Chapter 8: The Rule

I stood on the fire escape with a laptop under one arm and a drive against my ribs.

Ansel stood in the alley below with his hands in his jacket pockets.

"Come down, Gin," he said. "Let's be adults."

"I'm very comfortable up here."

I got my phone out with my free hand and texted the only number I trusted:

Alley. Behind cleaners. Ansel.

I hit send.

"You've been busy," Ansel said. "Photographers. Judges. That poor spouse with the video, and her baby."

"You sent MPs up the stairs to arrest me."

"To retrieve stolen property. My property is on that laptop."

"Your property is a picture of my mother handing you a pill bottle."

His smile dropped.

He crossed the alley and climbed the iron ladder two rungs at a time.

I backed up against the railing, and the laptop felt very light in my hands.

He caught my wrist.

His fingers were warm and dry and tight.

"Give me the drive," he said softly. "Your mother and I will make all of this go away, and nobody has to say her name."

"You and my mother."

"Livia's mother," he corrected. "I'm trying to protect your family."

"You put me on a cot."

"You were never going to say yes to what we needed."

"We?"

He opened his mouth, and I swung the laptop.

It caught him on the side of the head with the corner of the case, and he let go of my wrist and stumbled back against the wall.

I ran down the ladder with my heart slamming and dropped the last four feet into the alley.

Headlights swept the brick.

A staff sedan took the corner too fast and stopped crooked across the mouth of the alley.

Kirk was out before it stopped rocking.

He saw me, and then he looked up at Ansel on the fire escape holding a hand to his temple.

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