Chapter 3 - The Black Sedan
|
By five o'clock, the November twilight had swallowed the Chicago skyline, turning the city into streaks of amber headlights and cold gray mist.
Sarah wiped down the zinc prep tables, gathered her coat, and zipped her purse.
“You sure you don't want me to stay and help you close up, Viv?” Sarah asked, adjusting her woolen scarf.
“No, go ahead,” Vivien said, forcing a warm smile that felt like cracked porcelain on her face.
“I just have to mist the tropicals and run the end-of-day register tape.”
“Don't work too late,” Sarah said, opening the door.
“It's freezing out there, and that cop of yours is still sitting by the fire hydrant.”
The door closed, the bell giving its lonely chime.
Vivien turned the front door lock, flipped the open sign to closed, and leaned her forehead against the cool pane of glass.
Gallagher’s car was still there, the faint cherry-red glow of his cigarette pulsing in the dark cabin.
She had three hours.
Three hours before he walked through her apartment door with his spare key and the constant, unspoken threat hanging over Daniel’s future.
She retreated to the back room, pulling her phone from her apron pocket to check on Daniel.
There was a single unread text from her brother sent an hour ago:
Study group ran late at the library. Heading to my shift at the market now. Love you, Viv.
Vivien squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the phone to her chest.
Daniel was all she had left since their parents had died in a highway collision four years earlier.
He was gentle, brilliant with math, and entirely unsuited for the violent world Gallagher threatened him with every day.
She couldn't run.
Gallagher had his passport flagged, his vehicle plates logged, and friends in every patrol sector from Evanston to Gary.
Suddenly, a low, rhythmic engine rumble vibrated through the floorboards of the shop.
It wasn't the sound of city traffic.
It was the heavy, purring hum of a twin-turbocharged V8 engine idling close to the curb.
Vivien walked cautiously to the front display window, parting the broad green leaves of a fiddle-leaf fig.
Gallagher’s gray sedan was no longer alone.
A midnight-black Cadillac Escalade had pulled up along the curb directly behind Gallagher’s car, boxing his bumper against the hydrant.
Before Gallagher could put his car in reverse, a second identical black SUV pulled up in front of him, sealing him against the sidewalk.
The tinted driver’s door of the lead SUV opened.
A tall man in a dark tailored trench coat stepped out into the freezing drizzle.
It wasn't Sebastian Cross.
It was an older man with graying temples, a broken nose that had healed flat, and shoulders like an anvil.
He didn't walk to the flower shop; he walked directly to Gallagher’s driver-side window.
Inside the sedan, Gallagher scrambled, his interior dome light flicking on as he reached down toward his service weapon.
The gray-haired man didn't flinch.
He casually placed one gloved hand against Gallagher’s window, leaned down, and tapped the glass with a heavy platinum ring.
Through the rain-streaked window of Botanica Lux, Vivien watched the exchange in dead silence.
Gallagher rolled his window down two inches, his face twisted in defensive anger as he shoved his gold detective’s shield toward the glass.
The gray-haired man didn't look at the shield.
He pulled a manila folder from his coat and dropped it through the two-inch crack directly onto Gallagher’s lap.
Gallagher looked down.
Whatever was inside that folder wiped the arrogance from the detective’s face in less than five seconds.
His jaw slackened, his mouth opened, and all the color drained from his skin until he looked like a drowned corpse under the amber streetlamp.
The gray-haired man spoke three short sentences, his expression as flat and emotionless as a slab of granite.
Then he pointed toward the flower shop.
Gallagher didn't argue; he didn't reach for his gun; he didn't flash his badge again.
He simply nodded, his hands visibly shaking as he shoved the manila folder into his glove compartment.
The gray-haired man turned, walked across the rain-slicked asphalt, and stopped in front of Botanica Lux’s glass door.
He didn't knock.
May you like
He simply looked through the glass, his pale eyes finding Vivien behind the fig tree, and held up a small, folded piece of white paper.
It was the torn card she had slipped Sebastian Cross three hours earlier.
