Stevie’s name sits at the bottom. The newest. The one I think about when I shouldn’t.
I’ve got her favorite granola bars in the passenger seat. The kind that are more candy than granola, chocolate chips dipped in more chocolate. Cookie Crisp cereal because she’s almost out and she eats it dry by the handful while she works, which isn’t breakfast but I’ve stopped trying to convince her otherwise.
Small things. The kind of things I notice because noticing her has become second nature.
I park in my usual spot. Three spaces from the stairs. Close enough to see her door, far enough to not be obvious.
Kill the engine.
And that’s when I see him.
A man walking out of her building. Dark hair. Leather jacket. Moving with controlled purpose, the kind of walk that comesfrom training, from knowing how to handle yourself, from being dangerous enough that you don’t need to prove it.
I know that walk. I’ve seen it in courtrooms. In surveillance photos. In the nightmares I have about witnesses who didn’t make it.
More than that, I know that man.
Enzo Mancini.
Dario Marchetti’s enforcer.
Coming out of Stevie’s apartment building at seven in the morning.
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. I count. Trying to slow my heart rate, trying to think instead of react.
One. Two. Three.
He’s moving easy. Relaxed. No tension in his shoulders, no urgency in his stride. He stops at his car, checks his phone, smiles at something on the screen.
Smiles.
Four. Five. Six.
He drives away.
I watch his taillights disappear around the corner.
Then I’m out of the car, moving toward her building, taking the stairs two at a time.
Please be okay. Please be alive. Please let there be an explanation that doesn’t mean what I think it means.
I knock on her door. Too hard. Don’t care.
“Stevie. Open up.”
Shuffling inside. The lock clicking.
The door opens.
She’s alive. Whole. Standing in front of me looking confused, sleep-soft, her hair messy and her cheeks flushed and…
She’s wearing a man’s shirt.
Black. Too big. Falling off one shoulder, the collar stretched wide, the hem hitting mid-thigh.
Not her shirt.
I’ve seen her in that one, grey, soft cotton.
