She twisted free. My arms had loosened—the slap had bought her the half-second she needed, the same way the elbow to my wound had bought her the half-second last night—and she was out of my grip and running before my brain had finished processing the fact that I'd been hit.
Six steps.
She made it six steps toward the wall before I moved.
I didn't negotiate. There was nothing to negotiate. The man upstairs was unconscious, not dead, and when he woke up he'd have information about who sent him, and the sedan on the street meant there were others, and every second she spentoutside these walls was a second she was visible to whoever was watching.
I caught her in three strides. My hands found her waist and I didn't stop—I bent, dropped my shoulder into her midsection, and lifted. One smooth motion. My right arm locked behind her knees, my left hand flat against her lower back, and she came off the ground and over my shoulder with a sound that was equal parts outrage and surprise.
A fireman's carry. The kind of hold that was designed for pulling bodies from buildings, for moving weight when the weight couldn't or wouldn't move itself. She weighed nothing. She weighed everything. She was solid and alive and furious against my shoulder, and her fists came down on my back—both of them, hammering with the scarred knuckles that matched mine, hitting me between the shoulder blades with a force that was impressive for someone her size and absolutely futile against someone mine.
Midge barked. One sharp, outraged yip from inside the jacket — a single syllable of chihuahua fury that contained, in its brevity, a complete and articulate objection to everything that was happening. A protest filed on behalf of all small creatures who had been picked up without their consent and were not pleased about the change in altitude.
I carried them both across the yard. Cora's fists on my back, Midge's bark still ringing.
Through the side door. Into the hallway.
She called me every name she could think of. In English first—the standards, the classics, the vocabulary that required no creativity but compensated with volume. Then Spanish, which I didn't speak but understood enough to catch the shape of: variations on the theme of my intelligence, my parentage, the specific anatomical destinations she wished various parts of me would travel to.
I said nothing.
My pulse was doing something it had never done before. Not fast—not the combat spike, not the adrenaline surge. Something else. A heaviness. A depth. A rhythm that felt less like the engine running hot and more like the engine finding a gear it didn't know it had.
She hit me again. Between the shoulder blades. Hard enough that I felt it in my teeth.
I carried her inside and kicked the door shut behind us, and the warmth on my cheek didn't fade, and my pulse didn't settle, and the words to describe what I was feeling did not exist in any language I spoke.
So I said nothing. And I held on.
Chapter 6
Cora
Fourdayswentpast.
Life was strange.
He brought me food, on ceramic plates. White, with a thin grey rim that looked like it came from a set, which meant someone had chosen them, had stood in a store or scrolled through a website and decided these plates, this pattern, this life.
The food on them was real too—not takeout, not microwaved. Cooked. Plated. Chicken marsala on night two, the mushrooms sliced thin and the sauce reduced to something that smelled deep like wine. A frittata on morning three, still warm, with peppers and onions and cheese that had browned at the edges in the way cheese only browned when someone was paying attention.
He left it on the nightstand. Every time. Set it down, straightened, and left. No commentary. No expectation of thanks. No lingering in the doorway, waiting for me to acknowledge the gesture so he could feel good about it. Justfood, placed within reach, and then the broad back of him disappearing through the door.
He knocked before he came in, every time. Three knocks, even, unhurried, and then a beat of silence—one full second, maybe two—before the handle turned. Enough time for me to sit up. Enough time for me to arrange myself into whatever version of guarded I was performing that hour. Enough time for me to not be caught with my face buried in the pillow smelling the clean cotton.
He filled Midge's water bowl every day, too. Without waking me. Without waking Midge, who woke up if a car drove past three blocks away.
The dog food was the same brand she was used to. Same bag, same kibble, same chicken-and-rice formula I bought at the pet store on Division. He'd remembered it. He'd looked at the brand and remembered it and found it and bought it and put it in a plastic bin—new, clean, the right size—next to the dresser where I could reach it from the bed.
I cataloged all this, but I couldn’t understand it. The data didn’t fit. Normally, men gave things in order to take things. But Santo Caruso didn’t seem to want anything from me.
He hadn’t interrogated me again. He hadn’t hurt me. He hadn’t . . . touched me. Nothing.
I resented this. Deeply. With the full force of a woman who understood that the most dangerous prisons weren't the ones with locks on the outside but the ones that made you forget you wanted to leave.
I did push-ups. Fifty in the morning, fifty before bed, and another fifty whenever the walls started closing in, which was often. My hands flat on the hardwood, my body a straight line, my breath counting the reps because counting was control and control was the only currency I had left. Midge watched from the bed with the bemused concern of a creature who couldnot fathom why anyone would choose to be horizontal and not sleeping.
I counted the ceiling tiles. I counted the knots in the hardwood floor visible from the bed. I counted the seconds between his knock and the door opening.