Part 2: The answer came almost immediately.

Ava. I’m 7.
Where are you, Ava?
I don’t know the number. House has green door. My mom says we live by the big church with blue windows.
Nico exhaled through his nose. Chicago had hundreds of churches.

Send me anything with your address on it. Mail. A bill. A package.

There was no reply for fifteen seconds.
Then twenty.
Frankie stepped closer. “Nico, don’t.”
Nico held up his hand.
The phone buzzed again. A blurry photograph filled the screen. A child’s shaking fingers held an envelope against a cracked tile floor.

Hannah Price
2148 South Keeler Avenue
Chicago, IL 60623

Little Village.
Nico knew the street. Knew the alleys behind it. Knew the church with blue stained glass on the corner because he had once slept on its back steps after Ray threw him out in January.

The old neighborhood.
Of course.

The phone buzzed again.
He’s coming downstairs.
Nico stood so fast his chair struck the wall behind him.

Frankie’s expression hardened. “No.”
“Get my car.”
“Nico, this is insane. Call it in anonymously.”
“If I call 911, they get there in ten minutes if they care, thirty if they don’t.”
Frankie stepped in front of him. “And if it’s a setup?”

Nico put the burner into his coat pocket. “Then someone went to a lot of trouble to sound like a terrified child.”

Frankie lowered his voice. “You don’t leave this building for strangers.”

Nico’s eyes went flat. “She’s seven.”
That was all he said.

He walked around the desk, past Paulie Voss, who had stopped crying and was watching him with the dazed expression of a man seeing a priest take off his collar and pick up a sword.

At the door, Nico paused.

“Paulie,” he said.

The bookkeeper flinched.
“Go home to your kids.”

Paulie blinked. “What?”
“You get one life. You just got it back. Pay me every dollar by Friday and never touch another deck of cards.”

Paulie began sobbing again, louder this time.
Nico did not wait to hear gratitude. He was already moving.

Frankie followed him down the narrow back stairs. “I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“You don’t go alone.”
“This isn’t business.”

Frankie grabbed his arm. “Everything you touch becomes business.”
Nico looked at his friend’s hand until Frankie released him.

Outside, rain fell in thin silver lines. The alley behind the restaurant glowed under sodium lamps. Nico’s black Cadillac idled near the rear exit, engine purring, windshield wet. His driver, Lenny, jumped out, but Nico took the keys from him.
“Boss?”
Nico got behind the wheel.
Frankie stood in the rain, furious and afraid. “At least take two guys.”

Nico shut the door and lowered the window.
“If this is real, a little girl is alone with a monster. If this is fake, I want to know who thought using a little girl’s voice would be clever.”
Frankie stared at him. “And if police find you inside a house with a body?”

Nico’s jaw tightened.
“Then I’ll finally have something honest on my record.”

He rolled up the window and pulled into the street.
Chicago at night was a living thing. It shuddered under the rain, breathing steam from vents, flashing red and green at intersections, whispering through elevated tracks and bus stops and liquor store signs. Nico drove south with controlled violence, cutting through traffic, running lights only when he could read the cross street in a glance.

The burner buzzed in his lap.
He stopped yelling. I can’t hear Mom.
Nico gripped the steering wheel.
Ava, stay hidden. Do not make a sound.
I’m scared.
I know.
Are you a police?

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