CHAPTER 2 Declan
The heavy, armored door of the SUV shuts with a solid, airtight thud, cutting off the freezing Chicago wind.
I walk around the rear of the vehicle, my boots completely silent on the wet asphalt. The cold air bites at the back of my neck, but I barely register the temperature. What I register is the metallic, bitter taste of adrenaline coating the back of my tongue.
I pull open the driver’s side door, slide behind the wheel, and hit the central locking system. The mechanical clack echoes through the quiet cabin.
Maeve flinches in the passenger seat. She is pressed as far against the door as the seatbelt allows, her knees pulled up slightly, her unlaced white sneakers resting on the floor mat.
She looks small. Fragile. The gray sweatpants with the ridiculous pink lettering across the back and the oversized hoodie swallow her frame.
She doesn’t look like a woman who just unraveled a forty-million-dollar cartel laundering operation. She looks like a college student who got lost on her way to a laundromat.
But I know exactly how sharp the mind inside that messy head is. I’ve been watching her use it for ninety-four days.
I shift the SUV into drive and pull out of the alley, keeping the headlights off until we clear the intersection. My hands grip the leather steering wheel. I press my thumbs into the seams, applying pressure until the dull ache in my joints overrides the lingering tremor in my muscles.
I don’t shake. I haven’t experienced a physical stress response in the field in seven years. But ten minutes ago, when I stepped into the hallway of her apartment building and saw the splintered wood of her front door, my heart stopped. A cold, absolute terror had seized my chest.
If the traffic on I-90 had been three minutes heavier, I would have walked into that apartment to find her dead.
I exhale slowly through my nose, burying the thought. The threat is neutralized. The bodies will be found by the corrupt patrol officer Richard Evans paid off, which will send Evans into a panic, buying us exactly the window of time I need to disappear her.
"Where is my laptop?" Maeve asks.
Her voice is remarkably steady, considering she was hiding in a mothball-scented closet with a broken umbrella less than fifteen minutes ago.
"In the reinforced lockbox under your seat," I reply, my eyes scanning the rearview mirror. A dark sedan turns onto the avenue three blocks back. I take a sharp right, then an immediate left down a one-way street. The sedan doesn't follow.
"I need it," she says.
"You don't."
"You don't know what's on it."
"I know exactly what's on it, Miss Gallagher.
You compiled a secondary ledger tracking the discrepancies in the offshore accounts managed by your firm.
You found the missing forty million, traced it to a shell corporation in the Caymans, and realized your boss is washing money for the Sinaloa cartel. "
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her jaw drop. She stares at the side of my face, her chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
"How do you know that?" she demands, her fingers curling into the fabric of her sweatpants. Right over her right pocket.
I notice the subtle movement. The fabric pulls tight across a small, rectangular shape hidden inside the pocket. A flash drive. She managed to back up the data before the door came down.
A faint rush of dark amusement flickers through me. She’s terrified, sitting next to a man who just executed two hitmen, and she still had the presence of mind to steal the evidence. I could demand she hand it over right now. I could pin her wrist to the console and take it.
But I don't. She needs to feel like she has leverage, or she’ll shatter completely. Let her keep her little silver shield for now.
"It’s my job to know," I say smoothly, merging onto the expressway heading toward O'Hare.
"You said you were a security contractor," she argues, her tone gaining a defensive edge. The sarcasm is returning. It’s her armor. I’ve listened to her use it on telemarketers, on her boss, on the barista who gets her order wrong.
"Contractors don't just magically know the details of a forensic accounting audit. Who hired you? The police? The FBI?"
"If the FBI had hired me, you would be sitting in a fluorescent-lit interrogation room right now, drinking terrible coffee and waiting for a cartel lawyer to post bail for the men who tried to kill you."
"Then who?"
I don't answer immediately. I check the side mirrors, maintaining a steady sixty-five miles per hour.
"A third party," I say finally. It’s a half-truth. A rival faction within the cartel had initially hired my firm to locate the leak in their laundering pipeline. They wanted the accountant found and eliminated.
When I pulled the file and saw her face—saw the chaotic, brilliant, infuriating way she lived her life through the surveillance feeds—the parameters of the job changed. I didn't report her. I didn't eliminate her. I redirected the firm's resources to build a fortress for her.
