Chapter 3 - SAFE HOUSE
Renick moved them before midnight.
Belle argued for six minutes.
Then another brick hit the upstairs porch.
She stopped arguing.
Micah carried one backpack.
Two shirts.
His dinosaur.
A library book he had forgotten to return.
Belle grabbed documents and medication and one framed photo of Micah’s father.
Renick saw the photo.
He asked nothing.
They rode in an armored SUV with the lights off.
Micah whispered.
“Is this your normal car?”
Renick looked at him.
“No.”
“Good.”
Belle almost laughed.
The safe house was not a house.
It was a renovated brownstone in Beacon Hill owned through three companies.
Belle hated it on principle.
Then she saw the locks.
She liked the locks.
Brinley was already there.
The moment Micah entered, she ran toward him.
Then stopped three feet away.
She looked at Belle for permission.
Belle nodded.
Brinley hugged Micah.
Micah went stiff.
Then awkwardly patted her back.
“You’re squeezing my backpack.”
Brinley let go.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Renick watched from the doorway.
Something in his face hurt to look at.
Belle looked away first.
Sully Byrne arrived twenty minutes later.
He was angry.
Not at Belle.
At Renick.
“You moved them without a team?”
“I had a team.”
“You had me two blocks behind because you don’t trust anyone.”
“That’s working out pretty well tonight.”
Sully’s mouth flattened.
Belle watched both men.
The gold button could belong to someone in Renick’s family circle.
Sully wore no coat.
But the cuff links on his shirt were black wolves.
Micah noticed too.
He stared.
Sully crouched.
“Something wrong, kid?”
Micah shook his head.
Too fast.
Belle’s stomach tightened.
Later, after Brinley fell asleep on a sofa with one hand wrapped around Micah’s sleeve, Belle asked Renick.
“Do you trust Sully?”
“With my life.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Renick leaned against the kitchen counter.
“With Brinley’s life too.”
Belle nodded toward the hallway.
“Then why did your face change when he came in?”
Renick looked annoyed.
“Are you always like this?”
“Poor?”
“No.”
“Suspicious.”
“Usually after bricks come through my window.”
He almost smiled again.
Then his phone buzzed.
He read the message.
The color drained from his face.
“What?”
He handed her the phone.
Security had identified the black coat from the balcony footage.
Not the face.
Only the coat.
It belonged to Renick’s late father’s ceremonial set.
The red-eye buttons had been issued to seven men.
One had belonged to Sully’s father.
Another to Renick’s uncle Patrick.
A third to Declan.
A fourth to Vincent Moretti, a rival boss who died six years ago.
The fifth belonged to Renick’s father himself.
The sixth had never been recovered after Maeve’s crash.
And the seventh belonged to a man Belle knew.
She read the name twice.
Thomas Ashford.
May you like
Micah’s dead father.
