Chapter 6
The winter sky had turned a bruised metallic purple by the time Mave stepped off the city bus. The wind whipped down the concrete canyon of the avenue, biting through her thin coat. She kept her head down, hugging her purse tightly against her side, walking the four blocks toward the glowing neon sign of Red’s Diner.
For the first time in three years, the crushing weight of Chloe’s tuition wasn’t suffocating her. But the relief was entirely eclipsed by a creeping, primal paranoia. She felt exposed. She kept checking her reflection in the darkened windows of the closed storefronts she passed, expecting to see a man in a tailored overcoat trailing her.
But the sidewalks were mostly empty. Just stray cats and overflowing trash cans.
She turned into the alleyway that ran behind the diner. It was a shortcut to the employee entrance. The alley smelled of rotting produce and wet cardboard. The single floodlight above the heavy steel door was burned out, leaving the narrow passage bathed in deep shadows.
Mave was ten feet from the door when two figures detached themselves from the darkness near the dumpsters.
She stopped dead. The breath hitched in her throat.
They weren’t wearing tailored coats. They wore cheap leather jackets and heavy work boots. One was tall and painfully thin, chewing on a matchstick. The other was built like a cinder block with a flattened nose that indicated a history of losing bar fights.
“Mave, right?” the tall one asked. His voice was reedy, nasal.
Mave took a step backward, her hand instinctively reaching into her purse for the small canister of pepper spray she kept on her keychain.
“Who are you?”
“We’re friends of Benny’s,” the heavy one grunted. He stepped forward, blocking her path back out to the street. They had flanked her.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced her chest.
“Ben isn’t here. He moved out. I don’t know where he is.”
“We know he ain’t here, sweetheart,” the tall one said, spitting the matchstick onto the wet pavement. “But Benny was very chatty before he took his vacation. Told us all about his supportive girlfriend. Told us about a little lock box under the bed. Eight grand plus twenty in interest. We’re here to collect.”
Mave’s blood ran cold. The missing money. Ben hadn’t just stolen it to start over. He had stolen it to pay these men. Or he had stolen it from them. The details didn’t matter. The reality was standing in front of her, reeking of cheap beer and bad intentions.
“I don’t have it,” Mave said, her voice shaking violently. “He took it. It’s gone.”
“See, I don’t believe that,” the tall man sneered.
He closed the distance in two long strides, his hand shooting out to grab the lapels of her coat. Mave screamed — a short, jagged sound — and shoved him hard in the chest. It was like pushing a brick wall.
The heavy man grabbed her purse, wrenching it from her shoulder with such force the strap snapped, leaving a burning friction burn across her neck.
“Check the bag,” the tall one ordered, shoving Mave backward against the rough brick wall of the diner.
Her skull cracked against the masonry. Stunned, her vision swam. Black spots dancing in her peripheral vision. The heavy man dumped the contents of her purse onto the dirty asphalt. Lip balm, keys, a handful of change, and a bus pass scattered across the puddles.
“Nothing here, Tommy. Just junk.”
Tommy pressed his forearm against Mave’s throat, pinning her to the wall. He leaned in close. His breath was foul.
“You’re going to take us up to your apartment right now, girly, or we’re going to start breaking things. Where is the cash?”
Mave couldn’t breathe. The pressure on her windpipe was immense. Tears of sheer, helpless terror leaked from her eyes. She clawed at his arm, but his grip was iron.
She was going to die here in a filthy alley over money she didn’t even have.
Then the shadows at the mouth of the alley shifted.
There was no dramatic shout. No warning. Just the sudden, heavy thud of footsteps — precise and unhurried. Tommy barely had time to turn his head before a hand clamped onto the back of his leather jacket.
The movement was a blur of calculated violence.
The hand jerked backward with terrifying strength. Tommy was ripped away from Mave, his boots leaving the ground for a split second. Before he could regain his balance, a heavy fist buried itself into his kidney. The sound of the impact was a sickening, wet thud.
Tommy collapsed to his knees, a soundless scream tearing from his open mouth as all the air left his lungs.
The heavy man dropped Mave’s ruined purse and lunged, pulling a switchblade from his pocket with a mechanical snick. He didn’t make it two steps. The man in the shadows sidestepped the clumsy thrust of the knife with effortless grace. He grabbed the heavy man’s wrist, twisting it inward with a sharp, brutal motion.
A loud snap echoed like a gunshot in the confined space of the alley.
The heavy man roared in agony, dropping the knife. The newcomer didn’t pause. He drove his elbow upward, catching the heavy man directly under the jaw. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he folded onto the pavement like a dropped sack of flour, completely unconscious.
Tommy, still gasping for air on his knees, fumbled for a weapon at his waist.
A polished leather dress shoe pressed down hard on Tommy’s hand, grinding his knuckles into the asphalt.
“I wouldn’t,” a low, gravelly baritone said.
Mave slid down the brick wall, coughing violently as oxygen rushed back into her lungs. She looked up through her tear-blurred vision.
Standing over the two broken men, perfectly composed, not a single hair out of place, was Gideon. His dark overcoat blended into the night, but his eyes caught the faint ambient light from the street. They were utterly devoid of mercy.
May you like
He didn’t look at Tommy. He looked at Mave.
“Are you hurt?” His tone wasn’t frantic. It was conversational. As if he were asking for the time.
