attack.
Bellandi looks at me. “You have eight seconds to decide whether you’d rather argue with me or die near a planter.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
That answer is more persuasive than reassurance would have been.
He pulls me up.
Pain flares through my left knee, sharp enough to make my leg buckle. He catches my elbow but releases it as soon as I am balanced, already moving us toward a black SUV parked across the street.
The man in the navy coat accelerates.
Bellandi fires into the pavement near his feet.
The man veers behind a parked car.
“Police!” someone yells.
No sirens yet.
I wrench my bag from Bellandi’s hand and run.
My knee hurts. My lungs burn from cold air and fear. The SUV is less than twenty yards away, but Bellandi changes direction instead of heading for it.
He moves toward the first attacker.
The man has circled the parked car and is coming from behind us.
Bellandi strikes his gun hand against the roof of a vehicle. Bone makes a sound I will hear later when the street is quiet and my body has time to object. The weapon falls. Bellandi drives the man into the car door and hits him once beneath the ribs.
The attacker folds.
Bellandi catches the back of his coat, lowers him instead of letting his head strike the pavement, then turns to the second man.
He is too far away.
I am not.
The man in the navy coat comes around the front of a sedan three steps from me. He has a gun now. The barrel rises.
My hand is already inside my coat pocket.
I carry pepper spray because my father gave it to me after I moved to Chicago and asks every six months whether it has expired. I usually lie and say I checked.
I spray the man across the eyes.
He screams and turns his face, firing blindly.
The bullet strikes a car mirror.
Bellandi reaches him before he can fire again.
He takes the gun, twists the man’s arm behind him, and slams him against the hood. The attacker claws at his eyes with his free hand.
Bellandi looks at me over the man’s shoulder.
His expression is not approval. It is something more unsettling.
Recognition.
“Car,” he says.
The sedan that tried to hit me is moving again.
This time I do not argue.
We run across the street. Bellandi opens the passenger door of the SUV and reaches for my bag.
I hold it behind me. “No.”
His gaze drops to it.
“You copied the ledger.”
The certainty in his voice makes my skin tighten.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are a poor liar.”
“You know nothing about me.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
For the first time, his expression shifts. The change is small, but I see it. A private correction. As if I have stated something factually inaccurate.
The approaching sedan turns into our lane.
Bellandi opens the rear door instead. “Get in.”
“Tell me why your name is beside mine.”
A shot strikes the SUV.
The rear window bursts.
Bellandi pushes me down behind the open door. His palm lands at the back of my head, shielding me from the falling glass.
“The explanation requires you alive.”
“Start with one sentence.”
The passenger in the sedan fires again.
Bellandi returns two shots. One strikes the front tire. The sedan swerves, hits the curb, and stops at an angle. The passenger door opens.
Bellandi looks at me.
Something in his eyes tells me he could leave me here and end this in seconds. Perhaps that was the original plan. Perhaps the only reason I am still breathing is that he changed his mind.
I climb into the SUV.
He gets behind the wheel, locks the doors, and accelerates before I have fastened the seat belt.
The street falls away behind us.
I press my back against the seat and reach into my coat again.
Bellandi glances at the mirror.
“Spraying me inside the car will make both of us less safe.”
“I’m considering the trade.”
He turns hard onto a side street.
A dark sedan appears behind us.
Not the damaged one.
Another.
“How many people are trying to kill me?”
“At least two groups.”
“Does one of them work for you?”
His hands tighten once on the wheel. “Not anymore.”
The answer brings no relief.
I take out the pepper spray but keep it low beside my thigh. “Stop the car.”
“No.”
“I’m calling the police.”
“You left your phone on the sidewalk.”
I stare at him.
He looks ahead.
“You dropped it when I pulled you down,” he says.
I did not drop it. I remember placing it in my coat pocket after sharing my location.
My hand checks the pocket.
Empty.
“You took it.”
“Yes.”
Rage burns through the shock. “Give it back.”
“It is broadcasting your location.”
“To Mina.”
“To anyone with access.”
“You don’t know who has access.”
“I know more about your phone than you do.”
The sedan behind us gains distance.
Bellandi reaches into his coat and places my phone on the center console.
The screen is dark. A thin fracture crosses one corner.
“Unlock it,” he says.
“No.”
“Then I’ll destroy it.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“The men behind us are deciding faster.”
I look through the rear window. The sedan is two cars back now, moving aggressively between lanes.
I unlock the phone without giving it to him.
“Airplane mode,” he says.
I enable it.
“Power off.”
I do.
He takes the phone, removes the case, and opens a narrow compartment near the dashboard. Inside are several tools, a spare magazine, and two other phones. He uses a small metal pin to eject my SIM card.
“Do you usually carry a mobile crime drawer?” I ask.
His mouth almost moves. Not a smile. He may not remember how.
He snaps the SIM card between his fingers.
I stare at the pieces.
“You could have asked me to remove it.”
