Chapter 2 - THE WORD
The girl looked at the scarred dog.
“Break.”
That was all she said.
The animal moved before any of the men understood what the word meant.
He exploded from the mouth of the alley with a speed that made his battered body seem impossible. One second he was standing beside the girl, rain dripping from his torn ears. The next, he slammed into the nearest gunman hard enough to send the man crashing sideways into a stack of trash cans.
A pistol fired.
The shot went wild.
Then everything happened at once.
Men shouted.
Ray Delgado cursed.
Another gun cracked against the brick.
The dog changed direction with frightening intelligence, not charging blindly but cutting between the men, snapping at wrists, knocking knees out from under them, forcing armed killers to worry about what was happening at their feet instead of the wounded man against the wall.
Marcus Cole understood immediately.
The dog wasn't trying to win.
He was creating seconds.
And Marcus had built an empire by knowing what seconds were worth.
He lunged.
Pain tore through his side as he threw himself behind a rusted dumpster. A bullet struck the metal where his head had been.
“Get him!” Ray screamed.
The girl moved too.
She ran straight toward Marcus.
Marcus stared at her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying not to die.”
She reached him, grabbed the sleeve of his expensive coat, and pointed toward a narrow gap between two buildings.
“Move.”
Marcus almost laughed.
He was forty-eight years old. Men twice the girl's size had spent decades waiting for his permission to breathe.
Now a child who looked like she hadn't eaten a full meal in days was ordering him around.
Another bullet struck the dumpster.
Marcus moved.
They squeezed through the gap just as the dog came racing after them.
“Saint!” the girl whispered.
So that was his name.
Saint.
The dog bounded through the opening.
Ray appeared behind him.
“Marcus!”
Marcus turned.
Ray's pistol rose.
Saint saw it.
The dog spun.
Marcus would remember the next sound for the rest of his life.
Not the gunshot.
The girl's scream.
“Saint!”
The dog stumbled.
Marcus caught the child before she could run back.
“No!”
“He got shot!”
“And you'll be next.”
“Let me go!”
Saint hit the ground, slid across wet concrete, then somehow pushed himself upright.
Marcus stared.
Blood darkened the dog's shoulder, but the bullet appeared to have gone through muscle rather than bone.
Saint limped toward them.
The girl stopped fighting.
“Come on, baby.”
The dog reached her.
She pressed her forehead against his.
“You're okay.”
Ray's men were forcing themselves through the gap.
Marcus looked around.
The passage ended behind a row of abandoned commercial buildings. Chain-link fencing boxed them in on one side. A loading dock blocked the other.
No clear exit.
The girl pointed downward.
“There.”
Marcus saw nothing.
She kicked aside a sheet of cardboard.
A storm drain.
Not a sewer grate.
A maintenance entrance.
Someone had cut the padlock long ago.
She pulled the metal door open.
Marcus looked at the darkness below.
“You live down there?”
“Sometimes.”
That answer bothered him more than the gunfire.
She climbed in.
Saint followed.
Marcus heard voices behind them.
He went last.
The girl pulled the door shut just as flashlight beams swept across the pavement.
Darkness swallowed them.
Marcus could hear his own breathing.
The rain.
The dog's panting.
And men's footsteps directly above their heads.
“Quiet,” the girl whispered.
Marcus almost told her he knew how to hide.
Then Ray's voice came through the metal.
“Spread out. Victor wants the girl alive.”
Marcus went still.
Not him.
The girl.
Victor wanted the girl alive.
Ray continued.
“The dog doesn't matter. Put it down if you see it.”
The little girl's fingers buried themselves in Saint's wet fur.
Marcus could barely see her face.
But he saw enough.
Fear.
Real fear.
Not of dying.
Fear for the dog.
Footsteps moved away.
Marcus leaned closer.
“Who are you?”
She didn't answer.
“Why does Victor want you?”
Silence.
“Kid.”
“My name isn't Kid.”
“Then give me something better.”
A pause.
“Sadie.”
“Sadie what?”
“Quinn.”
Marcus knew hundreds of names.
Politicians.
Judges.
Union heads.
Killers.
Accountants.
Men who borrowed money and men who disappeared after failing to repay it.
Quinn meant nothing.
At least not immediately.
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
Marcus looked at Saint.
“How long have you been living like this?”
“Long enough.”
That wasn't an answer a nine-year-old should know how to give.
Saint suddenly sagged.
Sadie dropped beside him.
“No, no.”
Marcus reached forward.
The dog growled.
Sadie touched his muzzle.
“He's helping.”
Saint stopped.
Marcus examined the wound.
“I need light.”
Sadie pulled a tiny flashlight from her jacket.
The beam revealed matted fur, old scars, and a fresh groove through Saint's shoulder.
Marcus exhaled.
“Lucky.”
“He hates that word.”
Marcus looked at her.
“He told you?”
“I can tell.”
Despite himself, Marcus almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his hand came away from his own side covered in blood.
Sadie noticed.
“You're worse.”
“I've been worse.”
“You're lying.”
“Everybody lies.”
“My mom says people only say that when they want permission to keep doing it.”
Marcus stared at her.
“Your mother know where you are?”
Sadie's face changed.
There.
That was the first crack.
The confidence disappeared.
The child returned.
“I don't know.”
Marcus felt something cold settle beneath his ribs.
“When did you see her last?”
