Chapter 6 — The Forger’s Hands
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Four hours held, and that was the problem.
I had not slept longer than ninety minutes in twelve years without waking up with my teeth bared, and then one night above a chop shop on the South Side I slept four straight with my boots off and my spine unguarded.
Monday morning at seven fourteen he set his steel slider on the counter and pushed it toward me with one finger and I walked out into daylight with the shape of safety stuck to me like a burr.
One day, nine hours, thirty-three minutes.
That is the distance between that counter and this alley.
Monday I rode daylight back to the Gold Coast with my hair pinned so tight my scalp ached, smiled at my doorman through sunglasses, and stood under water so hot it turned my shoulders pink.
I pulled the tote out of its hide, checked the burner, checked the diagram, checked the two folded gloves.
The little charred button I carried out of the file room stayed in the jewelry dish on the dresser where I had dropped it.
I did not touch it again. Some things you carry and some things you leave to accuse you later.
Tuesday at eight oh two in the morning I stood in my own bathroom in the emerald slip dress and tights I had worn home and stripped them off and stepped into war.
Black turtleneck, black leather pants that sealed over the old crescent scar on my left knee and made it disappear, black wool wrap coat.
Hair up into the glossy chignon that says charity board, not back room.
The gold locket at my throat. The cornflower-blue ribbon knotted tight around my right wrist. Fresh Huntress-red on my mouth, the tube dropped into the tote zip pocket afterward.
The mother-of-pearl stiletto slid into the sheath on my right thigh and vanished under leather.
Armor looks a lot like evening wear if you buy it right.
Tuesday afternoon I took the bus east toward the West Loop with the tote on my knees and the diagram memorized until I could draw it blind.
Rain came down steady, fifty-one degrees and gray as dishwater, the windows fogged and the traffic on Madison snarled around a stalled delivery truck.
I got off three blocks early on purpose.
Wet pavement, wet wool, wet hair at my temples no matter how I ducked.
I walked the last three blocks with my head down, cut down the side alley beside Lang Letterpress at four forty-seven, and slipped in through the service gap with the rain at my back.
The smell hit first. Paper dust and sharp solvent ink over hot metal, the kind of smell that coats the back of your throat.
Fluorescents buzzed over the press floor and one hooded press lamp burned yellow over the drying rack.
The big offset press sat idle with its low hum, and somewhere in back a paper cutter thumped and a faucet dripped with a tired metallic tick.
West Loop outside, all exposed brick and new money.
In here, nothing had been new since the eighties.
An apprentice with ink to the elbows looked up from the front counter, nineteen and bored and already annoyed at the bell. I gave him the full Gold Coast smile, the one with teeth organized for charity photos.
“Please tell me you save brides from themselves,” I said, shaking rain off my coat sleeves. “My planner quit, my wedding is eight weeks out, and my mother-in-law to be has opinions about deckle edges.”
He almost laughed. “We do rush suites. What stock were you thinking?”
“Show me everything heavy,” I said. “I want to feel it before I fall in love with it.”
He turned to pull the sample books, and I looked past his shoulder the way a predator looks past bait.
Drying rack, three deep. Cream cover stock I knew from half the sealed files in this city, the weave just off enough to pass under bad light.
And beside it, test sheets in a deep brown-red ink, oxblood by any other name, the color my godmother’s charity programs always used.
My pulse did one slow roll and then settled.
Fox sees the henhouse door standing open. Careful, little doe. Not yet.
A man came out from the back wiping his hands on a rag, fiftyish, sleeves rolled, forearms dusted with paper fiber, fingers stained to the second knuckle.
Peter Lang. The hands gave him away before his face did.
Forgers always have ruined cuticles and a craftsman’s pride they cannot hide.
He glanced at my coat, my locket, my shoes, and priced me in two seconds.
“Rush bride,” the apprentice said. “Wants heavy stock.”
“Then she wants me,” Lang said, and smiled the way small men smile at pretty women who look rich. “Come see the cutter while the boy finds your samples. Nothing impresses like the big blade.”
