Chapter 20 · Nobody Hunts a Dead Woman

"One notch." Calder's voice comes out flat, chewed down to nothing, but I watch the tendons stand up on the back of his hand where he's got the wheel locked in his fist. "That's all it's giving me."

"Then give it more." I shove my shoulder into the door beside his, feel the cold bite through my shirt. "Turn it."

"I am turning it, Ira." He doesn't look at me. "Something's jammed the track on the outside. Somebody wedged it."

The speaker crackles overhead, mounted in the corner where the wire runs down into the panic room like a vein. A voice comes through it, easy, almost friendly, the kind of voice that's practiced being calm over people it's about to hurt.

"Ira Pell." Dez, unmistakable, that same lazy drawl he used to use asking her to pass the salt. "We know you're in there, sweetheart. Come on out and nobody's gotta open that door for you."

Calder's jaw goes tight. He doesn't answer the speaker. He answers me.

"You know him?"

"He's family." I say it like a curse because it is one. "That's my cousin's crew. That's the auction crew."

"They found the safehouse."

"They didn't find it."