Chapter 2 Stormie Protocol

Corinne

The password box remained in the center of my screen, waiting for an answer Tiny had never given me.

I tried the obvious possibilities first.

His birthday.

The year he joined the Black Daggers.

The name of his first motorcycle, a battered Harley he spoke about with more affection than most people reserved for their first love.

Each attempt earned the same response.

Incorrect password.

“Come on, Tiny.”

My voice cracked inside the silent apartment.

I tried his road name. His full name. The name of the diner where we usually met whenever he came into Albuquerque. I even tried the ridiculous nickname he had once claimed his mother used when he was a boy.

Nothing.

After the fifth failed attempt, a warning appeared beneath the password field.

Two attempts remaining before files are permanently locked.

My fingers immediately left the keyboard.

Tiny hadn’t trusted the information on that drive to an ordinary password. Whatever he had found was important enough to protect from anyone who might take it from him.

Important enough to get him killed.

I leaned back in my chair and pressed both hands against my face, but the moment I closed my eyes, I saw him falling again. The mug breaking. The blood spilling across his shirt. His expression as his body folded beneath him.

The gunfire hadn’t been random.

Someone had known exactly where he would be standing.

They had known when he would be home.

They might have known I would be there too.

My gaze snapped toward the darkened windows. The curtains were closed, but suddenly the thin fabric felt useless. Every passing set of headlights painted pale streaks across the ceiling, and every sound from the street below made my pulse jump.

Tiny had been getting close.

That was the only explanation.

For months, we had traded scraps of information while pretending our meetings were appointments. Client names. Freight companies. Private flights that left Albuquerque carrying more passengers than they arrived with. Charities that raised money for missing children while sharing donors with companies Tiny believed were moving girls across state lines.

Most of it had been circumstantial. Threads without a knot tying them together.

Tiny must have found that knot.

And someone had killed him before he could show it to me.

I reached for the flash drive, then stopped before pulling it free. If the people who murdered him had watched the apartment, they would know I escaped. They might not know who I really was or what Tiny and I had been doing, but they wouldn’t need to.

I had seen him die.

That alone made me dangerous.

Witnesses talked. Witnesses identified shooters. Witnesses ruined carefully planned executions by surviving them.

If they had tracked Tiny closely enough to know when to strike, it was only a matter of time before they learned who he had been meeting.

Stormie Fox was not difficult to find.

She was never supposed to be.

Her photographs lived online. Her booking information circulated through private groups and invitation-only websites. Men passed her number to other men because exclusivity made them feel important.

Stormie existed to be noticed.

Corinne Martinez existed to disappear.

I pulled the drive from my laptop, placed it inside a small plastic sleeve, and slid it beneath the removable lining of my purse. Then I stood and forced my trembling legs to carry me into the bedroom.

Panic wanted me to throw everything into a suitcase and run.

Stormie Protocol required something colder.

Methodical.

I opened the closet and pulled down the black canvas bag stored on the highest shelf. It had been packed for nearly three years and checked at the beginning of every month.

Two changes of ordinary clothing.

Flat shoes.

Cash divided among three envelopes.

A prepaid phone still sealed in its packaging.

Copies of identification under my real name.

Medication.

A compact first-aid kit.

Nothing glamorous. Nothing connected to Stormie Fox.

I changed out of the torn dress, carefully folded it inward so Tiny’s blood wouldn’t smear across anything else, and sealed it inside a garbage bag. My hands had stopped shaking, but that didn’t mean I was calm.

It meant Stormie had taken over.

Stormie could move while Corinne was still crouched behind Tiny’s couch, listening to bullets rip through the room.

I removed my jewelry and dropped each piece into a velvet pouch. The blond wig I sometimes wore went into its case. Makeup, designer shoes, perfume, every recognizable piece of the woman my clients knew went into another suitcase. I wasn’t abandoning Stormie Fox. I was relocating her.

Tonight, I needed to look forgettable.

Jeans.

Gray sweater.

Dark hair pulled beneath a baseball cap.

A woman no one would remember passing in a hallway.

In the living room, I gathered the items that mattered most. My primary laptop. Two encrypted external drives. The notebook containing Tiny’s most recent information. A small metal box filled with photographs, including the last picture ever taken of Camila before she disappeared.

My hand lingered on the lid.

For one dangerous moment, grief cracked through the shell I had built around myself.

Tiny had believed we were close.

Camila had believed she was safe.

Both of them were dead.

“I’m not losing everything again,” I whispered.

The promise steadied me.

I checked the apartment room by room before leaving, not because I thought someone had slipped inside, but because routine had kept me alive this long. Every window remained locked. The hallway outside was empty. No unfamiliar vehicles waited at the curb when I glanced through the peephole.

Still, I didn’t use the front entrance.

By the time I stepped into the night, Stormie Fox’s phone was powered off and wrapped inside the bloodstained dress. I carried it several blocks before dropping the entire bag into a construction dumpster already overflowing with broken drywall and insulation.

My car stayed in its assigned parking space.

The people looking for Stormie would expect her to drive it.

Corinne took a cab.

I gave the driver an address two blocks beyond my destination and spent the entire ride watching the mirrors. Every vehicle behind us looked suspicious. Every turn felt followed. The rational part of my mind knew fear was magnifying everything, but rationality didn’t make bullets less deadly.

My second apartment sat in an older building on the opposite side of Albuquerque. No luxury lobby. No doorman. No clients had ever crossed its threshold.

The lease carried my real name.

The utilities carried my real name.

Nothing about it connected to Stormie Fox unless someone already knew what they were looking for.

Inside, the furniture was mismatched and practical. The refrigerator hummed too loudly. A stack of unopened mail waited on the counter beside a dying houseplant I had forgotten existed.

It wasn’t beautiful.

It was mine.

I locked the door, set the canvas bag on the floor, and stood in the darkness until my breathing finally began to slow.

Whoever had killed Tiny would search for Stormie Fox.

But she would already be gone.