Chapter 1 - The Man in the Rearview Mirror
I slammed the sedan into gear as a man collapsed against the rear door.
"Drive!"
When Dante Moretti climbed into my back seat, a brass shell casing rolled beneath my brake pedal.
Three letters had been scratched into its base.
H.A.R.
I knew that casing had nothing to do with the men bleeding behind me.
I drove.
That was what I was paid to do.
Not ask who had fired first.
Not ask why two men who had walked into an abandoned shipping warehouse twelve minutes earlier were now slumped against Italian leather and leaving dark stains across the seat.
Not ask why Dante Moretti, whose name was enough to make nightclub owners suddenly remember unpaid taxes and police captains suddenly forget license plates, had blood on one cuff and a pistol resting loosely against his thigh.
My job began when someone opened the rear door.
My job ended when Dante said stop.
Everything between those moments belonged to the road.
"Left."
I cut across two lanes.
A horn screamed.
Dante didn't flinch.
Neither did I.
The first man in the back seat made a choking sound.
"Hospital?" I asked.
It was the first word I had spoken since Dante got into the car.
"No."
One syllable.
No emotion.
I looked into the rearview mirror.
Dante was thirty-seven, maybe thirty-eight, though nobody who worked for him asked personal questions. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A face that looked almost elegant until he stared at someone too long.
He stared at me now.
"Problem, Lena?"
"No."
"Then keep driving."
I did.
Rain slicked the streets. The city turned silver beneath traffic lights. I took a service road beneath the interstate, cut through an industrial district, doubled back toward the river, then killed my headlights for six seconds while slipping through an alley barely wide enough for the sedan.
A black SUV missed the turn behind us.
Dante noticed.
"You saw them?"
"Three blocks ago."
"You didn't say anything."
"You didn't ask."
Something shifted in his expression.
Not a smile.
Dante Moretti wasn't known for smiling.
But the corner of his mouth moved as though he had just discovered an interesting flaw in a weapon he already owned.
The second injured man groaned.
"She's good," he muttered.
Dante never looked away from me.
"I know."
I hated the way he said it.
Like he knew more than he should.
Twenty-three minutes later, I pulled behind an old restaurant in the North End. Two men were waiting beside a steel door.
They opened the rear door.
They didn't ask questions either.
People survived around Dante Moretti by understanding when curiosity became dangerous.
One of the men leaned toward Dante.
"Mr. Moretti, Nico called. He said—"
"Later."
Dante stepped out.
I thought he was finished with me.
Then he bent down to the open passenger window.
"You'll take me home."
It wasn't a request.
"Sure."
He got into the front seat this time.
That had never happened before.
For six months, I had driven him from restaurants, casinos, docks, hotels, warehouses, and meetings where people entered smiling and left looking twenty years older.
Dante always sat behind me.
Tonight he sat beside me.
I pulled away.
The silence changed.
There was no privacy glass between us now.
No rearview mirror to soften his stare.
"How long have you been driving like that?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"Like someone taught you how to lose a tail."
"My father raced cars."
"Racing doesn't teach counter-surveillance."
"Boston traffic does."
He glanced at me.
I kept my eyes forward.
Dante could smell lies.
Everybody said so.
I didn't know whether that was true, but I knew he understood fear.
Fortunately, fear was something I had learned to hide.
"Your father still alive?"
"No."
"Mother?"
"No."
"Brothers?"
I looked at him.
That was the first mistake I made all night.
It lasted less than a second.
But Dante saw it.
Of course he did.
"No," I said.
He turned his gaze toward the windshield.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter.
The shell casing beneath my brake pedal seemed to grow heavier even though I couldn't see it.
H.A.R.
Those letters bothered me.
Hart Auto Repair.
My father's garage.
My garage.
Nobody in Dante's organization knew about it.
At least that was what I had believed.
The garage was the reason I took the job.
Three years after my father's death, the place was drowning.
Back taxes.
Equipment loans.
A roof that leaked every winter.
A transmission lift old enough to vote.
I could rebuild an engine blindfolded, but skill didn't make bank notices disappear.
Driving for Dante did.
Cash every Friday.
Enough to keep the lights on.
Enough to buy parts.
Enough to keep promises I had made beside my father's hospital bed.
Nobody from the Moretti organization knew where I went after my shift.
Nobody knew my real work began after midnight.
Nobody knew why I protected that garage more fiercely than anything I owned.
And nobody could know what was hidden beneath Bay Three.
I stopped outside Dante's building at 1:48 a.m.
The doorman hurried forward.
Dante didn't move.
"You always go straight home after you drop me?"
"Usually."
"Where's home?"
"South side."
"Address?"
I finally looked at him.
"You planning to send me a Christmas card?"
That almost-smile appeared again.
"You make jokes around dangerous men often?"
"Only when I'm tired."
