CHAPTER 5
NORA
The safehouse contains everything a person needs to survive and nothing that suggests anyone has lived here.
Gray sofa. Black table. Two dining chairs. A narrow kitchen with identical white mugs arranged by height. No photographs, books, magnets, mail, or abandoned charger cables. Even the air feels unused.
I stand just inside the door while Rafe locks it behind us.
The lock turns three times.
“Open it.”
He looks at me.
“Now.”
He unlocks the door.
All three bolts.
Then he steps away.
The gesture is small. It should not matter after everything else. Instead, some tight part of my chest loosens enough to make me angry again.
I test the handle.
The door opens.
The hallway beyond remains empty.
I close it but leave the locks disengaged.
Rafe says nothing.
“Where’s the camera?”
He removes his coat and places it over the back of a chair. Beneath it, his shirt is dark and fitted closely enough to reveal the shoulder holster strapped beneath his left arm. He removes the gun, unloads it, and sets both weapon and magazine on the kitchen counter where I can see them.
A performance of safety.
Not safety itself.
He points toward a small black lens mounted above a bookshelf.
The indicator is dark.
I take out my phone before remembering he destroyed the SIM card and switched it off. The reflex leaves me with a useless rectangle in my hand.
“Turn it on,” he says. “The local network is isolated.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means the phone cannot connect outside this apartment unless I enable it.”
“That does not improve the sentence.”
His mouth moves again, the near-smile that never becomes one.
I dislike noticing it.
I turn on the phone and photograph the camera, the door, the room, and Rafe.
He watches without objection.
“For the police?” he asks.
“For whoever finds my body.”
The almost-smile disappears.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Your knee needs to be cleaned.”
“My knee is attached to me. I’ll decide what it needs.”
He goes to a cabinet near the kitchen and removes a first-aid kit. “The bathroom is through there.”
I take the kit when he offers it.
His hand is bleeding again. The cut across the base of his thumb has opened wider, staining the edge of the band of scar tissue that crosses his palm.
“You need stitches.”
“No.”
“That is not a medical assessment.”
“It is sufficient.”
“Your hand is leaving blood on everything you touch.”
He looks at the faint mark on the cabinet handle, then wipes it with the sleeve of his shirt.
The absurdity of the action cuts through the fear.
“That solves it,” I say.
“It solves the cabinet.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
I may have found the only man in Chicago capable of making literalism sound like a threat.
I take the first-aid kit into the bathroom.
The room is as blank as the rest of the apartment. White towels. Unopened toothbrush. Soap without a label. I close the door but do not lock it because the handle does not have a lock.
Of course it doesn’t.
I remove my coat and examine the damage. My pants are torn at the left knee. Beneath them, the skin is scraped raw but the joint moves normally. Bruising has begun along my ribs where Rafe struck me out of the sedan’s path.
I clean the wound, apply antiseptic, and cover it with gauze.
My hands begin shaking only after I finish.
I sit on the closed toilet lid and press them between my knees.
A vehicle tried to kill me.
Two men fired guns at me.
A third man, assigned to end my life, dragged me away and admitted he has watched me for months.
The facts line up. They do not become reasonable.
I think of Mina waiting for my call. My father asleep in Milwaukee with his phone charging beside his bed. Edward Pryce entering the office tomorrow and discovering I am missing.
No.
Discovering is the wrong word.
Edward may already know.
The idea produces a fresh wave of nausea.
I stand, wash my face, and look at myself in the mirror, though the reflection cannot tell me what to do next.
My face has become unfamiliar anyway.
A red mark crosses my cheek from the pavement. My hair hangs loose and uneven around it. There is dirt on my collar and a tear near the shoulder of my shirt.
My eyes look alert.
Too alert.
I open the bathroom door.
Rafe stands near the window with another phone at his ear.
“No,” he says. “She is not available.”
A pause.
“I’m aware of what he ordered.”
He listens, his back to me.
The broad line of his shoulders remains still, but his free hand closes around the scar in his palm.
“No one approaches this location,” he says. “If they do, treat them as hostile.”
He ends the call and turns.
“Who was that?”
“A man I trust.”
“Do I trust him?”
“No.”
“Excellent. I was concerned the evening might become simple.”
He puts the phone on the counter. “Your colleague knows you left the office.”
“Mina?”
“She received your location before the signal stopped.”
“You spoke to her?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I accessed the transmission log.”
I grip the first-aid kit tighter. “You accessed my phone.”
“Earlier.”
“How much earlier?”
“The device has been monitored for three weeks.”
“By you?”
“Partly.”
The room seems to narrow around us.
“Partly.”