“You could have said no.”
“That was my right.”
“Yes.”
The agreement is immediate and without apology.
I hate him more for understanding the difference.
The sedan moves beside us on the left.
Bellandi swerves right, narrowly missing a delivery truck. The driver leans on the horn. We shoot through an intersection as the light turns yellow.
“Seat belt,” he says.
I pull it across me.
The sedan follows.
Bellandi takes another turn, then another. He is not simply driving fast. He is choosing streets with construction barriers, delivery vehicles, and limited passing space.
The man thinks in territory.
I force myself to look beyond the fear. The sedan behind us has a damaged left headlight. Two people in front. No visible rear passenger.
“They’re not watching your car,” I say.
“They are.”
“No. The passenger keeps looking at reflections.”
Bellandi checks the mirror.
The sedan falls back.
A motorcycle emerges from behind it.
Black helmet. No license plate.
Bellandi’s attention changes.
“You saw him first,” he says.
The statement should not sound like praise. It does.
The motorcycle accelerates between lanes.
Bellandi cuts toward a parking structure entrance. The gate is down. He does not slow.
A security arm snaps against the hood and flies over us.
I grab the door handle.
Locked.
We descend into the garage, tires shrieking on painted concrete. The motorcycle follows.
Bellandi turns down one level, then another. Instead of continuing, he brakes beside a support column and switches off the headlights.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
The motorcycle engine grows louder.
Bellandi reverses into the shadow behind the column.
The rider reaches the bottom of the ramp and slows, looking toward the next level. He expects us to keep running.
Bellandi lets him pass.
Then he drives up the ramp in the opposite direction.
The rider turns too late.
By the time we reach the street again, the sedan has continued forward and the motorcycle is trapped behind the garage traffic gate, where an attendant is shouting into a radio.
Bellandi drives west at a controlled speed.
I become aware of my breathing. Too fast, too shallow. My hands ache from gripping the pepper spray.
The first wave of fear recedes enough for the second to arrive.
This man saved me.
This man was assigned to kill me.
Both facts occupy the car without resolving each other.
“What is your first name?” I ask.
He does not answer immediately.
“Rafael.”
“Do people call you that?”
“Not if they know me.”
“Rafe, then.”
His eyes shift to the mirror.
I study his profile. The broken line of his nose. The small scar near his jaw. Black hair cut short but disturbed now by wind and motion. He wears no tie, only a dark shirt beneath the coat, as if he expected the evening to require movement.
“You knew I found the ledger.”
“Yes.”
“You knew my name was in it.”
“Yes.”
“You knew someone would come for me.”
“I expected more time.”
“Why?”
His silence changes shape.
I understand before he responds.
“Because you were supposed to do it.”
He turns onto an industrial road where warehouses replace apartment buildings and pedestrians disappear.
I lift the pepper spray.
“Stop the car.”
“No.”
“I will spray you.”
“You already said that.”
“And now I mean it.”
“I believed you the first time.”
The calm in his voice is infuriating. Not dismissive. Certain.
I aim directly at his face. “Tell me why your name was beside mine.”
His gaze remains on the road.
“I was assigned to determine whether you could be bought, frightened, or removed.”
The words are spoken as facts, stripped of any attempt to soften them.
My fingers tighten around the canister.
“And what did you decide?”
“That you couldn’t be bought.”
“Frightened?”
“You’re frightened now.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
The road narrows between two warehouses. A chain-link fence runs along the right side, topped with loops of wire.
“Removed?” I ask.
Rafe finally looks at me.
The glance lasts less than a second, but it contains months I do not understand.
“I decided no one was going to touch you.”
“Except you.”
His face turns forward again.
“Yes.”
A laugh escapes me. It is not humor. My body has simply run out of appropriate reactions.
“You expect me to believe you’re protecting me.”
“I expect you to remain alive long enough to choose what you believe.”
“And if I decide you’re the greatest threat?”
“Then you’ll be correct about one of them.”
The honesty is not comforting. It is a locked room with good lighting.
I keep the spray raised.
“How long have you been watching me?”
His right hand shifts on the steering wheel.
The scar across his palm catches the passing light.
“Months.”
The word enters slowly.
Months means before Aurelia. Before tonight. Before I knew the ledger existed.
“You knew where I worked.”
“Yes.”
“Where I lived.”
“Yes.”
“My father’s name?”
“Yes.”
My stomach turns.
“What else?”
“We’re not having that conversation in the car.”
“You don’t control when I ask questions.”
“No. I control whether I answer while someone may still be tracking us.”
The distinction is precise enough to sound rehearsed, though I doubt anyone has ever made him explain himself this much.
I look at the locked door.
Then at him.
“You took my phone before the first shot.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I would check for it.”
“Yes.”
“You knew I would try the door.”
His silence lasts one beat too long.
A cold awareness moves through me.
“How did you know I always pull a locked door twice?”
He keeps driving.
He does not answer.