Chapter 13 - THE MAN I USED TO OBEY
The first thing Nolan did was not touch me.
The second thing he did was look me over.
Not with desire.
With inventory.
Shoes.
Hands.
Pockets.
Hair.
The way I was standing.
He had always looked at me like that after I came home from somewhere without him.
He called it noticing.
I knew now it was inspection.
"You cut your hair."
He said it casually.
I had trimmed two inches months earlier.
He had complained for a week.
"Yes."
"I told you I liked it longer."
There it was.
A tiny hook thrown toward the old argument.
I did not take it.
"I know."
Nolan waited for the rest.
An apology.
An explanation.
A defensive sentence he could turn into another discussion.
I gave him nothing.
His eyes sharpened.
That was when I understood something I should have understood years ago.
Nolan's arguments needed participation.
He could start them alone.
He could not complete them without me.
"You look different."
"I am different."
"Because of him?"
"Because of me."
For the first time, Nolan looked genuinely irritated before he had even raised his voice.
That gave me more information than any threat could have.
His control depended on familiar responses.
If I changed the response, he had to improvise.
And Nolan Mercer was most dangerous when he planned.
Maybe improvisation was where he could finally make mistakes.
That was deliberate.
He stood ten feet away and smiled as though we had run into each other at a restaurant.
"You look tired."
The old sentence.
The one he used before telling me I was overreacting.
I felt my body try to return to an older version of itself.
Shoulders in.
Voice lower.
Eyes careful.
I forced my shoulders back.
"You look dead."
His smile disappeared for half a second.
Then it returned.
"Cute."
He walked toward the bear and picked up the authorization.
"This is fake."
"Then why ask for it?"
"To see if you'd bring it."
Exactly what I had told Brooks.
The request was never the point.
Nolan unfolded the paper.
"Federal tracking fiber."
He held it toward the light.
"Brooks is getting predictable."
My stomach tightened.
"How do you know about Brooks?"
"Claire."
He gave me the old disappointed look.
"I know everything happening around you."
"No."
I shook my head.
"You know what people tell you."
"Those aren't the same thing."
His jaw twitched.
Tiny.
But I saw it.
I had spent years studying his face to survive moods.
Now I could use the same skill against him.
"Where are Tessa and Voss?"
"Gone."
"Alive?"
"For now."
"If you hurt them, the authorization becomes useless."
"You think I need your signature?"
He laughed.
"I have been practicing it for six years."
"And failing for six years."
The smile vanished.
There.
Failure.
His wound.
"My father built the trust so you couldn't steal it."
"Your father built the trust because he was stupid enough to believe my father."
"And you're still angry at a dead man because he outsmarted you."
Nolan crossed the distance between us so fast my body flinched before my mind did.
He stopped inches away.
He did not hit me.
He did not need to.
The old fear filled the space.
"Careful."
His voice was almost gentle.
I smelled his cologne.
For one dizzy second, I was back in our apartment.
I could feel the hallway wall against my shoulder.
I could hear him asking why I always made things difficult.
Then I remembered the ballroom.
My hand on Dante's chest.
My own voice saying the truth.
He hits me.
I looked Nolan in the eyes.
"Or what?"
He blinked.
I had never asked that before.
"What exactly happens if I'm not careful?"
"You hit me?"
"You tell people I'm crazy?"
"You steal my identity?"
"You fake your death?"
"You already used every weapon you had."
My voice shook.
I hated the shaking.
I kept going anyway.
"And I'm still standing here."
Nolan's face changed.
The charm disappeared.
"Because Dante is standing behind you."
"He isn't here."
"Exactly."
Nolan leaned closer.
"And look how scared you are."
I was terrified.
That did not make him right.
"Being scared doesn't mean you're in control."
His eyes narrowed.
A siren sounded faintly outside.
Nolan glanced toward the door.
Only once.
Enough.
Brooks had found the arcade.
Maybe the transmitter had sent the location before the jammer came on.
Maybe Tessa and Voss had been recovered.
Nolan folded the authorization and slipped it into his coat.
"We're leaving."
"No."
He looked at me.
"That wasn't a question."
"Then the answer is still no."
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard at first.
My body flooded with memory.
He pulled.
I did not move.
"Claire."
"Let go."
"Don't make a scene."
