No One Is Safe (Noone Thriller #1)

Prologue

Waking up after being knocked unconscious is like being reborn, and equally painful. It is not, Simon decides, an experience that improves on repetition.

Oh, his head. His vision is spinning, so he closes his eyes. That’s unfortunately worse. The hurt is intense. He breathes through it, controls the urge to throw up, opens his eyes again.

Everything is blurred, fractured shapes of black, brown, and gray, which gradually resolve.

This is a room; he’s somewhere inside. There’s the edge of a ceiling where it meets a wall.

Buttresses are black; the wall is tarry brown, with gray metal shelving.

Left of the empty shelving, a stack of white plastic thirty-gallon drums. For a moment, in his debilitated state, the stack seems like a modernist sculpture made from larger-than-life Tic Tacs.

The air is icy, and he’s lying on a hard, cold floor—feels like concrete.

This room is industrial—maybe a warehouse?

There’s some natural light from a small high window on the wall past the drum stack, which helps him get his bearings.

He can hear a pattering sound: rain on a tin roof.

It’s raining outside. The room is gloomy but not completely dark; it’s still daytime.

The last thing Simon recalls is walking into his apartment, closing the door and turning around . . . then Claude Ameche’s ugly sneer. Okay, he’s got it now. Or rather, he knows how they got him.

A long tacky-wet line on his cheek itches. One of his nostrils is blocked with what smells like blood. He swallows—definitely blood. He brings his hand up to touch his nose; it doesn’t feel broken.

This is what you get for being caught out and knocked unconscious.

Nomi warned him, even said the words Be careful, and he didn’t give her advice enough consideration.

She’s going to be pissed. She’ll give him that look—thin lips closed in a line, mink-brown eyes boring into his, a direct admonition.

He almost wishes she were here right now, so he could say “What?” as if he didn’t know, and she could blink at him in that way she does, like she’s waiting for his brain to catch up to his mouth . . .

Dammit, his brain is rattling in his skull.

And Nomi’s not here, but that’s a good thing—she’ll know he’s been taken; she’ll figure it out.

Unless Eric Lamonte’s men have followed their mob boss’s orders and simply shot her and left her in a dumpster somewhere, which is a possibility Simon doesn’t want to think about.

It’s freezing in here. He swipes a hand down his front: Henley, pilled knit vest, coat. He’s still in his work clothes. His brown trousers are scuffed and dirty at the knees. There’s dark blood on his coat lapel—goddammit, that stain’s going to be impossible to get out.

A soft voice says, “Are you okay, mister?” and Simon startles, looks to the right.

Background: more brown wall, a hanging bulb, a door, the top of another white drum.

Foreground: a girl’s face, very dark-brown skin, black hair in short braids framing her eyes, plump cheeks, wide mouth.

She’s wearing blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt with a Care Bear on it and a multicolored nylon windbreaker.

She’s hugging herself for warmth and looking at him with concern.

Although he has never met her before, Simon knows this girl.

“You’re—” His throat is rough. He clears it. “You’re Brittany Jackson.”

“Uh-huh.” The girl nods.

“Your mom is Solange Jackson. She’s been looking for you.”

“You know my mom?” the girl asks, hopeful.

“Yes.” He sits up carefully, winces. “Don’t suppose you have any aspirin?”

Brittany bites her lip. “Sorry.”

Simon rubs the back of his neck with a cold hand.

His head is splitting. A rumble of thunder from outside makes his teeth vibrate, which doesn’t help.

He looks at Brittany, crouched on her haunches nearby.

The intention was to find this girl and rescue her, not get himself laid up in what he assumes is a locked room with her.

“This . . . isn’t quite going the way I anticipated,” he admits.

Brittany just stares at him. “Uh-huh.”

“My name is Simon Noone.” Which is not true, but he’s not getting into that now. “Brittany, your mom hired a woman I work with, Nomi Pace, to help find you, and . . . Actually, forget that for a minute. Do you know where we are?”

“We’re in a room in a big building.” Brittany sketches toward the air behind her with one hand. “The men out there, they put me in here, and the door is locked.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“We can’t get out. I didn’t see anything when they put me in here, but when they open the door to bring food in, the other side looks like a big, like, factory or something? A big room, bigger than a house.”

“Okay.” He needs to get up. He’s bracing for it. “Give me one second.”

He rolls to the left. Oh fuck.

“When they brought you in, I was scared,” Brittany says. “I thought you were dead.”

He’s not dead, he just wants to be dead.

Head like a supernova, black fuzzy sparklers in his vision.

His stomach is sliding around, and his rib cage is too small.

