Chapter 2 - The Bitter Wind and the Frozen Tracks
The wind cutting off Lake Michigan didn't care about the expensive wool of my custom overcoat. It bit straight through it, sharp as a switchblade.
I kept my black sedan idling a full block behind Beatrice, watching her small figure hunched against the snow. She clutched her worn cloth bag to her chest like a shield, her head down as she navigated the labyrinth of run-down alleys on the city’s industrial west side.
Chicago at midnight was a dangerous place, even for my men. But Beatrice didn't look like a spy or an informant. She looked like a ghost walking through a graveyard.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Lorenzo. I swiped it silent without answering. Let him wonder. Right now, my entire world had narrowed down to the rhythmic, exhausting pace of her boots crunching against the ice.
She turned down an abandoned rail spur, a desolate stretch where rusted freight cars sat like the skeletons of prehistoric beasts. The streetlights here had been smashed out months ago, leaving the area bathed in an eerie, sickly glow from a distant billboard.
I stepped out of the car, moving with the silent, practiced grace of a man who had survived a dozen assassination attempts. My boots made no sound on the frozen gravel.
Beatrice stopped in front of a corrugated metal shipping container that had been crudely converted into a makeshift shelter. A thin wisp of smoke curled from a rusted stovepipe jutting out of the roof.
May you like
She paused, looking around nervously, before pulling a heavy iron key from her coat pocket.
I melted into the deep shadow of an overturned railcar just ten feet away, holding my breath as the heavy metal door creaked open.
