Page 147 of Fractured Allegiance
I stare her down. “Then stop pretending she’s not a target.”
Naomi exhales through her nose. Not annoyed. Just adjusting.
“You said and,” she says.
“What?”
“You listed the things you want. Then you said and. So what else?”
I open the inside pocket of my coat and pull out the burner envelope.
Set it down beside the folder. Tapped shut.
“I want an apartment,” I say. “Off-grid. Off record. No Bureau tags.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s not safe where she is. And this time, I don’t trust your cameras to catch the bullets before they hit her.”
Naomi lifts the envelope. Weighs it with her fingers, like she’s testing how much I’m willing to risk.
Then she smiles, and I hate this one.
It’s not approval.
It’s calculation.
“If I give you that apartment,” she says, “and you catch Marrow, he’s mine. I get the press. The internal credit. The leverage.”
“I don’t care who gets the win,” I say. “I care who walks out alive.”
“Fine,” she answers, flipping open her tablet.
A few keystrokes. Her fingers move fast, too fast not to already have a location in mind. Meaning she was waiting for this.
She turns the screen toward me.
“Redhook Industrial Lofts. Back stair entrance. Third floor. Top unit. It’s unlisted. Scrubbed.”
I memorize the digits. She wipes them before I can ask for a hard copy.
“Use it wisely,” Naomi says. “And don’t pretend this means I trust you.”
I stand.
“You shouldn’t.”
When I turn to leave, it’s with a grim parting smile in her direction. All I think is: Whatever or wherever Marrow’s watching from? I’m coming for it.
I don’t head for the new apartment.
Instead, I traverse fourteen blocks in a different direction. Across the city’s rusted veins and shadow alleys where men like Marrow still crawl when they’re supposed to be dead.
The cold isn't biting yet, but it knows my name. It chases me through the East End, past shuttered supply shops and under bridges smeared with tags that haven’t meant anything in a decade. The ground smells like diesel and mold. Like the city itself has secrets it doesn’t want to keep anymore.
I turn left down the canal path, the one we used to run surveillance on cartel ghost trucks back before Drazen learned how to launder blood with better paper.
Two burners in my coat. My compact holstered behind my hip. The photo from Lydia’s loft folded inside my jacket like a line I’ve already crossed.
