Carter Reed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Terms

Calla refuses to be hidden, chooses to stay on her own terms, and a bullet through the window ends the night.

"Someone told him," Carter said.

He didn't raise his voice.

He stood at the kitchen counter with both hands flat on it and looked at nothing.

"Told him what?" I asked.

"Your job. That you were in the garage. That you came here."

"Who knew?"

"Four people." He glanced at the scar on his hand. "Five now, counting you."

I stood up too fast, and the room tilted.

"So I'm what, a package? You hide me in a back room until your negotiations are over?"

"That is the safest thing."

"Safe for who?"

He turned and looked at me.

"For you."

"I killed a man tonight with a tire iron," I said. "I'm not a girl who needs a back room."

"Then what are you?"

"A nurse. A sister." I held up the stitched hand. "And I'm the one Giorgio Ferraro wants, so I am going to be in the room when you decide what happens to me."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

It wasn't a smile.

It was what a smile would look on a man who had forgotten how.

"Wyatt said you'd do this," he said.

"Do what?"

"Argue with me while bleeding."

"Then he knew me."

"He knew you better than he knew himself."

He pulled out a chair for me and sat across the table.

"Sit, please. I'll tell you what I know, and you'll tell me what you want."

I sat.

"Giorgio has no proof it was you. A garage camera, maybe. Two bodyguards who saw a car."

"And Tori."

"Tori is in a locked flat with a man who'd walk into traffic for me. Giorgio will need days to find her."

"Days is not safe."

"No."

"What happens Thursday?"

"I meet him. The truce says any dispute between our families gets settled in public, at a table, in front of witnesses. If I don't show, he can say I broke it."

"And if you do?"

"Then he wants you, and I tell him no."

"Just no?"

"Just no."

I stared at him.

"That sounds like the start of a war."

"It is."

"Why would you start a war over someone you've never met?"

His eyes held mine.

"I've seen you," he said. "Once. You didn't see me."

I was quiet.

There was so much in that sentence I couldn't unpack it.

"At Wyatt's funeral," I said. "A tall man stood at the back in a black suit and left before the end."

"Yes."

"I thought he was a cop."

"I was a friend."

I looked at the burn on his hand again.

I looked at the room, the guards, the steel gate.

"Fine," I said. "I want to stay."

"You want to?"

"I'm choosing it. I am not being locked in or hidden or handed over. I'm choosing to stay in your house until this is done."

"And what do you want in return?"

I frowned.

"In return for what?"

"For the house, the guards, the war."

"Nothing. I don't want to owe you something."

"You don't." He said it fast, almost rough. "You owe me nothing. If anyone ever tells you otherwise, you walk out that door and I'll drive you wherever you want to go."

"Is that a promise?"

"That's the only rule in this house."

The words sat on the table between us, solid as a coin.

I wanted to believe a man who spoke like that.

I was so tired I could barely lift my head.

He showed me upstairs to a bedroom with a big bed, a window over the river, and a lock on the inside.

"There's a bathroom through there. Clothes in the drawer are clean. They'll be too big."

"Whose are they?"

"Mine."

I laughed once, a surprised sound.

"Goodnight, Calla."

He went out, and I heard the chair scrape in the hall.

I opened the door a crack.

Carter Reed, the man whose word could stop a war, was sitting in a straight chair outside my door in his shirtsleeves.

"You don't have to sit there," I said.

"I know."

"Are you going to sit there all night?"

"Yes."

I was too tired to argue.

I took a long shower in his bathroom and put on one of his grey shirts.

It hung to my knees and smelled like cedar and soap.

I told myself that was only comfort.

I lay down on the bed with my heart still racing and watched the river lights slide across the ceiling.

I must have slept, because the glass broke before I understood where I was.

A hard crack.

Something struck the wall above the pillow, a hand's width from my head, and plaster fell on my face.

Then the door burst open, and Carter was on top of me, his whole weight pressing me flat and his arm over my head.

"Don't move," he said, and his heart was hammering through his shirt against my chest.

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