Carter Reed novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Trade

Tori's bedroom window was shut, and the back door alarm was off.

Someone had turned it off from the inside.

Carter stood in the hall in yesterday's trousers and looked at the dead keypad for a long time.

"One of mine," he said.

"Which one?" I asked.

"I don't know yet."

His second-in-command came down the stairs, a grey-bearded man with a boxer's nose and fifteen years at Carter's side.

"Boss," he said. "Let me take eight men. We hit the Lantern Room tonight, and we bring her out."

"No," Carter said.

"They took a girl from your house."

"And if you go in with rifles, Giorgio gets what he's been praying for. A broken truce, a fight on his terms."

"So we do nothing?"

"I didn't say that."

My phone buzzed on the table.

It was a text from a number I didn't know.

Noon. The Lantern Room. Front door. Bring Nico's phone. If you bring anyone else through the back, the girl dies.

A photograph followed.

Tori sat on a barstool with her wrists zip-tied, her hair stuck to her wet face, a man's hand on her shoulder.

My hands went cold.

Carter read it over my shoulder.

"It's a trap," he said.

"Of course it's a trap. But it says front door."

"So?"

"So it's daytime, and a bar full of staff and deliveries." I turned to him. "They want me inside. They don't want a fight in the street. They want to make me hand it over."

"Calla."

"I'm going."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"I wasn't going to ask you to stay."

His second-in-command made a small noise of disgust.

"You're letting her walk you in?"

"I'm letting her decide," Carter said.

I took the phone, plugged it into Carter's laptop, and began to copy.

"What are you doing?" the second asked.

"Taking out insurance."

It took forty minutes.

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