Chapter 13: Above the Bakery

Nico let the blind fall.

"Back stairs," he said. "The nurse's van is in the yard behind the garage."

The nurse was already moving.

She unclipped the little monitor, shouldered a bag with the oxygen bottle in it and lifted my daughter out of the incubator in one motion.

"Hold her head," she said, and put her in my arms.

She weighed almost nothing, and she was warm through the blanket.

Gina took the bag.

Nico went ahead of us down the kitchen stairs and out into a yard of cracked concrete and a leaning fence.

The van said Heating and Plumbing on the door.

The nurse got behind the wheel and Gina climbed in beside her.

I sat in the back with the carry-cot across my knees and one finger inside the blanket.

"Come with us," I said.

Nico shook his head.

"If they find an empty house, they follow the van. If they find me, they stay and talk."

"They will shoot you."

"They'll try to be polite first. They're Marco's men, and the table has told them to stand down."

"Nico."

"Go, Elena."

The van rolled out of the alley.

Through the gap between two garages I saw the porch, and Nico walking out onto it with his hands open and empty.

Then the street turned, and I saw nothing else.

The flat in Bayonne sat above a closed bakery, and the whole stairwell still smelled of old flour.

The nurse had the transport isolette plugged in before I had my coat off.

I sat on a kitchen chair beside it for two hours and watched my daughter's chest go up and down.

Nico came up the stairs a little after nine.

His knuckles were split, and there was blood dried on his collar that was not his.

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