Saving Grace

Chapter One

Saving Grace

AJA FOXX

~ Jai ~

It was a Tuesday night on SE Belmont, wet enough that the air felt like soup and the sodium streetlight at the mouth of the alley looked more like a traffic accident than a light source.

If I’d had a choice, I would have been inside already, sunk into my third mug of Yunnan gold, writing soft core fanfic about the bartender who still carded me every Friday even though I was closer to thirty than eighteen.

Instead, I had a grocery bag in one hand, a half-unwrapped cherry sucker in my cheek, and the distinct pleasure of stepping in something that squelched.

I cut behind the bakery because it shaved two minutes off my walk, which is the only reason I ever cut behind the bakery. The alley was never just an alley.

It was an aromatic dissertation on human neglect: bins steaming with rot, old fryer oil from the Thai place at the corner, puddles of rainwater shimmering with whatever iridescent byproduct the laundromat flushed after hours.

The streetlight’s orange glow didn’t reach this far, so everything was colorless except for a blue flicker from the 7-Eleven sign bleeding through chain-link at the far end.

I was about to turn left at the dumpster when my boot caught on the edge of a cardboard box wedged against the metal. Not a light kick, either—a full toe-stub, like the box was trying to mug me.

The box moved.

Something inside made a sound.

I hesitated.

I had a healthy respect for the surprises Portland’s dumpsters could produce, ranging from live raccoons to the time I found an entire set of twenty-pound kettlebells, still boxed, with a sticky note that just said “TAKE.” I’d seen things. But this sound didn’t track.

It was too... high-pitched, and not in a rat way.

I crouched, convenience bag scraping against damp brick, and used the tip of my boot to pull the box clear of the dumpster. It was a liquor box, the cardboard softened by rain but not enough to collapse. On the side: HANDLE WITH CARE, in bold print.

The irony was not subtle.

The sound happened again. This time it was a soft mewl, the kind that slides right into your eardrum and short-circuits the part of your brain that likes to pretend you don’t care.

I pressed two fingers to the top flap and peeled it back, expecting kittens or, at worst, a possum.

What I found was a newborn baby. Human. Pink and furious.

Swaddled in a men’s flannel shirt that was the wrong size, wrong color, and already soaked halfway through with something I did not want to identify.

She was so small I thought I’d hallucinated her. Red-faced, shrieking, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands balled into fists.

My hand came up, involuntarily, like I was going to shush her, but the absurdity of that made me laugh—a rough, startled sound that came out of me before I could stop it.

Three seconds, we just stared at each other. Me, crouched in the filth, a grocery bag of ramen packets and milk in one hand, a bright red lollipop in the other, and her, a newborn girl who’d already figured out that the world was garbage and she was probably on her own.

I pulled the lollipop out of my mouth and stared at it for a second, then tucked it into the breast pocket of my jacket.

I peeled off my jacket—olive canvas, no sentimental value, but dry enough to matter—and wrapped it around the baby like I’d done this a thousand times. I hadn’t, but I was good with my hands.

Army Ranger training does that.

The jacket cocooned her, and I tightened it behind her back with one hand, using my teeth to hold the sleeve closed. The other hand got under her head. She was cold. Not the blue-lip hypothermia kind of cold, but not far off.

“Fuck,” I said, which didn’t help. “You couldn’t have just been a raccoon?”

She made a sound like she agreed. Or maybe she was just breathing. It was hard to tell under all the noise.

There was a move, here—a branch on the decision tree.

Hospital, police station, or home. I ran the math in my head, fast, eyes darting down the alley to check for other signs of human life.

Nobody. Not even a bored teenager or a night shift dishwasher catching a smoke.

The bakery’s security cam blinked red over the back door, but I didn’t care.

Let them think I’d stolen a baby. I didn’t have time to worry about public image.

I got up, keeping the baby wedged tight against my chest, and hooked the grocery bag into the crook of my arm.

My car was three blocks north, parked behind the florist because the closer spaces were all “permit only” and the city was ruthless about tickets after 6 p.m. I started walking, boots skidding on slick asphalt, every sense dialed up to eleven.

The baby’s head pressed against my sternum. The weight was nothing but the reality of it was massive. I’d held hand grenades with less caution.

