Chapter 2 - The Baby Behind the Locked Door
The black SUV waiting outside L’Osteria was worth more than the entire apartment building where Norah lived.
That fact bothered her immediately.
So did the driver opening the rear door.
So did Mateo standing beneath an umbrella as though rain falling on Ethan Hayes personally constituted a security threat.
Norah stopped on the sidewalk.
“I can walk from here.”
Ethan did not even turn around.
“No.”
“I said I agreed to let you help me get Sam. I didn’t agree to be kidnapped.”
“If you were being kidnapped, you wouldn’t be arguing about it.”
Finn coughed into his hand.
Norah looked at him.
“Was that supposed to be funny?”
“Not intentionally.”
Ethan entered the vehicle.
Norah remained on the curb.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Ethan leaned across the seat and looked at her.
“Mrs. Higgins leaves in four minutes.”
Norah got in.
The car smelled of leather, rain, and faint cedar.
She sat as close to the opposite door as possible.
Ethan noticed.
He also noticed the way she immediately wrapped both arms around the canvas tote.
“You think I’m going to steal your crackers?”
“I think I don’t know you.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You knew my husband.”
“I knew of him.”
“That is not what your face said.”
Ethan looked toward the rain moving across the window.
Norah waited.
When he did not continue, her anger returned.
“You took the picture Adam left me.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then talk.”
“Not until I know your son is safe.”
“Why?”
“Because if Gregory is involved in what I think he may be involved in, discussing it while your child is sitting in an unsecured apartment with a stranger would be irresponsible.”
Norah stared at him.
She wanted to accuse him of dramatizing everything.
She wanted to say Gregory was greedy and cruel but not dangerous.
Then she remembered his face when Ethan discovered Adam’s photograph.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Who are you?”
Ethan finally looked at her.
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
Finn glanced back from the front passenger seat.
That surprised him.
Norah caught the look.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Finn said.
“I clean kitchens and take buses. I don’t read the society pages.”
“Ethan has never appeared in a society page in his life,” Finn murmured.
“Finn.”
“Right.”
Norah folded her arms.
“You’re criminals.”
No one answered.
“That silence was not reassuring.”
Ethan looked almost bored.
“You asked who I am. My businesses include freight, construction, hospitality, and private security.”
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“It was accurate.”
“You have armed men.”
“So do banks.”
“Banks don’t usually hide them under dinner jackets.”
Ethan looked at her.
Norah looked back.
For an instant, something almost human passed through his expression.
Amusement.
Then it disappeared.
The SUV turned onto a narrower street.
Norah sat upright.
“Next block. Yellow building.”
Ethan’s expression changed as they approached.
The neighborhood was not merely poor.
It was exhausted.
Boarded storefronts.
A laundromat with two letters burned out.
Trash caught in chain-link fencing.
A man sleeping beneath plastic beside a shuttered pharmacy.
Norah’s building stood at the corner.
Yellow brick blackened by decades of pollution.
A handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign covered the elevator button.
Mrs. Higgins occupied apartment 3B.
Norah was out of the vehicle before Mateo could open the door.
She ran into the building.
Ethan followed.
“Boss,” Finn warned.
“I know.”
The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and damp plaster.
A baby was crying upstairs.
Norah took the stairs two at a time.
“Sam!”
She reached the third floor.
Mrs. Higgins’s door was already open.
A heavyset woman in a nursing uniform stood there holding a red-faced toddler.
Sam saw Norah.
His entire body lunged toward her.
“Mama!”
Norah broke.
Not dramatically.
No scream.
No collapse.
Her face simply crumpled as she took him into her arms.
“I’m here, baby.”
Sam buried his hot face against her neck.
“I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Higgins checked her watch.
“You are late again.”
“I know.”
“I told you I have to leave at six-thirty.”
“I collapsed at work.”
“You don’t work at L’Osteria anymore.”
Norah went still.
Ethan, standing several feet behind her, noticed.
Mrs. Higgins noticed him only then.
Her mouth closed.
Norah tightened her hold on Sam.
“How did you know where I was?”
Mrs. Higgins looked uncomfortable.
“Gregory called.”
Ethan’s attention sharpened.
Norah’s eyes widened.
“When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you might show up at the restaurant acting unstable. He told me I should call him if you didn’t come back.”
Norah felt cold despite Sam’s feverish body against hers.
“Did you?”
“No. I’m not your secretary.”
Mrs. Higgins looked toward Ethan again.
“Who is this?”
“No one.”
Ethan raised one eyebrow.
Norah ignored him.
“Did Gregory ask about my apartment?”
Mrs. Higgins hesitated.
That was enough.