“Someone else installed access first. I found it and observed the traffic.”
“You found spyware on my phone and left it there.”
“Yes.”
“So you could see who was using it.”
“Yes.”
“And meanwhile they could see me.”
“Limited location data, call timing, message metadata. Not content.”
The precision in his answer suggests he expects it to help.
It does not.
“You let someone track me.”
“I controlled what they received.”
“You keep using that word.”
“What word?”
“Controlled.”
He says nothing.
I place the first-aid kit on the table. “Sit.”
His gaze drops to the kit, then returns to me.
“Your hand,” I say. “If you lose the use of it, I assume kidnapping becomes less efficient.”
“I’m not kidnapping you.”
“You locked me in a car and brought me to an unknown apartment.”
“I unlocked the door.”
“After I made you.”
“Yes.”
The admission disrupts my anger because it contains no resistance. He is not trying to win the argument. Perhaps he believes the facts speak in his favor. Perhaps he simply has no instinct for defending himself.
“Sit,” I repeat.
He takes one of the dining chairs and turns it so the back faces the table. He sits with his forearm resting across the top.
I open the kit and find gloves, gauze, antiseptic, wound strips, and a suture pack I will not pretend to know how to use.
“Did the bullet do this?”
“Glass.”
I pull on gloves. “This will hurt.”
“It already does.”
“That wasn’t a request for emotional context.”
The near-smile appears again.
I clean the cut.
He does not flinch. His hand remains relaxed beneath mine, warm and heavy. The scar across his palm is older than the injury and slightly raised, crossing from beneath his index finger toward his wrist.
“What happened here?”
“Knife.”
“You’re going to need to narrow that down.”
“I was holding one. Someone else wanted it.”
“Who won?”
“I kept the knife.”
I look up.
His eyes are brown, not black. The light above the table reveals warmer tones near the center, though nothing about his expression is warm.
I return to the cut.
“Why did you turn off the camera?”
“You asked that already.”
“You did not answer.”
“I know.”
I apply pressure with gauze. Blood spreads through the first layer.
“How many cameras are in my apartment?”
He does not move.
The answer is there before he gives it.
“One.”
My stomach tightens.
“Where?”
“Living room.”
“For how long?”
“Eight weeks.”
I release his hand.
He does not reach for me or attempt to stop the movement.
“You put a camera in my home.”
“Yes.”
“Bedroom?”
“No.”
“Bathroom?”
“No.”
“Do you expect credit?”
“No.”
“Did you watch it?”
“Yes.”
The word is quiet.
Not ashamed. Not proud.
True.
I stand and strip off the gloves.
Rafe looks at the unfinished bandage but does not comment.
“What did you see?”
“You working. Eating. Sleeping on the sofa twice.”
“What else?”
“You turned it toward the wall after finding it.”
“I never found a camera.”
“Not consciously.”
The memory returns slowly.
Three weeks ago, I noticed a small dark spot above the bookshelf. I assumed it was part of a smoke detector, then became irritated by the feeling that it pointed toward the sofa. I moved a tall ceramic vase in front of it because the empty shelf looked unbalanced.
The next morning, the vase was back in its original position.
I blamed myself for forgetting.
My skin feels too tight.
“You entered my apartment after that.”
“Yes.”
“To move the vase.”
“To remove the camera.”
I look toward the black lens above the safehouse bookshelf.
“This one.”
“The same model.”
“How thoughtful.”
I walk to it and pull the power cable from the wall. It is already disconnected.
Rafe remains seated.
The unfinished wound leaves a red line along his hand.
“You said you watched me officially for four months.”
“Yes.”
“And unofficially longer.”
“Yes.”
“What changed three weeks ago?”
His gaze follows me as I move toward the window.
Outside, the interior shaft is a narrow column of brick and darkness. The glass reflects the apartment behind me: Rafe at the table, me standing with my arms wrapped around myself, the safehouse pretending to be neutral territory.
“Another team entered your apartment,” he says.
“When?”
“While you were at work.”
“How do you know it wasn’t yours?”
“They moved differently.”
“That is not an answer a normal person would give.”
“I’m not a normal person.”
There is no arrogance in it. No apology either.
I turn around. “What did they do?”
“Installed access through your router. Copied documents. Photographed the apartment.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to identify them.”
“You wanted to use me again.”
“Yes.”
The honesty has become unbearable.
“Stop agreeing as though that makes it better.”
“I don’t believe it makes it better.”
“Then what do you believe?”
He looks at his hand.
For the first time tonight, he appears to search for words rather than withhold them.
“I believed I could keep the danger outside your awareness until I understood it.”
“That is insane.”
“Yes.”