Chapter 4 - BLOOD ON THE CONCRETE|
The parking structure beneath a commercial tower on Lower Michigan smelled of damp concrete and exhaust.
Nadia reached level three just before dawn, moving quickly despite the pain spreading beneath her coat. She had been followed from Wicker Park, and she had made two turns she had not planned in order to confirm it.
The first man had disappeared near a gas station.
The second had stayed.
She reached her car, a borrowed sedan with a cracked taillight, and found the driver’s door open.
That was when she understood the trap.
A hand closed around her shoulder.
Nadia twisted, driving her elbow backward. Her attacker grunted, but another man stepped from behind a concrete pillar. Something flashed in the dim light.
She felt the knife before she saw it.
Pain tore across her right side.
She struck the attacker’s wrist, stumbled away, and slammed her palm against the pillar to keep from falling.
“Give us the case,” one man said.
Nadia pressed her hand against the wound.
“What case?”
“The one your brother left you.”
The words frightened her more than the blade.
She had never told anyone outside her closest circle about Cristian’s files.
“Your employer should have taught you to ask better questions,” she said.
The man stepped forward.
Nadia threw the contents of her handbag at him. Keys, receipts, and loose coins scattered across the floor. As he looked down, she ran toward the stairwell.
She reached the first landing before her legs threatened to collapse.
The prepaid phone in her pocket had one saved contact.
She called.
It rang twice.
“Hello?”
“Marcos Vega?”
“Who is this?”
“The waitress you didn’t look at closely enough to remember.”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“Nadia?”
“I made a mistake in the timing. Don’t go to the locker.”
“Where are you?”
“They know about it. Someone is waiting at the station. The key was never meant to get you the evidence. It was meant to prove I’d given you something.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“No.”
“Nadia, you’re bleeding.”
She looked down. Blood had spread beneath her hand.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I can hear you trying not to breathe.”
For one absurd second, she almost laughed.
“Go somewhere Isabel can’t find you,” she said. “Don’t send anyone to the station. Don’t trust anyone who tells you this is under control.”
“Let me help you.”
“You don’t even know whether I’m telling the truth.”
“I know someone just tried to kill you.”
“That doesn’t make me innocent.”
“No,” Marcos said. “But it makes you worth listening to.”
Footsteps echoed from the floor below.
Nadia’s heart began to pound.
“I have to go.”
“Stay on the line.”
She ended the call.
A few seconds later, headlights swept across the wall.
A black SUV entered the structure.
Nadia stumbled toward the exit ramp, leaving a faint trail behind her. She had survived worse situations in her life, but never one in which the people hunting her knew so much about her brother.
She reached the street as the city began to wake.
A delivery truck passed.
Then a gray sedan stopped beside her.
The passenger window lowered.
A woman with short silver hair leaned across the seat.
“Get in,” she said.
Nadia backed away.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who knew Cristian before you did.”
“That’s impossible.”
The woman’s expression tightened.
“Not impossible, sweetheart. Just inconvenient.”
Nadia swayed.
The woman opened the passenger door.
“If you stay here, they’ll finish what they started.”
Nadia looked toward the parking structure.
Two men had appeared at the exit.
She climbed into the car.
The door slammed shut.
May you like
As the sedan pulled into traffic, the woman glanced at the blood on Nadia’s coat.
“My name is Evelyn Price,” she said. “And if your brother was right, we have less than a day before someone destroys the only evidence that can save all of us.”
