Chapter 1 - The House Beyond the Gates
The car reached the coast road at two in the morning.
November rain struck the windshield so hard that the world beyond it seemed to dissolve. Somewhere to our left, the Atlantic crashed against cliffs I couldn’t see. My daughter slept against my chest, clutching a stuffed whale with one button eye.
Three nights earlier, a man had died protecting us.
Now an FBI agent was taking us to the home of a mafia boss.
“Last chance,” Dean Whittaker said from the passenger seat. “I can find somewhere else.”
“You found Quincy.”
He looked away.
That was where two armed men had entered our safe house through a kitchen window. Deputy Marshal Elena Ortiz had pushed Junie and me into a bathroom, placed herself between us and the door, and never come home to her own children.
Junie still asked whether the nice lady was finished helping the police.
I still didn’t know how to answer.
Eight months earlier, I had been a bookkeeper with a mortgage, a daughter, and a system for remembering which bills could wait until Friday.
I worked for Doyle Maritime Shipping.
Officially, we moved cargo.
Unofficially, our accounts contained transactions that made no sense. I had spent six years telling myself that understanding them wasn’t my responsibility.
Then I overheard Ray Doyle order someone to handle a problem named Marcus Hale.
Two days later, the port inspector’s body was pulled from the harbor.
I went to the FBI that night.
Now the trial was three weeks away, someone had exposed our safe house, and Whittaker claimed the only man capable of keeping us alive was Nico Barone.
“He hates Doyle,” the agent had explained. “Doyle had his brother killed.”
“And that makes him trustworthy?”
“It makes his interests clear.”
Then Whittaker had handed me a transmitter.
Small. Black. Adhesive backing.
While Barone sheltered us, I was supposed to observe his household and report what I heard.
“You want me to spy on the man protecting my daughter.”
“I want you to help us stop dangerous people.”
He said it with the weary patience of someone explaining arithmetic.
I accepted the device because Junie was asleep nearby, and fear had reduced every question in my life to one.
What keeps her alive tonight?
The gates opened.
A broad man in a raincoat approached the car. He introduced himself as Dom Ferraro and examined us with an expression that suggested he disliked the entire arrangement.
“We walk from here.”
Junie woke when I lifted her.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
“Where’s Button?”
“Right here.”
I pressed the whale into her arms.
Its repaired seam scratched my wrist.
Whittaker had fixed it before we left. A small kindness during an impossible night.
I would remember that kindness later.
I would remember it until my stomach turned.
The house emerged through the rain, three stories of gray stone and dark windows. At its entrance stood a slim older man in a navy cardigan.
He wore glasses.
He favored one hip.
Nothing about him resembled the monster I had imagined.
“Miss Lind,” he said. “Bring your little girl inside.”
His voice was quiet enough that I had to step closer to hear.
The east wing contained two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen warm with the smell of bread. An elderly woman in a flowered apron introduced herself as Mrs. Pace.
She gave Junie hot chocolate in a mug shaped like a rabbit.
My daughter held it with both hands.
“Is this ours?”
“For as long as you need it,” Mrs. Pace said.
Nico waited until Junie was eating a sandwich before explaining his rules.
We were not to leave the wing without him or Dom.
We were not to use personal electronic devices.
And nobody in his house was to lie to him.
The transmitter felt suddenly enormous beneath my sweater.
“I don’t lie,” I said.
He studied me.
I swallowed.
“Not if I can help it.”
His mouth moved slightly.
“That is a more believable answer.”
After he left, I checked the windows, the bathroom, and the spaces beneath both beds.
Junie watched from the pillows.
“Are there monsters?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Then why are you looking?”
I stood very still.
“Because sometimes grown-ups check things twice.”
She considered that.
“Button checks three times.”
“Then Button is very responsible.”
When she finally slept, I sat beside her and listened to the rain.
I thought about Elena Ortiz.
About the blood on the safe-house floor.
About a man I had trusted telling me to betray another man I had been warned never to trust.
At ten past three, I stepped into the sitting room and activated the transmitter.
“This is Lind,” I whispered. “We’re inside.”
A soft click answered.
“Good,” Whittaker said. “Describe the rooms.”
So I did.
I described the windows, the corridor, the covered passage connecting us to the main house.
I described every place someone might come through.
I believed I was helping the man responsible for our protection.
Across the house, behind a door labeled LINEN, Nico Barone sat before a security monitor and listened to my frightened voice through the sitting-room surveillance system.
He knew about the transmitter.
May you like
He knew I was reporting to someone.
What neither of us knew was that the most dangerous device in the house was already tucked beneath my daughter’s chin.
