Chapter 7 · Safehouse

"Down." Nico's hand closed on the back of my neck and shoved me under the window frame a half second before glass didn't break, before nothing happened, before the black SUV rolled past the end of the block like it wasn't looking for us at all. My knees hit the floor of a house I'd never seen, and his knee hit the floor next to mine, and his palm was still on my neck like he hadn't noticed he hadn't let go.

"They're gone," he said. "Breathe."

"I am breathing." I wasn't. My chest was doing something else, something that had started three blocks back when he'd grabbed my wrist off the sidewalk and said *don't run, walking is invisible, running gets you shot* like that was a normal thing to say to your husband of eleven days.

He stood, pulled me up by the same wrist, and threw the deadbolt on a door I hadn't even clocked as a door. Safehouse. Of course the Falcones had a safehouse two blocks from the restaurant where I'd almost gotten both of us killed.