“Three nights ago.”
“What happened?”
“She told me to run.”
“From who?”
Sadie looked toward the metal door above them.
“You already met him.”
Ray.
Marcus shifted against the tunnel wall.
“What does your mother have to do with Victor?”
Sadie reached under her oversized jacket.
Marcus instinctively tensed.
She pulled out a small brass key hanging from a shoelace around her neck.
Stamped into the metal were three numbers.
Marcus knew that key.
Not the individual piece of brass.
The design.
Union Station storage lockers.
Old underground level.
Most had been abandoned after the renovation.
His organization had used them years ago for dead drops.
“Where did you get that?”
“My mom.”
“What did she tell you?”
Sadie swallowed.
“If anything happened to her, I was supposed to find Marcus Cole.”
Marcus said nothing.
“She said Marcus Cole was dangerous.”
He gave a humorless laugh.
“Smart woman.”
“She said he did bad things.”
“Smarter every second.”
“But she said Victor was worse.”
That wiped away what little amusement remained.
Sadie's voice lowered.
“She said Marcus doesn't hurt children.”
Marcus felt the tunnel become smaller.
“Your mother knows me?”
“She knows about you.”
“How?”
Sadie hesitated.
Then she reached into her coat again.
This time she removed a folded photograph sealed inside a sandwich bag.
She handed it to him.
Marcus aimed the flashlight at it.
And his blood went cold.
The photograph was seventeen years old.
Four men stood outside a warehouse on the river.
A younger Marcus.
His late brother Anthony.
Victor.
And a thin twenty-something accountant named Evan Quinn.
Marcus had not heard that name in sixteen years.
Because Evan Quinn was dead.
Marcus looked at Sadie.
“Evan Quinn was your father?”
Sadie nodded once.
“You knew him.”
It wasn't a question.
Marcus stared at the photograph.
He remembered Evan.
Quiet.
Nervous.
Brilliant with numbers.
Too honest for the business he'd found himself inside.
And one rainy evening sixteen years ago, Evan Quinn had supposedly driven his car through a guardrail and drowned in the river.
Marcus had believed it was an accident.
Until now.
“What does your mother do?”
“She keeps books.”
“For who?”
Sadie's eyes locked on his.
“Victor Cole.”
The pieces began moving.
Victor's sudden confidence.
The hidden meetings.
Money disappearing from accounts Marcus thought he controlled.
Federal pressure appearing and vanishing at convenient moments.
And now Victor was hunting the daughter of his own accountant.
“What is in locker 317?”
Sadie shook her head.
“Mom wouldn't tell me.”
“You never opened it?”
“She said only open it with Marcus.”
“Why trust me?”
“I don't.”
Good answer.
Marcus listened to the footsteps fading above.
Then he heard a new sound.
Sirens.
Ray's men would disappear before police entered the area.
That gave them maybe five minutes.
Marcus pushed himself upright.
His legs nearly failed.
Sadie caught his arm.
Nine years old.
Maybe sixty pounds soaking wet.
Trying to hold up the most feared man in the city.
Marcus looked down at her.
“What?”
“You can't fall.”
“Why?”
“Because Saint can't carry both of us.”
Marcus actually laughed.
It hurt badly enough to make him curse.
Sadie frowned.
“What's funny?”
“Nothing.”
He looked at the key.
Locker 317.
A dead accountant.
A missing mother.
A betrayal that had already cost him his empire and nearly his life.
Marcus had always believed survival began with knowing who wanted you dead.
Tonight he had learned something more important.
Sometimes survival began with discovering why someone needed you alive.
He looked at Sadie.
“There's a doctor twelve blocks from here.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Gangster doctor?”
Marcus considered lying.
“Mostly.”
“That doesn't sound better.”
“It isn't.”
They started through the drainage tunnel.
Saint limped beside Sadie.
After fifty yards, the tunnel divided.
Marcus turned left.
Sadie grabbed his coat.
“Right.”
“I know this neighborhood.”
“I know these tunnels.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Right it is.”
For the next twenty minutes, the king of half the city's underworld followed a homeless nine-year-old through darkness.
When they finally emerged beneath an overpass, Marcus stopped.
Across the street stood a twenty-four-hour laundromat.
Its television was visible through the glass.
Sadie pointed.
“That's you.”
Marcus looked.
Breaking news filled the screen.
A photograph of Marcus Cole.
Then footage of police vehicles outside the alley.
The caption beneath it read:
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN BELIEVED KILLED IN ORGANIZED CRIME SHOOTING.
A reporter stood beneath an umbrella.
Behind her, men in dark suits moved through the scene.
One of them turned toward the camera.
Victor Cole.
Marcus's cousin looked devastated.
His hand rested on the reporter's shoulder as he spoke.
Even without hearing the television, Marcus knew what Victor was saying.
Family.
Tragedy.
Justice.
The performance was flawless.
Then Victor looked directly into the camera.
For one brief second, his grief disappeared.
And he smiled.
Marcus felt Sadie beside him.
“He thinks you're dead.”
Marcus watched his cousin.
“No.”
He wiped rain and blood from his mouth.
“He needs everyone else to think I'm dead.”
Sadie looked up.
“Is there a difference?”
Marcus stared at the screen.
“Yes.”
His voice became quiet.
May you like
“A very expensive one.”
And somewhere across the city, Victor Cole was already sitting in Marcus's chair.
