Page 224 of Merciless Daddy

My voice did not sound like mine.

Pietro’s voice came through my earpiece. Gunfire cracked behind him.

“We have Kiryl moving. The convoy is pinned but holding.”

“Forget the convoy.”

A silence.

“Sal—”

“Track the vehicles that left this building. Look at the feed from every traffic camera. Every car, van, truck, ambulance, whatever. Now.”

I stood. The corridor tilted once beneath my feet.

I did not let it take me

Angela’s hand caught weakly at my sleeve.

“She fought,” she said.

I looked down at her.

Her expression sharpened through pain.

“She fought them.”

“I know,” I said.

I had heard her scream once through that door. I had heard the sound of men taking the woman I loved while reinforced steel kept me on the wrong side.

I had stayed.

I had promised her I would stay.

And I had still failed.

Building security pulled the loading-bay footage before I reached the stairs. Two men in paramedic uniforms wheeled a covered gurney out of the service lift and into an ambulance waiting beside the loading dock.

City dispatch had no record of an ambulance being sent to the building. The plates belonged to a suburban hospital vehicle reported stolen less than half an hour earlier.

“Find it,” I told Pietro. “Every camera. Every toll reader. Every signal that vehicle gives off.”

The ambulance transponder appeared forty-three minutes later.

A vehicle registered to a suburban hospital had transmitted from the legal tower’s service lane. It had moved south, then east, then vanished near the industrial waterfront.

Pietro met me in the armored SUV outside the building.

His shirt sleeve was dark at the cuff. Not his blood, I thought. I did not ask.

“Angela?” he said.

“She’s in hospital. Awake. Doing well. Don’t worry.”

“The guard who got shot?”

“Alive but angry.”