He opened the door.
"Good night, Lena."
"Night."
He stepped onto the curb.
I drove away before the doorman had finished opening the lobby door.
Ten minutes later, I checked my mirrors.
Nothing.
Fifteen minutes later, still nothing.
I crossed the river.
Took two unnecessary turns.
Waited at a twenty-four-hour gas station.
Nothing.
Only then did I head toward the garage.
Hart Auto Repair sat between an abandoned printing company and a plumbing warehouse on a block the city had forgotten existed.
The sign above the rolling door hadn't worked in two years.
I preferred it that way.
I parked in the alley behind the building and entered through the side door.
The familiar smell hit me first.
Oil.
Metal.
Rubber.
Home.
I locked the door and switched on one bank of lights.
My navy hoodie hung from a hook.
I changed out of the black blouse I wore while driving and pulled the hoodie over a charcoal tank top.
Then I tied my hair up.
The transformation took less than two minutes.
Dante's driver disappeared.
My father's daughter came back.
A half-rebuilt carburetor sat on the workbench.
A customer's pickup needed to be ready by morning.
I worked because machines were simple.
A broken part didn't lie.
A stripped bolt didn't threaten your family.
An engine either ran or it didn't.
At 2:13, I heard a car.
I froze.
The wrench stopped in my hand.
Headlights swept across the wet pavement outside.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
I killed the overhead light.
The car stopped.
Black sedan.
My stomach tightened.
I moved toward the doorway but stayed behind the steel frame.
The driver's door opened.
Dante stepped out.
Same black suit.
Same dark shirt.
Hands empty.
Expression unreadable.
He had followed me.
Somehow.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, I was furious.
I stepped into the light with the wrench still in my hand.
"You weren't supposed to follow me."
Dante looked past me.
Tool cabinets.
Parts shelves.
Hydraulic lift.
My father's faded racing photograph on the wall.
Then his eyes returned to me.
"So this is where you disappear every night."
"Go home."
"You're ordering me?"
"I'm asking."
"No, you're not."
He walked toward the entrance.
I didn't move.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then his gaze dropped to the wrench.
"Planning to use that?"
"If necessary."
"On me?"
"Depends how annoying you become."
There it was again.
That almost-smile.
Then it vanished.
His attention shifted behind me.
Toward Bay Three.
I stepped sideways.
Too fast.
His eyes sharpened.
"What are you hiding?"
"Nothing."
"That was a bad lie."
"Maybe you're a bad listener."
He took another step.
I raised the wrench slightly.
Dante stopped.
Not because he feared me.
Because he respected the warning.
That frightened me more.
"Why does a night driver know how to lose surveillance?"
"My father taught me."
"You already told me he raced."
"He did."
"And why does a mechanic need cash badly enough to drive for me?"
"None of your business."
"Everything involving someone who sits six feet from me while people try to kill me becomes my business."
"I don't work for your family. I drive a car."
"You drive my car."
"I drive whoever pays me."
Dante stared at me.
That answer landed badly.
Then his eyes moved toward the workbench.
I followed his gaze.
My blood went cold.
The brass shell casing was sitting beside my gloves.
H.A.R.
I must have picked it up unconsciously when I left his sedan.
Dante walked past me before I could stop him.
He lifted it.
Turned it under the light.
"H.A.R."
I reached for it.
He closed his fist.
"Give it back."
"Where did you get this?"
"Your car."
His expression changed.
For the first time that night, Dante looked genuinely surprised.
"That came from the warehouse?"
"It rolled under my pedal."
He opened his hand again.
"This isn't ours."
"I figured."
"Do you know what those letters mean?"
I didn't answer.
Because I did.
And now he knew I did.
Dante looked at the faded sign painted on the interior brick wall.
HART AUTO REPAIR.
Then back at the casing.
"H.A.R."
Coincidence.
It had to be.
My father had been dead for six years.
His garage had nothing to do with Dante Moretti.
Nothing.
Dante turned the casing over.
Something tiny had been etched beside the primer.
A number.
My grip tightened.
Dante noticed.
"You recognize that too."
"No."
Another bad lie.
317 was my father's locker number at the old Harbor Street racing club.
The locker he had forbidden me to open after his death.
The locker whose key I had found hidden beneath Bay Three eight months ago.
Dante stepped closer.
"What happened here, Lena?"
"Nothing."
His voice dropped.
"Your father wasn't just a mechanic, was he?"
I said nothing.
Because the floor beneath Bay Three suddenly creaked.
Dante heard it.
So did I.
Neither of us moved.
The sound came again.
From underneath us.
Someone was below the garage.
Dante reached inside his jacket.
I tightened my grip on the wrench.
Then three slow knocks came from beneath Bay Three.
A pause.
Two more knocks.
May you like
My father's old signal.
Someone was waiting under the floor.