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know whether you still kept Adam’s things.”
Norah went completely still.
Sam whimpered.
Mrs. Higgins shifted uneasily.
“I thought it was family business.”
“Gregory has never cared about Adam’s things.”
Norah’s voice had gone quiet.
She looked at Ethan.
He was no longer pretending this might be a coincidence.
“Take us home.”
Mrs. Higgins touched her arm.
“Norah.”
Norah turned.
The older woman’s hard expression softened.
“I wasn’t really going to call child services.”
Norah blinked.
“I said it because you keep running yourself into the ground. Look at you.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
Mrs. Higgins touched Sam’s forehead.
“He needs his mother alive more than he needs his mother pretending she can survive without sleeping or eating.”
Norah swallowed.
“I know.”
She didn’t.
Or perhaps she had known and simply had no alternative.
The hallway blurred for a second.
Ethan saw it.
Without asking, he took Sam from her.
Norah recoiled.
“No.”
But Sam was already against Ethan’s chest.
Everyone froze.
Including Ethan.
The feared man who had stared calmly at loaded guns and dying enemies looked utterly unprepared for a fourteen-month-old child clutching his tie.
Sam stared at him.
Ethan stared back.
Finn looked away to hide a smile.
Sam tugged Ethan’s tie.
Hard.
Ethan frowned at him.
Sam laughed.
Norah made an involuntary sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
Ethan turned his eyes toward her.
“Interesting child.”
“He likes anything expensive enough to destroy.”
“That explains the tie.”
Sam grabbed Ethan’s collar.
Then rested his feverish cheek against Ethan’s chest.
The room became quiet.
Ethan’s hand, which had been awkwardly suspended in the air, slowly settled across the child’s back.
“Home,” he said.
Norah’s apartment was one floor above Mrs. Higgins.
The door was unlocked.
Norah stopped.
“I locked it.”
Ethan immediately moved her behind him.
Finn drew his weapon.
Mateo appeared from the stairwell.
Norah’s heart hammered.
“What is happening?”
“Stay with the child.”
Ethan handed Sam back.
Finn pushed the door open.
The apartment had been searched.
Not robbed.
Searched.
Couch cushions sliced.
Kitchen drawers dumped.
Mattress overturned.
Cardboard boxes emptied.
Adam’s clothing scattered across the bedroom.
Norah stood in the doorway.
“No.”
She stepped inside.
“No, no, no.”
Sam began to cry again.
Norah barely seemed to hear him.
She crossed to the bedroom.
Adam’s old flannel shirts were on the floor.
His work boots had been cut apart.
Their wedding album lay open beneath the dresser.
Someone had even emptied Sam’s diaper pail.
“They were looking for something,” Finn said.
Norah turned on Ethan.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew this would happen.”
“I suspected something might.”
“Then tell me what Adam did!”
Sam cried harder.
Norah sank onto the edge of the overturned mattress.
“I buried my husband eighteen months ago. I gave birth six weeks later. I lost the house because his insurance didn’t pay enough. Gregory told me Adam had left debts. I believed him.”
Her voice shook.
“I believed everything because I had a newborn and stitches and no sleep and a funeral bill.”
Ethan’s eyes hardened at Gregory’s name.
Norah wiped at her face angrily.
“You walk into my life for twenty minutes and suddenly my dead husband had secrets, my apartment gets torn apart, and men with guns are standing in my kitchen.”
She looked at him.
“Tell me the truth.”
Ethan was silent.
Then he reached inside his jacket.
He returned the photograph.
Norah took it instantly.
“Adam worked for one of my logistics companies,” Ethan said.
She stared.
“No.”
“Hayes Continental Freight.”
Norah’s expression changed.
“I know that name.”
Ethan waited.
“Adam told me it was a subcontractor. He said he was auditing shipping invoices.”
“He was.”
“Then why would he write your name on our photograph?”
“Because six weeks before he died, Adam came to me.”
Norah stopped breathing.
Ethan continued.
“He said money was disappearing through companies that should not have existed. False vendors. Phantom cargo. He believed someone inside my organization was moving shipments without authorization.”
“What shipments?”
Ethan paused.
“Not merchandise I allow.”
Norah understood anyway.
“Drugs.”
“Yes.”
She looked sick.
“My husband was involved in drugs?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“Adam was trying to identify who was.”
Norah shut her eyes.
For eighteen months she had lived with Gregory’s accusation.
Your husband started making bad decisions because of you.
She had replayed Adam’s final weeks endlessly.
The late nights.
His nervousness.
The second phone he claimed belonged to work.
The argument two days before his death when he had made her promise that if anything happened, she would take the baby and leave Chicago.