I adjusted the jacket once, twice, until I could feel her cheek against my skin, damp and weirdly hot. Her smell was new-baby and flannel and old cardboard, layered over the baseline of damp alley and garbage.

For a second, I remembered a different alley in a different city, rain on my face and a warmth in my arms, but I slammed the door on that memory so hard it shivered the back of my eyes.

I walked fast. Every step was a calculation: where to plant my foot, how to keep the jacket closed, which streets would get me to the Subaru without drawing too much attention.

The lamp at the far end of the alley made the rain look like hot metal, splattering in random streaks across the pavement. The city noises faded out, replaced by my own heartbeat and the steady, ridiculous breathing of the baby.

I got to the car, unlocked it with a chirp, and yanked open the passenger door. I set the grocery bag down and cradled the baby in the crook of my arm while I rooted through the backseat for the emergency blanket I kept rolled up for earthquake season.

My fingers shook, but not from fear. Just too much caffeine and not enough sleep. The blanket came free, orange nylon, and I wrapped it around the jacket for an extra layer. The baby made a chuffing sound and went still.

I slid behind the wheel, hands already moving for the ignition, and did a quick check of the rearview. Nothing. No one.

I sat for half a beat, eyes on the baby, waiting for the next step to present itself. I expected panic, or at least some trace of sentimentality, but all I felt was a hard-edged responsibility, the same shape as the voice that used to bark orders at me across miles of sand. Get it done. Do it now.

I checked the mirrors, eased the Subaru out of the lot, and pointed it toward OHSU. The baby’s weight pressed against my chest, inconvenient and shockingly real, like the universe had just handed me a new mission and didn’t care that I’d clocked out years ago.

I drove, the city sliding by in streaks of orange and blue, my mind already plotting the fastest way to the hospital and wondering, not for the first time, why weird shit like this always found me.

If you ever want to see a city for what it really is, get yourself followed by professionals. The suburbs will try to sell you on safe neighborhoods and recycling bins, but Portland after midnight was all exposed nerves.

I clocked the bikes before I hit 41st—a pair, maybe three, running black and formation tight. No plates, headlights modded down to a mean slit, each helmet the same matte nothing.

I didn’t panic. It’s not my thing. But the baby on my chest was an issue.

The first motorcycle flashed in the rearview at the intersection, just a shadow over my left taillight, not even a pretense of traffic law.

I took Belmont at a normal pace, kept my signals casual, and watched as the bikes hung back just close enough for intimidation.

They wanted me to see them.

Whoever they were, they’d done this before, and the fact they were out in this weather told me something had changed since I’d picked up the baby.

I popped a fresh lollipop and ran scenarios in my head. Hospital was four miles and change, straight shot over the bridge and up the hill, but the parking structure was a bottleneck. They’d have backup waiting.

I had no illusions about my own importance in the world, but if a random Tuesday baby-dump could buy me this kind of attention, then the baby was the draw, not me.

Which meant the hospital was a trap.

The baby, for her part, had gone inert. Not the limp, boneless kind of inert. More like a grenade with the pin out. Her breath was hot through my shirt, not the quick, erratic pattern I expected but a measured in, out, in. I had to resist the urge to check her pulse at every stop sign.

The bikes closed up as I hit the light at Burnside. Third bike, this one running lights-off, slotted in behind the other two. Textbook shepherding, right out of the convoy defense playbook. I’d been on the giving end of that formation more than once, overseas, so I knew how hard it was to shake.

But I had one advantage they didn’t. I knew Portland’s every back alley, service ramp, and pedestrian cut-through. Six years and three breakups worth of midnight walks will do that for you.

At the next green, I broke pattern. Hard right down 32nd, then a quick left onto the delivery lane behind the old record shop.

The pavement here was crap, pitted and slick, but I kept the Subaru’s nose ahead of the first bike and floored it up the alley.

Behind me: the distant snarl of engines opening up, close enough to rattle my fillings.

The first turn at 29th almost cost me the grocery bag, but I caught it with my free hand and felt the baby shift, her fist tightening around the placket of my shirt. She still didn’t make a sound. Just watched me with eyes I knew were open, because I could feel them.