The words were so absurd in an abandoned arcade that I almost laughed.
"There's no one here to impress, Nolan."
His grip tightened.
I twisted my wrist toward his thumb the way a self-defense instructor had once shown me and Nolan had mocked me for practicing.
His grip broke.
Shock crossed his face.
I ran toward the side exit.
Nolan caught the back of my coat.
The fabric pulled against my throat.
I shrugged out of it and kept moving.
The transmitter stayed in the coat.
I reached the side door.
Locked.
I grabbed an old metal stool and struck the push bar.
Nothing.
Footsteps behind me.
I turned.
Nolan stopped several feet away.
His breathing was heavy now.
The mask was gone.
"You think you're different because some old gangster kissed you back?"
I stared at him.
"No."
"I think I'm different because I finally saw you clearly."
The sirens grew louder.
Nolan heard them.
He looked toward the front.
Then he did something I did not expect.
He smiled.
"Perfect."
That smile terrified me more than his anger.
"What did you do?"
He reached into his pocket and tossed a small key onto the floor between us.
"Go ahead."
"Open the side door."
I did not move.
"Why?"
"Because the police are here."
"And you want me to run from them."
Nolan's smile widened.
"You're learning."
A loudspeaker outside ordered everyone inside to show their hands.
Then another voice came through.
Lieutenant Warren Pike.
Not Agent Brooks.
"Claire Sullivan."
My blood turned cold.
"Exit the building alone."
Nolan leaned against the wall.
"Your friend Pike works fast."
"He's not my friend."
"He will be when he finds what I left in your purse."
My stomach dropped.
I looked toward the prize counter.
My purse was gone.
Nolan held it up with one hand.
"Looking for this?"
"What did you put in it?"
"Nothing that wasn't already yours on paper."
The four-point-eight-million-dollar account.
Forged documents.
Maybe a weapon.
Maybe anything.
"Give it to me."
"Come get it."
Pike's voice sounded again.
"Claire, you have thirty seconds."
Nolan tossed the purse across the room.
It landed near my feet.
"Twenty-nine."
He whispered.
"Twenty-eight."
I did not pick it up.
I kicked it away.
Nolan's smile faltered.
"Not mine."
"Your fingerprints are on it."
"So are yours."
That surprised him.
I had watched him handle it without gloves.
The sirens outside multiplied.
Then a different loudspeaker cut through Pike's.
Agent Brooks.
"Chicago Police, stand down."
Nolan's head snapped toward the entrance.
Now he looked worried.
Good.
The front doors crashed open.
Federal agents flooded the arcade.
Nolan ran toward a service corridor.
I shouted.
"Back left!"
Brooks's team followed.
Dante entered behind them despite every instruction Brooks had apparently given him.
His eyes found me immediately.
He crossed the room fast, then stopped an arm's length away.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Did he touch you?"
"My wrist."
Dante looked at the red marks.
Rage moved across his face and vanished behind control.
"Where is he?"
"Running."
"Then let them catch him."
He looked at me as if I had spoken another language.
"You heard me."
"I don't want you chasing him."
"Why?"
"Because he wants you angry enough to make a mistake."
Dante stared at me.
Then he nodded.
"All right."
It might have been the first time anyone in his world had told him not to act and been obeyed.
Agents returned five minutes later.
Nolan had escaped through a storm tunnel.
Pike had vanished before Brooks could confront him.
Tessa and Voss were found alive in a delivery van six blocks away.
That should have felt like a victory.
Then Ross opened my recovered purse.
Inside was a flash drive.
Not my father's.
A different one.
Brooks plugged it into an isolated laptop.
One video file appeared.
The date was six years earlier.
Traffic camera footage.
Lower Wacker Drive.
The night my father died.
The image showed my father's damaged car against a concrete barrier.
A second vehicle stopped behind it.
A nineteen-year-old Nolan Mercer got out.
He walked to my father's driver's window.
My father was moving.
Alive.
Nolan opened the door.
For one impossible second, I thought he was helping him.
Then Nolan reached across my father, pulled his wallet from his coat, removed the family photograph, and walked away.
He left my father alive in the wreck.
I stopped breathing.
The video continued.
Nolan reached his own car.
Then he turned back.
May you like
He looked directly at the traffic camera.
And smiled.