She had thought he was anxious about becoming a father.
Now those memories rearranged themselves into something darker.
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I had no proof.”
“What happened to the records Adam found?”
“They disappeared the night he died.”
Norah’s eyes opened.
“And you thought he took them.”
Ethan did not answer quickly enough.
Her face changed.
“You thought my husband was a thief.”
“I thought he might have sold them.”
“So while I was burying him, you thought he betrayed you.”
“Yes.”
Norah stood.
“You need to leave.”
Ethan’s expression hardened.
“Norah.”
“Get out.”
“Someone just searched your home.”
“Because of you.”
“Because of Adam’s investigation.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But Gregory knew enough to ask your sitter whether you kept Adam’s belongings.”
Sam whimpered against her shoulder.
Norah’s anger began collapsing beneath fear.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Ethan looked around the ruined apartment.
The radiator was cold.
He glanced toward the kitchen.
A final notice had been taped to the refrigerator.
HEAT AND ELECTRICITY SUBJECT TO DISCONNECTION.
Beside it sat an empty formula tin.
Something shifted inside Ethan.
Not pity.
He still refused to call it that.
Rage, perhaps.
At Gregory.
At whoever had manipulated Adam.
At himself.
Because if Adam had been telling the truth eighteen months earlier, Ethan had failed him.
“We’re leaving,” Ethan said.
Norah shook her head.
“I’m not living in one of your mansions.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say you and Sam are staying somewhere secure tonight.”
“No.”
“Then choose the location.”
She stared.
“What?”
“A hotel. A friend. A shelter. One of my properties. I don’t care which. But not here.”
Norah almost argued.
Then a floorboard creaked in the hall.
Mateo moved instantly.
He opened the apartment door.
No one.
But Norah had finally reached her limit.
Her shoulders dropped.
“One night.”
Ethan nodded.
“One night.”
She packed Sam’s clothes into a grocery bag.
Ethan watched her leave her own clothing behind because there was not enough room.
He said nothing.
Twenty minutes later, the SUV stopped outside a quiet brownstone in Lincoln Park rather than a mansion.
Norah looked at him suspiciously.
“What is this?”
“A safe property.”
“It looks like a house.”
“That is generally what brownstones are.”
Finn laughed.
Ethan looked at him.
Finn stopped.
Inside, the house was warm.
Not luxurious.
Comfortable.
A stocked kitchen.
Two bedrooms.
A crib already being assembled by a security officer who apparently feared Ethan enough to accomplish impossible errands in twenty minutes.
Norah stood in the doorway.
On the counter sat formula.
Diapers.
Children’s fever medicine.
Bread.
Eggs.
Soup.
Fruit.
She looked at Ethan.
“I said no charity.”
“I know.”
“This is charity.”
“No. This is operational expense.”
“That may be the most criminal way anyone has ever described groceries.”
Ethan removed his coat.
“Eat.”
Norah wanted to refuse purely on principle.
Then she smelled the soup.
Her knees weakened again.
She sat.
Halfway through the bowl, she began crying silently.
Ethan pretended not to notice.
Sam sat in a borrowed high chair eating banana pieces.
Finn had gone.
Mateo stood outside.
The house was quiet.
Norah wiped her face.
“Adam used to make tomato soup when I was sick.”
Ethan looked down at his untouched coffee.
“He talked about you once.”
Norah’s spoon stopped.
“What did he say?”
“That you hated lilies.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
She laughed.
“I do.”
“He said everyone bought them for funerals and hospitals, so they smelled like bad news.”
“That sounds like him.”
Ethan reached into his jacket.
He placed something beside her bowl.
A business card.
Hayes Continental Freight.
On the back, handwritten in faded ink, were three numbers.
Norah frowned.
“What is that?”
“I found it behind the photograph inside your wallet.”
Her head snapped up.
“You searched my wallet again?”
“Yes.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“Probably.”
She turned the card over.
“417.”
Ethan nodded.
Norah stared at the numbers.
Then all the color left her face.
“What?”
She whispered the answer.
“Adam’s storage unit.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“What?”
“He rented one when we lost the house.”
Her breathing changed.
“Unit 417.”
Outside, a car rolled slowly past the brownstone.
Mateo immediately stepped into the street.
The vehicle accelerated away.
Ethan stood.
Norah looked toward the window.
“What is it?”
He took out his phone.
“Nothing I intend to ignore.”
Norah stared at the business card again.
Adam had left Ethan’s name.
A storage-unit number.
And somewhere in Chicago, people were tearing apart her apartment looking for something her husband had hidden before he died.
May you like
She looked toward Sam.
For the first time, she understood that being poor was no longer the most dangerous thing in her life.
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