Chapter 2 - Shadows of Albany
The white light of the ambulance ceiling hummed as paramedic straps secured my arms. Beside the gurney sat Paul, one of Vincent’s quiet men in tailored dark woolen coats. He didn't speak to the medical team, but his presence was an iron boundary. Nobody asked him to leave.
My head throbbed with a rhythmic, heavy heat. Every pulse behind my eyes brought back the phantom smell of stale malt liquor and burnt toast—the inescapable atmosphere of the apartment on Third Street in Albany.
When I arrived at St. Jude’s Hospital, the ER was bustling, but I didn't wait in a hallway. A private room on the fourth floor was opened immediately. Vincent’s personal physician, Dr. Harrison, was already waiting beside the attending staff.
“Mild concussion,” Dr. Harrison reported an hour later, illuminating my pupils with a small penlight. “Laceration on the cheekbone from the fall, slight soft tissue swelling. She’s lucky her jaw didn't fracture.”
I sat on the edge of the examination table, clutching the charcoal overcoat Vincent had draped over me hours before. It smelled faintly of clove tobacco and winter air.
The door clicked open, and Vincent stepped inside. He had discarded his gloves, revealing long, calloused hands marked by faint silver scars across the knuckles.
“Angela went home,” Vincent said, his voice flat and steady. “The diner is closed for the night. The floor has been cleaned.”
“I’m sorry about the coffee pot,” I murmured, my throat dry. “And the disruption.”
Vincent took a wooden chair from the corner, reversed it, and sat down facing me. He rested his forearms on the backrest, watching me with slate-gray eyes that saw straight through my exhaustion.
“Clara,” he said, using my real name—not the shortened 'Clare' printed on my forged employee tax form. “In six months of working four morning shifts a week, you have never dropped a plate. You have never missed a count on the register. You came to Brooklyn with a bus ticket paid in cash, no bank account, and a social security number belonging to a woman who died in Syracuse in 2012.”
I went rigidly still. The hum of the hospital heart monitor in the adjacent room suddenly sounded like a siren.
“I didn't report you,” Vincent continued calmly. “Because people who hide with that much care usually have a good reason. But thirty minutes ago, while lying in your own blood, you spoke a name.”
“Raymond,” I whispered, my fingers tightening into the wool of his coat.
“Raymond Fletcher,” Vincent filled in, his expression turning to stone. “Former detective sergeant, Albany Police Department. Resigned three years ago following an internal affairs investigation that vanished into thin air. Currently managing regional logistics for the Callahan syndicate along the upper Hudson.”
My lungs seized. “How do you know him?”
“Because eighteen months ago, Raymond Fletcher tried to expand Callahan’s extortion ring down into my shipping docks at Red Hook,” Vincent replied smoothly. “I sent three of his couriers back to Albany in wooden crates. He knows my face. I know his structure.”
May you like
He leaned closer, his dark eyes locking onto mine.
“What I don't know, Clara, is why a girl with a master’s degree in accounting was taking a right hook from a small-time loan shark in my diner while running from a dirty cop in Albany.”