I went rogue. I broke every rule in my own operational doctrine. And looking at her now, illuminated by the passing amber streetlights, I know I would do it again without a second thought.
"A third party," she repeats, the disbelief heavy in her throat. "Right. Because that sounds totally legitimate and not at all like human trafficking."
"If I wanted to traffic you, Maeve, I wouldn't have shot the men who were about to do the heavy lifting for me."
She flinches at the blunt reality of the words. She turns her head, staring out the passenger window at the blur of the city skyline. The silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable. I can hear the erratic rhythm of her breathing.
"I don't have a passport on me," she mutters after a few miles. "If you're taking me to a secondary location to murder me, you should know I get very motion sick on boats."
"We aren't taking a boat."
"A plane, then. I don't have ID."
"You won't need it."
We pull into the private aviation terminal on the outskirts of the airport twenty minutes later. The tarmac is slick with freezing rain. A sleek, matte-black Gulfstream G650 is waiting, its engines already emitting a low, high-pitched whine.
I park the SUV near the hangar. I kill the engine, unbuckle my seatbelt, and turn to look at her.
She is staring at the jet, her eyes wide. Her fingers are still hovering near her pocket.
"Listen to me carefully," I say, keeping my voice low, forcing her to focus on the cadence of my words.
"From this moment forward, you do not exist. Maeve Gallagher died in that apartment tonight.
Your credit cards, your phone, your email—everything is compromised.
If you attempt to contact anyone, Richard Evans will find them, and he will kill them to get to you. Do you understand?"
She swallows hard. The defiance in her eyes wavers, replaced by the crushing weight of reality. "My friend Sutton..."
"Is currently asleep in her townhouse in Lincoln Park. She is safe, as long as you stay dead."
A small, broken sound escapes her throat.
She bites her lower lip, pressing her teeth into the soft flesh to stop it from trembling.
The sight of it does something violent to my chest. I want to reach across the console.
I want to press my thumb against her mouth and force her to stop hurting herself.
I keep my hands firmly on my thighs.
"Get out of the car," I command softly.
She complies. The freezing rain hits us the second we step onto the tarmac. She shivers violently, her thin hoodie completely useless against the Chicago winter.
I walk around the hood of the car, stopping in front of her. Without asking for permission, I shrug off my suit jacket. The cold bites through my dress shirt, but I ignore it. I drape the heavy charcoal wool over her shoulders.
She freezes, looking up at me in surprise. The jacket is massive on her, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. It smells like my cologne, and for a brief, irrational second, I feel a surge of territorial satisfaction seeing her wrapped in something that belongs to me.
"I don't need this," she says, though her teeth are chattering.
"Put your arms through the sleeves, Maeve, before you catch hypothermia."
I don't wait for her to argue. I place a hand on the small of her back—the heat of her body radiating through the layers of fabric—and guide her up the stairs of the jet.
The interior of the Gulfstream is warm, lined with dark leather and polished walnut. The flight attendant, a professional who knows better than to ask questions, is waiting near the galley.
"Take a seat," I tell Maeve, gesturing to one of the oversized leather recliners.
She sits down awkwardly, pulling her knees up to her chest, burying her hands in the sleeves of my jacket. I take the seat opposite her, separated by a narrow mahogany table.
The cabin door seals shut. The engines roar to life, vibrating through the floorboards.
"Water," I say, looking at the attendant. "And whatever food you have prepared."
A minute later, a glass of water and a small plate of sandwiches are placed on the table between us. Maeve stares at the glass like it's filled with hemlock.
"Drink it," I say, opening a secure tablet I pulled from my briefcase.
"Is it drugged?" she asks, her eyes narrowing.
I stop scrolling through the security feeds of the Safe House. I look up, meeting her gaze. "If I wanted you unconscious, I would have administered a sedative in the car. It would have made the drive significantly quieter. Drink the water. You're dehydrated."
She scowls, but she reaches for the glass. Her hand is shaking so badly the water sloshes over the rim, spilling onto the polished wood. She freezes, a look of pure panic flashing across her face, as if she expects me to hit her for making a mess.
The trauma response is immediate and telling. Whoever raised her didn't tolerate mistakes.