On hands and knees, he pants and tries not to vomit.

Concentrates on what he can feel: crumbs on the buffed concrete floor, cold air on his face.

Pulsing pain in his left cheekbone and eyeball, maybe some swelling around the zygomatic arch.

His breathing is occluded; he presses his thumb against his nostril, clears his blocked nose onto the floor, wipes his face with the sleeve of his coat.

Ai-ai-ai, this is wool, his landlady, Sofia Rosa, would tut. You should take better care of your clothes.

But he can smell now: the scent of rust and perishing wood, like mulch under a tree in spring; the acerbic tang of ammonia; the stink of food scraps. There’s probably a bucket in here that Brittany’s using for a toilet and a trash can. Or maybe it’s the smell of the street outside.

“Are you okay?” Brittany repeats, somewhere in the upper atmosphere.

“Fine.” Simon grunts, pushes himself back, clambers dizzily up to standing.

Perspective is good. The room is eight feet wide by twelve long, and the walls are eight feet high. If he calls the window north, there are drums and shelving against the east wall, the door to the south, a narrow wooden desk and more shelving at the west.

The window: Holding the desk, then the upper edge of a drum, he totters his way toward it.

It’s small, placed six and a half feet up the wall—he can just see over the bottom sill.

They’re at ground level. Rain dashes itself against the glass, seeps into a water stain under the sill.

There’s the damp brick wall of a fence, then another building about twelve feet away, a cramped alley between them.

Where the hell are they? Are they still in Manhattan?

He can’t hear traffic, only the whistling of the wind and rain.

He hopes they’re still in the West Village—it’s ridiculous to be getting a rush of longing for the filthy, disreputable streets that he knows, but Simon’s been cut loose from his personal geography before.

He hates this feeling of disorientation, like he’s a snipped thread.

He pulls his coat tighter against the chill, tries to concentrate.

Hard to tell what time it is because of the storm, but he can’t have been out that long; it’s probably still midafternoon.

This is an industrial building, a warehouse.

Nomi followed Lamonte’s flunky to a warehouse off West Nineteenth Street last night.

So what’s the likelihood this is the same place?

“I climbed up to that window,” Brittany says, “but it’s blocked off.”

Simon angles to see, and she’s right; the window is covered with wire mesh on the outside.

Lightning cracks like a flash grenade outside: Bright light suddenly spears through the window, jags into him like a glass knife to the eye. He hisses, presses his hands against the wall, tries to breathe. This is worse than his regular headaches.

His teeth are clenched, his shoulders bunched. The doctor would be telling him to let his muscles relax. Flores’s deep voice always had a calming burr: You tense up; you hurt. Let go. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but just try it.

Simon relaxes, lets go. Lets his chin hang down to his chest. The pain in his temples subsides to a dull throb.

Brittany again. “Head’s hurting, huh?”

“You have no idea.” He turns around, props himself against the wall.

She’s standing up. She’s surprisingly tall for a seven-year-old, but her mother is a tall woman. “Yeah, I think they beat you up pretty good.”

Simon huffs air. There’s a certain comedy in it, he’ll admit. Then Brittany grins, and he sees a dark gap—she’s missing two of her bottom baby teeth. He winces at how, in these circumstances, she might have lost them.

“I’ve got a bottle of water, if you’re thirsty,” Brittany offers, “and some gum, if you—”

She stills, eyes flicking. Then he hears it, too, over the noise of the rain.

He quiets his own voice. “Is that them?”

Brittany nods. The whites of her eyes show stark against the brown of her skin.

“How many?”

“Four,” she whispers. “That’s all I seen.”

Something like mercury—cool and calm and alien—is easing into his veins. “They have weapons, Brittany?”

She nods again. “Usually.”

The sounds are clear to both of them now: the clump of heavy boots, the clipped echo of arriving voices. Simon can smell cigarette smoke. A door is rolled open, farther away, the rumble distinct from the low growl of thunder outside.

Brittany steps closer. She grips the sleeve of his coat with both her small hands. “Simon . . . What are we gonna do?”

Lightning cracks out the window behind them once more.

Simon looks around the room, at the size and shape of the space, the objects it holds, the cold light in the air, the little girl by his side.

Considers the ripe-bursting pain in his head, the quicksilver under his skin. How is he supposed to answer?

We can get out, but I’ll need to slaughter some people first. If I remember how to do that. If my new conscience allows. And once I let the beast out of the box, will he want to go back in?

He can’t say any of that. For Christ’s sake, she’s only seven.

“Don’t worry.” He pats Brittany’s shoulder awkwardly. “I’ve got a plan.”