The phone at the front counter rang. The apprentice grabbed it, turned sideways, started arguing about a delivery driver stuck on Lake Street.
Lang jerked his chin toward the back, already walking.
I followed him past the cutter, past skids of paper wrapped in plastic, into the back room with its steel worktable and its shelves of ink cans and its stainless sink in the corner with the left faucet dripping into the basin.
The press hum dulled behind us. The walls were close.
One door in from the shop, bolted from inside with a sliding bolt, and one narrow alley door at the rear, locked.
I set my tote down under the rim of the worktable where it would not trip anyone. I unbuttoned my coat. He noticed the shape of my legs in leather and thought it was for him, and something cold and amused uncurled behind my ribs. Men always think the armor is an invitation.
“You do a lot of legal work here?” I asked, trailing one finger along the steel table edge. “Certificates, seals, that kind of thing? My fiancé’s family is very — documented.”
His eyes flicked to the drying rack visible through the doorway, then back. A tell the size of a billboard. “We do whatever the client needs,” he said. “Discretion included.”
“Discretion,” I repeated. “That must pay well. Syndicate rates?”
The smile did not fall so much as curdle. “I think you should —”
I pulled the gloves from the tote and snapped them on, left then right, latex popping against the ribbon on my wrist. His gaze dropped to my hands and his breath changed.
He knew what gloves meant in a room with a bolted door.
He stepped back toward the shelves, hand groping for something heavy, an ink can, a wrench, anything.
“Peter Lang,” I said, and my voice came out flat and bright at once, socialite lilt with the floor cut out from under it.
“You mixed the test batch and you ran the covers. You took their money and you owed the difference to Marcus, and you thought paperwork would keep you breathing. Here is the math you missed. I am done being patient with men who sell paper ghosts.”
He lunged for the bolt. I was faster. Leather soles are silent on concrete when you know how to land, and I had practiced this approach in my head for eleven days.
I caught his collar, spun him off the door, and drove him back against the steel table.
His hip hit the edge hard enough to rattle the ink cans.
He swung at me, wild, knuckles grazing my shoulder. I took it and smiled with all my teeth.
“Shh,” I said. “The boy out front is still arguing about Lake Street. Let us not embarrass him.”
The stiletto left its sheath with a snick, mother-of-pearl catching the fluorescent light for half a heartbeat. Beautiful sound. Private sound. Mine.
He saw the blade and made a noise low in his throat and got one hand up.
I did not grab his wrists. I never touch wrists, not even theirs, especially not theirs.
I clamped my gloved left hand hard over his mouth, fingers clear of his nose so he could still breathe through it, and drove the blade up under his ribs with my right.
Once. The coat at my thigh fell back into place on its own.
His body jerked against the table, ink cans jumping.
I yanked free and struck again in the same hot channel, angled up, and felt the give that means the work is done.
Blood came fast and dark over my right cuff and down his shirtfront.
Hot metal and fresh blood rolled over the solvent smell until my eyes watered.
He sagged against me, heavy, breath sawing through his nose against my palm.
I held him upright with my shoulder under his and counted.
One. Two. His eyes fixed on the ceiling fluorescents and then unfocused.
Three. The fight went out of his legs all at once.
I lowered him to the concrete by the table leg, controlled, no thump to carry through the floor.
He stared up, mouth working under my hand.
I eased my palm back so he could take one last wet breath.
This is the part no one writes in the revenge fantasies.
They gurgle. They look surprised. They look, God help me, ordinary.
“For the covers,” I told him quietly. “For every lie you printed that kept someone owned.”
His pulse fluttered under the skin of his throat and stopped. Verdict rendered. Peter Lang dead on the back-room floor, six feet from a paper cutter and three feet from a sink that would not save him.
My hands were steady. They were always steady after. That steadiness scared me more than the blood ever did. Good girl, Huntress. Pretty little butcher with the good hair.