**Part 2** The elevator doors slid open. Clayton Hayes stepped out dripping rain, encrypted tablet in hand. “Boss. Preliminary report from the estate.”
**Part 2**
The elevator doors slid open. Clayton Hayes stepped out dripping rain, encrypted tablet in hand. “Boss. Preliminary report from the estate.”
Roman’s jaw locked. “Report.”
Hayes’s eyes flicked once to Josephine on the stool, then away. “Random hit. Local junkies. We ran the prints on the man Miss Caldwell dropped. Nobody. Petty theft, narcotics.”
The kitchen went still. Hayes had run the prints. Hayes had called a professional mercenary a junkie. Hayes had lied.
Roman reached for the Sig. Hayes was already moving. The black barrel leveled at Josephine’s chest.
“Drop it, boss. I sold *her* out. The Morenos offered eight million for the missing Navarro girl. They tracked her through the agencies. I control the grid. I let the team in tonight. They were supposed to grab her clean. Your kids were never the target.”
“They put a knife on my son.”
“Collateral friction.” Hayes shrugged. “Slide the Sig across the marble. Cleanup crew is in the garage. Five minutes or they come up. You have two boys sleeping down the hall. Hand her over and the syndicate survives the night.”
Josephine’s breath caught. Three years running from the Miami port. Now the nightmare stood in a luxury kitchen demanding her life for the boys she had already bled for.
Roman stepped in front of her, shoulders blocking the line of fire. “She is not going anywhere.”
Hayes sneered. “Fool for a fat girl.”
He fired. Roman tackled Josephine to the floor as marble exploded where she had sat. Gunfire ripped the kitchen. Roman returned two shots from the tiles. Hayes ducked behind the steel refrigerator. Hollow points shredded cabinetry and glass.
Josephine hit hardwood hard. The butterfly stitches tore. Roman was heavy over her, plaster dust coating his suit. “Stay down. Elevator’s locked from his tablet. We’re trapped.”
She heard Hayes reload. She heard the elevator begin its ascent from the garage.
The tactical medical kit lay spilled beneath shattered stools. Beside it, Roman’s bronze tactical pen.
Josephine did not crawl toward the bedrooms. She crawled toward the fight. When Hayes stepped out to put a round in Roman’s shoulder, he never saw the nanny coming from his blind side. She drove her full weight into his knees. His legs buckled. As he collapsed, she slammed the knurled bronze pen into the nerve cluster of his gun hand. Fingers splayed. The weapon clattered away.
Roman’s boot pinned Hayes to the floor. Empty Sig aimed at his face.
The elevator chimed.
Josephine lunged for the master panel, punched the industrial fire-suppression override. Doors opened on four armed sicarios. Pressurized chemical foam and freezing water blasted the car. Steel fire doors slammed down, sealing them inside the flooded shaft.
Silence, except for foam hissing and Hayes groaning under Roman’s boot.
Three hours later the penthouse was quiet. Hayes was gone—supermax, accounts drained. The Morenos were in custody. The evidence Josephine had hidden for three years had been delivered by Roman’s lawyers.
He found her on the glass terrace in a borrowed black silk robe, auburn hair moving in the cold wind. He set a thick Manila folder on the table.
“Clean papers. New passport. Untouched identity. Jet at Dulles. Anywhere you want. You have your life back.”
She looked at the folder, then at the exhausted man who could not watch her leave.
“I do not want to run anymore.”
Roman turned. His gaze dropped to the solid curve of her hips, the waist he had gripped earlier.
“You belong in the light.”
“I belong exactly where I choose to stand.” She pushed the folder off the table. It fluttered to the wet stone. “I choose here.”
He closed the last inch, hands firm on her waist, pulling her flush against him, and kissed her like a man who had almost lost everything twice.
Far below, a black town car idled in the shadows of Thomas Jefferson Street. Inside, a man in a tailored suit watched the terrace through binoculars, a silver lighter bearing the Chicago Outfit crest turning slowly in his hand.
