Page 2 of Gage

His shoulders eased by a degree. The small change frightened me more than anger would have because it meant my lie was working.

“Pack for several weeks,” he said. “The apartment can be handled later.”

I nodded once and stood. Rafael opened the door, and Tomas returned to his coffee while I walked out with the shape of a plan and no idea whether it would hold.

Rafael followed my car from the hotel and parked beside me in the underground garage at my building. He was younger than my father, broad across the chest and dressed like a man trying not to look like hired muscle. He came with me as far as my apartment door.

“You can wait downstairs,” I said.

“No. Your father told me to stay with you.”

“My father also told me I'm marrying Javier Mora. Apparently, I'm cooperating.” I unlocked the door and faced him without moving aside. “I need to change and pack underwear. You can watch the elevator from here or explain why you needed to stand in my bedroom.”

He considered it, then looked toward the end of the corridor. “Door stays open.”

“No. You can wait in the hall, and I’m hardly going to be able to go anywhere, am I?” I lied knowing my building better than he did.

The fire escape was on the opposite side from the route I intended to take. Rafael gave me a hard look but stepped back. I closed the door, turned the dead bolt as quietly as I could so he wouldn’t hear and stood in my own living room listening to the television murmuring in the apartment next door.

Everything was just as I left it this morning. My work laptop sat on the small desk beside two billing reports I had planned to finish that afternoon. A basket of laundry waited near the hall, and the basil plant in the kitchen window needed water. The ordinariness hurt, and my father expected me to pack my life into a bag because he’d found a profitable use for me.

I moved quickly without letting the movements become frantic. Laptop, charger, several pairs of jeans, toiletries and the medication from my bathroom cabinet went into a dark canvas bag. It was enough to keep going and light enough to carry without wheels rattling across concrete.

Rafael knocked once. “Everything okay?”

“Packing takes longer when you're not a man, you know.”

He muttered something under his breath but stayed outside.

I picked up my phone and searched for the Unholy Few MC. The name produced old news, photographs of motorcycles and a public listing for Salvation Motor Works. Calling my father's enemies and the very reason any of this was happening was a terrible plan, but it was also the only one I had.

The number went onto the back of a grocery receipt in careful digits. I checked it twice, tucked the receipt into my jeans and left the phone charging beside my bed. If Rafael listened at the door, I wanted him to hear drawers opening and the closet shifting, so I kept packing clothes into a larger suitcase I had no intention of taking.

My building had a service corridor beyond the laundry room, used mostly for trash collection and deliveries. It led to a concrete stairwell that opened into the resident section of the garage behind a locked door. Rafael had no reason to know the service stairs existed, and his belief that I’d surrendered gave me the only advantage I was likely to get.

I left the larger suitcase open on the bed and let him see it through the open door. Then I slipped into the hall and locked the apartment behind me. Rafael was posted near the elevators with his back angled toward my door, looking at his phone.

“Laundry room,” I said, lifting the canvas bag. “I spilled coffee on a blouse this morning. I want to rinse it before it stains.”

He frowned at the bag. “Leave that here.”

“It has the rest of the laundry in it.”

I didn't wait for approval and went in like it was the most natural thing in the world. The laundry room door closed behind me, and I crossed to the service exit without looking back. The stairwell smelled of hot concrete and detergent, and every footstep sounded loud enough to carry through the building.

I reached the garage and moved between parked cars with my hands beginning to shake, hoping my plan would carry on working. The engine started on the first turn, and I drove past the security arm, took the ramp into the Las Cruces sun and kept to ordinary speed so I didn’t draw attention to myself until my building had disappeared from the mirror.

I stopped for gas well outside the city, paid cash and asked the woman behind the counter if I could use the landline. She studied my face, then pointed to a phone beside the office door.

A man answered on the fourth ring. “Salvation Motor Works.”

“My name is Elena Rivas. Tomas Rivas is my father, and I need to speak to someone in the Unholy Few.”

Silence held for a second. My name landed somewhere and I knew it. “About what?”

“I've got information about what he’s planning in Salvation. I need protection, and I’ll trade what I know for it. I want to make that offer in person.”

“Hold.”