Chapter 9 - The Baby They Could Not Take
Everything happened too fast.
Tommy shoved Reed behind the hallway wall.
A shot shattered the mirror near the elevator.
I ran.
Not gracefully.
Not bravely.
I ran because Ava began screaming, and every instinct inside me knew the only thing that mattered was getting her away from the sound of guns.
I reached the bedroom, locked the door, and pushed a dresser against it.
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely dial my phone.
No signal.
Of course.
The safe house had been designed to block outside surveillance.
Now it blocked me too.
Ava clung to my coat, crying into my neck.
“It’s okay,” I whispered.
It was not okay.
I looked around the room.
A window.
Thirty-two floors above the street.
No escape.
A closet.
Bathroom.
Nothing.
Then I heard Reed’s voice outside.
“Mara!”
I froze.
“Reed?”
“Do not open the door.”
“Then how do I get out?”
“There’s a panel inside the closet. Behind the coats.”
I ran to it.
Behind a row of winter jackets was a narrow wooden panel with a brass handle.
I pulled it open.
A service passage.
Dark.
Barely wide enough for one adult.
“Where does it go?” I called.
“Stairwell access. Go down two flights. Tommy will meet you.”
“What about you?”
“Go.”
The bedroom door shook under a heavy impact.
Ava screamed again.
I climbed into the passage.
It smelled like dust and old concrete. I held Ava tightly and crawled forward on my hands and knees.
Behind me, wood splintered.
Frank’s voice came through the broken door.
“She is gone.”
Another voice answered.
“Find the baby.”
I crawled faster.
The passage ended at a metal door.
I pushed it open and stumbled into a dark stairwell.
Two flights down, Tommy waited.
Blood ran from his forehead.
“Come on,” he said.
“Reed?”
“Still upstairs.”
“Is he hurt?”
“He will be if we stand here.”
We moved down the stairs.
Ava had stopped crying.
That was worse.
She was too quiet, staring at Tommy’s blood with wide dark eyes.
At the twenty-eighth floor, a door opened below us.
A man stepped into the stairwell.
Not Frank.
One of Moretti’s men.
Tommy fired once.
The man fell backward.
I covered Ava’s ears and kept moving.
By the time we reached the parking level, police sirens echoed outside.
Reed had called them before the attack.
Or perhaps he had expected this all along.
Tommy led us toward an armored SUV.
The door opened.
Reed was inside.
His shoulder was bleeding.
But he was alive.
The second Ava saw him, she reached out.
Reed’s face broke.
He took her carefully.
Not like a criminal boss.
Not like a man who owned half of Chicago.
Like someone terrified he had almost lost her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.
Then he looked at me.
“I am sorry.”
I climbed into the SUV.
“Frank?” I asked.
“Escaped.”
“Victor?”
“Not here.”
“Then this isn’t over.”
Reed shook his head.
“No.”
His phone buzzed.
Tommy looked at the message.
Then he handed it to Reed.
It was a photograph.
My mother.
Sitting in a chair in an unfamiliar room.
Alive.
But frightened.
Below it, Victor Moretti had written:
Bring the drive to the old shipping terminal. Come alone, or she disappears.
I stopped breathing.
Reed’s eyes lifted to mine.
“No,” he said before I could speak.
“He has my mother.”
“He wants you to panic.”
“I am panicking.”
“He wants you to walk into a trap.”
“And what do you suggest? I wait while he hurts her?”
Reed looked down at Ava in his arms.
Then back at me.
“We get your mother back.”
“How?”
His expression hardened.
May you like
“The truth your father left behind is going to end Victor Moretti.”
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