Chapter 3 Not Safe Enough

Corinne

Three days after Tiny died, his murder finally made the news.

I had turned on the television for background noise while another decryption program crawled through the flash drive, but the moment his face appeared on the screen, every muscle in my body locked.

The photograph had been taken years ago. Tiny was younger, his beard darker, his Black Daggers cut stretched across shoulders that looked broad enough to carry the whole club. He was smiling at someone outside the frame, entirely unaware that one day a news anchor would speak about him in the careful, distant tone reserved for the dead.

“Albuquerque police are asking for the public’s help following the fatal shooting of sixty-two-year-old Michael Benson, known to friends as Tiny.”

My stomach clenched at the lie hidden inside those words. Calling it a shooting made it sound spontaneous, almost ordinary. Tiny had been executed through his own apartment window while drinking coffee with me.

The screen changed to footage of his building surrounded by police tape. Officers moved through the alley where I had run, and for one sickening second, I imagined the camera turning toward the Mexican restaurant next door, toward the bathroom where I had hidden with his blood drying beneath my fingernails.

“Investigators have not released information regarding a possible suspect or motive. Anyone who saw or heard anything unusual is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.”

The number filled the bottom of the screen, and I stared until the digits blurred.

“Sorry, Tiny,” I whispered.

I could call. I could tell them where I had been standing, how the glass exploded, how the shots came from outside. I could describe everything except the person who pulled the trigger because I had never seen them.

But the police would ask why I was there. They would find Stormie Fox, then my appointments, clients, and travel schedule. Even if they believed I was only an escort who survived the wrong booking, my name would enter a report. The killers would not have to hunt anymore. The system would hand them my location through one leak or crooked cop.

I shut off the television, erasing Tiny’s smiling face from the room, but the password box on my laptop remained.

I had spent most of the last three days trying to break through it without using either of the final attempts. Every program hit the same wall. The drive was encrypted twice, maybe three times, and whoever had protected it knew exactly what they were doing.

Tiny had known motorcycles, freight routes, and how to make a man talk after two glasses of bourbon. As far as I knew, Tiny hadn’t understood advanced encryption. Either he had learned far more than he ever admitted, or someone had helped him protect the drive. The question was whether that person was still alive.

I leaned closer to the screen and studied the strings of code as if frustration alone might rearrange them into something useful.

“Come on.”

The program continued crawling while my shoulders ached from hunching over the table and a dull headache settled behind my eyes. I pushed back from the laptop and crossed to the refrigerator, already knowing what I would find.

Half a bottle of water, mustard, and a takeout container I did not remember putting there and did not trust enough to open.

“That’s bleak.”

The cabinets were no better. The crackers were stale, and the only can of soup had expired fourteen months ago. Stormie’s apartment had been stocked with wine, expensive cheese, fresh fruit, and everything necessary to create the illusion that she lived beautifully.

Corinne’s apartment had mustard.

Hiding had made me hungry enough to risk daylight.

I changed into jeans and a dark sweatshirt, tied my hair beneath a cap, and slipped the flash drive into the inner pocket of my purse. Leaving it behind felt impossible now. Tiny had died before he could explain what was on it, and until I understood why, the drive stayed with me.

The aging Honda I kept in the building’s rear lot started on the second try. It wasn’t registered to Stormie, and no client had ever seen me drive it.

The grocery store was only ten minutes away, but I took twice that long getting there. Every vehicle behind me looked familiar. Every person standing too long beside an aisle seemed to be watching, though no one was. At least, not obviously.

I bought enough to last a week: water, bread, eggs, fruit, frozen meals, coffee, and three kinds of chips because terror had apparently turned me into a woman preparing for either a siege or a sleepover.

For one hour, nothing happened. The cashier complained about the weather. A toddler screamed over a candy bar. An elderly man blocked the cereal aisle while comparing nutritional labels. The ordinary world continued moving as though Tiny had not died and mine had not cracked open with him.

By the time I returned, the sky had darkened and the parking lot lights had flickered on. I parked near the rear entrance, gathered the grocery bags, and checked my surroundings before stepping out.

Nothing seemed wrong outside. 

My apartment door stood open by less than an inch.

I stopped at the end of the hallway as the bags pulled painfully against my fingers. Somewhere inside one, a glass jar shifted and clicked against another.

I had locked that door. I remembered checking the handle twice before leaving.

The doorframe was splintered near the lock, subtle from a distance but unmistakable up close. Whoever entered had cared about speed, not concealment.

I lowered the groceries beside the stairwell without making a sound, then reached into my purse. My fingers closed around the small pistol tucked beneath my wallet as I approached one careful step at a time and pushed the door wider with the toe of my shoe.

The living room looked as though a storm had torn through it.

Couch cushions had been ripped open. Drawers lay overturned across the floor. Books had been swept from the shelves, their pages bent beneath broken picture frames. The dying houseplant had met its end against the wall, soil scattered over the carpet like dark ash.

They had not come for money. The television remained mounted, the cheap jewelry in the bedroom sat untouched, and even the emergency cash hidden inside a kitchen canister had been dumped across the counter and left there.

They had been looking for something.

My gaze snapped toward the table. The chair was overturned, cords trailing across the floor.

My laptop was gone.

Cold moved through me as I crossed the apartment, pistol raised, checking each room. The bedroom had been stripped apart. The mattress was slashed open. The closet doors hung crooked from their tracks. In the bathroom, the medicine cabinet had been emptied into the sink.

They had found Corinne Martinez, not Stormie.

Me.

I stepped back into the living room, barely breathing.

A floorboard creaked near the door.

Then a man’s voice came from the open doorway.

“Put the gun down.”