Carter Reed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Port Richmond

Carter cleans the garage, moves Tori to a safe flat and takes Calla to his warehouse, where Giorgio's call gives them until Thursday.

He told me to park behind a shuttered tire shop on Allegheny Avenue.

I killed the engine and sat with Nico's pistol in my lap, listening to Tori breathe.

She had stopped crying somewhere around the second stoplight.

That scared me more than the crying.

"Calla," she said. "Your neck."

I flipped down the mirror.

Four purple ovals were coming up along my throat, a perfect set of fingers.

"I'm fine," I said. "Don't look at it."

Headlights swept across the lot, and a long black car slid in beside us without a sound.

A second car stopped behind it, blocking the exit.

The back door of the first car opened.

The man who stepped out was so tall he had to unfold from the seat.

He wore a long black coat over a dark sweater, and his hair was cropped close and grey at the temples.

He had a burn scar across the back of his right hand and a face with nothing spare on it.

He looked at me through the window, then at the gun in my lap, then at my throat.

Something went across his eyes, there and gone.

I rolled the window down.

"Carter Reed?" I said.

"Calla." He said it as if he'd said it before, many times, to himself. "Give me the gun, handle first."

"It's his. I took it off the floor."

"I know whose it is. Handle first."

I passed it through.

He checked the chamber, dropped the magazine into his pocket, and handed the empty gun to a man in the second car.

"Where's Nico?" he asked.

"Level three. On the ground outside the garage."

"Alive?"

"No."

He nodded once.

"Did anyone see you leave?"

"His people were coming up the ramp. I drove out with my lights off."

He didn't ask what I had done, or why.

He opened my door, and the cold air hit my face.

"Your hand," he said.

I looked down.

My right palm was sliced across the heel where the iron's rusted edge had gone through the skin, and I hadn't felt it.

Blood had run down my wrist into my sleeve.

"Oh," I said.

"Come on." He took my elbow, light but certain. "Tori, you too. Get in the first car."

Tori didn't move.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Somebody Wyatt trusted."

She looked at me.

I nodded, and she got out.

A silent man behind the wheel of the first car pulled away with her toward a safe flat on Aramingo.

Carter had promised me that she would have a bed, a locked door, and a doctor within the hour.

"Hers is the only name they have," he said. "Yours they'll find by morning."

"How?"

"The same way they found everything else. Somebody talks."

I climbed into the back of his car and the heat hit like a hand.

He sat across from me and took out a clean cloth.

"Give me your hand."

He wrapped the cloth over the cut and pressed.

His fingers were warm and very careful, and the scar on his hand was rough against my wrist.

I looked at that scar and didn't know where to put my eyes.

"You knew about me," I said. "You said Wyatt told you I'd call."

"He told me many things."

"That you were funny. That you never ran from anything."

"He didn't say what I'd be calling about?"

"He said you'd know when it came."

"I killed a man tonight," I said.

"You killed a man holding a gun on your friend."

"His father runs South Philly."

"I know who his father is."

"Then why aren't you angry?"

Carter turned his head and looked at me for a long moment.

"If I were angry," he said, "it wouldn't be at you."

We stopped in front of a brick building with a steel gate and a dock light burning over it.

REED TERMINAL, said the sign.

The gate rolled back, and two men with rifles watched us pass, their faces blank.

Inside was a huge room with bare brick, pipes, a long table, and a kitchen at the far end.

It looked like a place where one man lived alone and liked it.

Carter shed his coat and hung it on a hook as if he did it every night.

He set a first aid kit on the table and pulled out a chair.

"Sit."

I sat.

He cleaned the cut with a steadiness I wanted to resent and sewed it in six neat stitches without asking if I minded.

"You're good at this," I said.

"I've had practice."

"On who?"

"On myself, mostly."

A phone rang in his coat.

He looked at the name, and his jaw tightened.

"That's Giorgio Ferraro," he said. "He's found his son already."

"What do I do?"

"You stay quiet." He answered and put it on speaker. "Giorgio."

A soft old voice filled the room, calm as a priest's.

"Carter. My Nico is dead on a hospital floor. Someone beat his head in like a dog's. I want the person who did it."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Don't be sorry. Be useful. You hear everything on the water. Find me the killer."

"I'll ask around."

"By Thursday," said Giorgio. "Hand her over by Thursday, or I burn your docks to the waterline."

"Her?" Carter said.

"Her," said the soft voice. "The nurse. She's in your house, isn't she?"

The line went dead.

Carter set the phone down very slowly on the table.

I stared at him.

"How did he know I'm a nurse?" I said.

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