Chapter 3 - The House With No Family Photos
Gabriel's safe house was not a house.
It was a fortress pretending to be one.
From the street, the place looked like an old brick townhouse on a quiet block north of the river. Inside, steel plates hid behind the doors, cameras watched every entrance, and the windows were thicker than anything I had ever seen outside an operating theater.
I arrived with one duffel bag, two pairs of scrubs, a toothbrush, and enough resentment to power the building.
Gabriel arrived with four men.
None of them were Victor.
"Forty-eight hours," I reminded him as one of his people locked three separate bolts behind us.
"You said that before the threat."
"I still have a job."
"Your clinic is closed for two days."
I stopped in the foyer.
"How do you know that?"
"I paid for the repairs to the front entrance."
"There were no repairs."
"There are now."
I stared at him.
"You had my clinic renovated while I was in the car?"
"The door was weak."
"The door was old."
"Same thing."
I pointed toward his bandaged abdomen.
"You are not allowed to make expensive decisions while on narcotics."
A man standing near the staircase choked on a laugh.
Gabriel gave him one look.
The laugh disappeared.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Mateo Serrano."
Mateo stepped forward. He was in his forties, broad-faced, dark-haired, with the permanently tired eyes of someone who had spent twenty years expecting bad news.
"Security," he said.
"For him?"
"For both of you now."
"I hate that sentence."
"You'll get used to it."
"No, I won't."
That earned me the faintest smile.
Gabriel led me into the living room, if a room containing bullet-resistant glass and a wall of surveillance monitors could still be called that. The furniture was expensive but almost aggressively impersonal. No framed photographs. No children's drawings. No evidence anyone had ever lived there instead of waiting out a war.
I dropped my bag beside a couch.
"Where's the medical setup?"
Gabriel looked at me.
"You just arrived."
"And your dressing is leaking."
He looked down.
A dark stain had begun spreading through his shirt.
Mateo muttered something in Spanish.
"Bedroom upstairs," Gabriel said.
"Good. Move."
"You make it sound romantic."
"Nothing says romance like infected sutures."
I found a medical kit in the upstairs suite that was better stocked than St. Jude's. Sterile dressings, sutures, IV fluids, antibiotics, even portable ultrasound equipment.
I held up a sealed package.
"Your criminal organization has better supplies than my clinic."
"We donate to hospitals."
"How civic-minded."
"You disapprove of me on principle."
"I don't know enough about you to organize my disapproval yet."
He sat on the edge of the bed while I changed his bandage.
The wound had reopened slightly but not catastrophically.
"You're lucky," I said.
"People tell me that."
"Do they usually say it while threatening you?"
"Sometimes."
I cleaned the wound in silence.
His body was a map of old damage. A knife scar along his ribs. A round scar near one shoulder that looked like a previous gunshot. Another pale line across his lower back.
"How many times have you been shot?"
"Three."
"Including this one?"
"No."
I stopped.
"That's not a number to be proud of."
"I didn't say I was proud."
"You're saying it like a man listing business acquisitions."
His eyes dropped to my hands.
"You don't ask what I did to deserve them."
"Would it change the dressing plan?"
"No."
"Then no."
When I finished, I taped the gauze and stepped away.
"You need rest."
"I need answers."
"You need both. One is currently available."
He ignored me and reached for his phone.
"Mateo found something."
That got my attention.
We went downstairs.
Mateo had pulled up a map on one of the monitors.
Red dots marked security cameras around the Diamond District where Gabriel's convoy had been attacked.
"Most street cameras went dark eleven minutes before the hit," Mateo said. "City maintenance records show a network interruption."
"Convenient," I said.
"Too convenient."
He clicked again.
A delivery van appeared in grainy footage from a private garage camera that had remained online.
"This van blocked the only clean exit from the alley," Mateo continued. "Registered to a company called North Vale Medical Logistics."
I leaned closer.
The name bothered me.
"Medical?"
Mateo nodded.
"Shell company. No employees listed."
"I've seen that name."
Gabriel looked at me.
"Where?"
I tried to remember.
St. Jude's ran on donations, overstocks, expired-soon medication, and whatever charity wholesalers would release cheaply. I handled most of the inventory because our administrator hated spreadsheets.
"A shipment," I said. "Last month. Antibiotics and saline. The invoice had North Vale on it."
Mateo straightened.
"At your clinic?"
"Yes."
Gabriel's face changed.
"Do you still have the invoice?"
"Probably. Our filing system is mostly cardboard boxes and optimism."
Mateo looked at Gabriel.
"If the same shell company touched the ambush and the clinic—"
"Then someone knew about St. Jude's before I ever went there," Gabriel finished.
A chill moved down my spine.
I thought about Victor finding us too quickly.
My apartment being broken into.
The message.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HIM DIE.
"Why would a fake medical distributor know my clinic?" I asked.
No one answered.
Gabriel looked toward the monitor.
"We go back tonight."
"Absolutely not," Mateo said.
"I can go," I said.
Both men turned to me.
"No," Gabriel said.
"My files. My clinic."
"You are the target of a threat."
"Which means whoever sent it already knows where I work."
"Exactly."
"So you want to send one of your men rummaging through my records? He won't know what he's looking for."
Mateo rubbed a hand over his face.
"She's right."
Gabriel stared at him.
"You don't have to sound so happy about it," Mateo said.
We left after midnight in an unmarked SUV.
I wore black jeans and a borrowed coat that smelled faintly of cedar. Gabriel sat beside me in the back even though I had ordered him to stay behind.
"You're ridiculous," I said.
"I own the car."
"That doesn't make your abdominal wall bulletproof."
"Nothing does."
"That was not an invitation to test the theory."
St. Jude's looked different with the lights off.
More vulnerable.
The new reinforced door was already installed.
I hated that I was grateful.
Mateo stayed outside while Gabriel and I went in through the rear entrance.
I found the invoice box beneath the administrator's desk.
"January," I muttered. "February... March..."
Gabriel stood watch near the door.
"Take your time."
"That's rich from a man who ignored three days of bed rest."
I found it.
North Vale Medical Logistics.
A donation of ceftriaxone, saline, gauze, and blood collection kits.
The signature accepting delivery was mine.
But someone had handwritten an additional code at the bottom.
R-17.
I frowned.
"This wasn't there before."
Gabriel came closer.
"You're sure?"
"I sign every incoming shipment. I would have noticed this."
A sound came from the hallway.
Not Mateo.
Too soft.
I turned.
The lights died.
Complete darkness swallowed the clinic.
Gabriel's hand closed around my wrist and pulled me down behind the reception desk just as something shattered the glass panel in the door.
A suppressed gunshot.
Then another.
I heard footsteps entering the waiting room.
Gabriel leaned close enough that I felt his breath against my ear.
"Stay behind me."
I whispered back, "You're injured."
"I know."
"You keep forgetting."
"Norah."
His voice changed.
No teasing now.
No patience.
Only command.
"Whatever happens, do not move until I tell you."
I wanted to argue.
Then I saw a red laser dot slide across the wall above us.
And understood that the men who had broken into my apartment were done sending warnings.
May you like
They had come to erase evidence.
And this time, they knew exactly where I was.
