“Broken traffic light,” I say, looking out the window.
Connor’s on one side of me. Oliver’s on the other. Tamara’s behind us, decoding the dispatcher’s messages into a coded shorthand, and Sarah’s still behind a door.
Pedestrians make slow, steady progress below us as if everyone isn’t separated from everything they love in the world, but the car traffic isn’t doing as well. The light at the corner of Ninth and 47th blinks alternating flashes of red in both directions. The intersection is snarled with people who don’t know how to manage a four-way stop.
“There was a broken light reported right before the last three greenhouse SWAT hits,” Oliver says. “Could be coincidence.”
“It ain’t,” Connor says.
“How long do we have?” I ask, knowing full well it won’t be enough time to gently coax Sarah from hiding.
“Forty-five,” Tamara confirms what I already know.
Forty-five minutes isn’t enough to earn Sarah’s forgiveness… but it’s enough to escape and live to fight another day.
“Everybody out.”
The chainsaw’s tank has about a quarter cup of fuel in it. The way it stinks up the storage area in the garage, a guy could think that gas has been evaporating since it got those pine chips in the blade, years ago.
The red milk crate with the safety goggles and gloves sits on the floor under a sagging shelf of who even knows the fuck what. The single bulb hanging from a wire is so bright it hides details in hard shadows.
Behind me, the scrape of footsteps on the concrete is soft, but calculated not to frighten me into alertness. Careful and sure. Respectful but confident.
The gate is open, chain dangling with the open padlock at the end of it. Anyone could just walk in while my back is turned, but it’s Willa, and she doesn’t need an open lock to be dangerous.
“Dario.” She uses her social worker voice. There was a time when it soothed me. Now the bite of saccharine opens to a bitter aftertaste.
“Go home.” When I yank the chain, the motor spins and coughs. “Not to your apartment. Home, home.”
“When Sarah Colonia agrees to come with me.”
Never. My mind screams, but my lips stay shut as I yank the chain again. Any harder and it’s going to snap, but the motor doesn’t catch.
I pull the chain again. Same result. This ignored, unused machine knows better than to start. This little cage isn’t the place to run a chainsaw. What am I going to do? Bring it upstairs with a roaring motor? I might open a wall in the elevator. I might cut the building in two. New York City is too fragile for me right now.
“She stays here with me.” I drop the chainsaw back into the crate and dig to the bottom of the one next to it, finding a little cardboard box.
“Why?”
“Because at some point, soon, I’m going to have to explain to her who the fuck you are.” I read the printing on the box. Wrong. I toss it and hunt for another. “And I don’t want you around, complicating the conversation.”
“About me being your wife?”
“Yeah.” Another box. Wrong again. “Sarah doesn’t have a nuanced idea of marriage.”
“None of them do. What I don’t understand is why it matters to you.”
The last box is labeled with the right size. I open it. Three spark plugs. I pluck one out and pocket it.
“I don’t have time to explain it.” Opening the motor cover, I find the old plug, and grunt as I remove it with my fingers. I have a wrench somewhere, but this is faster. “But having you around is going to hurt her, and I don’t want her hurt. So, good-bye.”
I grab the chainsaw and stand, facing her.
A light flashes from the parking lot behind her. Car headlamps. My team is doing what I told them and getting the fuck out of here.
“You don’t get to decide what hurt she bears. Not after what you did.” Willa steps forward, completely blocking the way out of the chain-link cage, touching nothing, hands folded in front of her, manicured thumbs tapping. The approach is utterly non-threatening and fully assured. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall give me a fucking headache.
“What I did was set us up to win a war you chose to fight with me.” I approach the exit with a chainsaw in my hand and she still won’t budge.
“While I was down there getting complacent, you were up here acting like a damn vicious monster.”
“I did what had to be done.”
“Bullshit. You changed. You’re regressing.”
“I want to protect her!”
“If you want to protect her, you’ll send her with me.”
Willa’s right.
I have fucking changed.
The man who kidnapped Sarah would use her as bait. He’d throw her back to the pack of wolves he stole her from. She’d return home a broken woman with horror stories bad enough to force them to pause, and in that pause, I’d attack.
None of that is going to happen.
Willa’s always right, and fuck her for it, but she’s only seen a slice of the truth.
Everything’s changed.
“Lock up on the way out.” I brush by her as I leave.
She’s perfectly capable of locking the cage, since she helped build it.
Breathless from running up the stairs, I burst into my apartment with the chainsaw.
We don’t have much time.
Crossing through the living room, I slide open a hidden door.
On my wedding night, Sarah heard Nico and Oria in his old apartment, which can only be accessed through mine. I’d walled it off from the hallway until he comes home. Matter of security. Didn’t stop them from walking through my residence to get to it.
I enter Nico’s bedroom like a hurricane and yank the bed away from the wall.
I put my ear against the cool plaster and hear a scratching sound from the other side, as if she’s clawing her way out, but gently.
Crouching, I open the chainsaw’s motor door and snap in a new spark plug. As I do this, I realize the gentle scritch-scritch is her drawing on the opposite side of the wall.
“Sarah.”
“Dario.” Her voice sounds far away.
“We’re leaving.” I close the motor cover.
“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” she says.
“Step away.”
“Why?”
I yank the chainsaw cord and it roars like a bear poked with a stick.
I bend and put the chain against the wall, squinting against flying plaster as I push the saw up and over, then back down to the floor, pulling it across the top of the molding. Then it sputters, kicks, and dies. Out of gas.
“Back up,” I call, then shove my shoulder into the wall. It cracks, and on the third hit, bends. I smash my body against it over and over, grunting, “Mine. Mine. Mine,” with every impact.
The wall drops with a pop and a spray of dust.
Sarah stands in the center of the room, sweet brown eyes wide as chocolate coins. A dozen walls could not keep me away from this woman.
Mine.
Neither of us move over the line separating us.
I have to tell her to get her toothbrush and underwear before her family comes to take her away, but she’s so beautiful, there’s nowhere to run.
“You’re ready.” I step forward, onto the fallen wall.
“You lied to me,” she says, stepping back.
“I told you our marriage wasn’t legal.” Forward again.
“You don’t get a medal for that.” She points at me while taking another step back. “You knew that if I knew you were already married—”
“You wouldn’t have obeyed me. Damn fucking right. You would have screwed your ass tight to your Colonia bullshit… your loyalty. Your upbringing. That trash fire of a wedding I saved you from.”
“You didn’t care who I married.”
“I didn’t!”
What am I saying?
Why is my face hot? Why am I shaking?
How did it come to this?
“That was then.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “This is now.”
Why is she crying? God damnit, why is she crying?
No. Comfort is too much of a distraction. I need to get her out of here before they take her away from me forever. Physically, she needs to be safe from the world. Her body is all I have control over. It’s the only safety I can guarantee. I’ll never be able to protect her heart and mind from me.
I bend, pick her up, and throw her over my shoulder.