Chapter 5 - The School Bell Rings
The trip down Lake Michigan aboard the twin-engine offshore vessel was a blur of freezing spray and screaming diesel engines.
Marco stood at the helm, his jaw set, cutting through three-foot swells like a razor while I huddled in the enclosed cabin, clutching a borrowed wool blanket around my shivering frame. My secondhand coat was soaked through, the broken zipper gaping open, but I didn't feel the cold. All I felt was the clock ticking down inside my skull.
Two-fifteen.
The bell at St. Jude’s School for the Deaf in Lincoln Park rang at two-thirty.
"We dock at Diversey Harbor in four minutes," Marco shouted over the roar of the engines without looking back. "A black Escalade is idling at the ramp. Two of my best men are inside. We go straight to the front office."
"Does Marcus Vance have men in Lincoln Park?" I asked, my voice shaking so hard my teeth chattered.
"Marcus Vance has eyes in every ward between Evanston and the Indiana line," Marco spat. "He’s been skimming from the shipping union for five years, building his own crew while Luca was modernizing the family’s legal assets. He thinks Luca has gone soft because he stopped running street hits."
The boat slammed against the wooden pilings of the slip with a violent lurch.
Marco didn't bother tying off the stern line. He vaulted over the gunwale, reached down, and hauled me onto the wet timber of the pier with one arm.
Before my feet could find their balance, the passenger door of a massive black SUV flew open. I scrambled inside, Marco sliding into the front seat beside a driver whose eyes never stopped scanning the rearview mirrors.
"Go," Marco barked. "South on Clark. Run the lights."
The SUV surged into traffic, tires screaming on the damp asphalt.
The red brick facade of St. Jude’s appeared five minutes later. Yellow school buses were already lining the curb, their exhaust drifting into the chilly autumn air as parents and yellow-vested crossing guards gathered near the double glass doors.
I didn't wait for Marco to clear the perimeter. The moment the Escalade braked against the curb, I tore the door open and bolted across the lawn, my waterlogged shoes splashing through puddles.
"Sophie!" I gasped, bursting through the front entrance.
The school hallway was quiet, smelling of floor wax, construction paper, and wet raincoats. At the end of the corridor, the classroom doors were opening, children with backpacks spilling out, their hands moving in animated, silent bursts of sign language as they laughed and teased each other.
And then I saw her.
Sophie was standing beside her locker, wearing her favorite oversized mustard-yellow sweater, her dark braids swinging as she struggled to zip her pink backpack. Her hearing aid was clipped neatly over her left ear, its little green indicator light blinking softly.
"Sophie!" I signed frantically as I ran toward her, dropping to my knees on the linoleum.
She looked up, her round, freckled face lighting up with a brilliant smile that instantly dissolved the suffocating terror in my chest.
Mommy! she signed, throwing her small arms around my neck. You're early! Did you finish the big house?
"Yes, baby," I whispered into her hair, fighting back a sob as I held her against me. "We're going on a little trip. Just for a few days."
With the nice people? she asked, pulling back, her big hazel eyes searching my wet, panicked face. Children who grow up in silence read faces better than any private investigator. Her smile slowly faded. Mommy, are you scared?
Before I could answer, a shadow fell across the classroom doorway behind us.
A man was standing there.
He wasn't wearing a uniform. He wore a heavy leather bomber jacket, his hands tucked casually into his pockets, chewing on a plastic toothpick. He had a crooked nose that had been broken more than once and a tattoo of a coiled black viper creeping up from his collar toward his earlobe.
My blood turned to pure frost.
"Claire Dawson?" the man asked, his voice low, gravelly, and entirely out of place among the children's drawings taped to the walls.
I pulled Sophie behind my back, rising slowly to my feet. "Who are you?"
"Friend of Patricia’s," the man smiled, the toothpick shifting between his yellowed teeth. "She said you were a real hard worker. Said you were so dedicated you might forget to bring your little girl home tonight."
He took a step forward, his right hand slipping an inch out of his jacket pocket. I saw the glint of blued steel beneath his leather hem.
"Come on, sweetheart," he said softly, looking past my shoulder at Sophie. "Your mom and I are going to take a little ride down to the South Side. Mr. Vance wants to have a word with both of you about an old woman's signature."
Sophie's small fingers clamped onto the back of my jeans, trembling violently. She couldn't hear his voice, but she felt the vibration of my terror through the fabric.
"Don't touch her," I choked out, backing toward the fire alarm on the wall.
"Don't be stupid, Claire," the man sighed, closing the distance between us. "You scream, and some teacher gets a hole in their—"
A hand the size of a shovel reached out from the hallway behind him.
Marco’s fingers wrapped around the back of the man's neck with the speed of a striking cobra. With a single, sickening crunch, Marco slammed the man’s face directly into the steel locker doors.
The metal groaned. The man’s knees gave out instantly, his eyes rolling back as he crumpled into an unconscious heap on the linoleum, a thin line of dark blood pooling beneath his shattered nose.
Marco stepped over the body, kicking the fallen snub-nosed revolver into the empty classroom.
He looked down at Sophie, who was staring up at him with wide, saucer-like eyes. Slowly, deliberately, the terrifying six-foot-four mob enforcer dropped to one knee, brought his massive, scarred hands up to his chest, and formed three clumsy, awkward signs he had clearly practiced on the boat ride down.
Safe, he signed, his fingers stiff. With me. Go.
Sophie looked at the giant, then looked up at me.
May you like
He signs funny, she communicated with a tiny, nervous smile.
"He's a friend, baby," I whispered, hoisting her into my arms. "Let's go home."
