"I know."
"This is my fault. She's not taking the fall for my mess."
"Like what, though? What are you gonna do?"
I hang up without answering because I don't have one yet.
I give myself sixty seconds to think and then I drive to her apartment.
The kitchen window is still unlocked. I'm going to have a conversation with her about that. I get through it, drop onto the counter, scan the apartment. Then I see it on the counter beside her purse, folded and creased like it had been stuffed into a bag.
We're watching you.
I read it twice. Then I stand in her kitchen in the dark and feel the shape of the situation clarify into something I should have seen coming.
Raul was right. Textbook intimidation. Rattle a suspect until they run toward something stupid, or crack and offer up details they never should have. The cops don't have enough or they'd have moved already. They're manufacturing pressure and waiting to see what breaks loose.
They don't get to do that to her.
I go to her bedroom. She's tucked in, breathing slow and even, completely under. A few loose strands of hair have escaped her bun and are curved against her cheek.
I stand there for a moment longer than I need to.
Then I slide my arms beneath her knees and shoulders and lift.
She turns into my neck without waking, a small instinctive move toward warmth. God, she’s a deep sleeper. Thankfully. I hold her against my chest and carry her out through the apartment, out the front door careful and slow, and load her into the truck.
I still don't have a complete plan. I know she needs to be somewhere no one is watching, somewhere outside the radius of whatever the cops are building around her. The rest I'll figure out.
My uncle's storage facility sits off a downtown side street, the kind of place that's been in the family so long nobody questions why it exists. I punch in the code and pull through. She's still asleep when I check, her breathing unchanged, a quiet sound escaping her that might be a snore.
I carry her into the safe room at the back of the unit. It's not much. A metal-frame couch, a workbench, overhead lighting that hums. I've been in worse.
I set her down on the couch, pull the blanket from the shelf and tuck it around her. Then I look at the handcuffs on the workbench and hate myself a little as I pick them up.
One end around her ankle. One end around the couch frame. Then another chain for her wrists.
She can reach the blanket. She can sit up. She can't run in a panic before I can explain, and panic is the reasonable response to waking up here, which is the only reason I'm doing this.
That's what I tell myself.
I pull the door shut behind me and call Raul.
He picks up on the first ring.
"I took her."
Silence. Then: "You what."
"She's safe. Uncle's storage unit, safe room. But someone left a note on her counter.We're watching you."
"That's cops," he says immediately. "Classic play. Rattle a suspect, get them to do something stupid. Run, confess, contact someone they shouldn't." A low whistle. "Smart. And dirty."
"They don't get her."
"Okay. But what's the move? You can't keep a civilian locked up indefinitely."
"She's not just a civilian." The words come out before I've decided to say them.