Page 100 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

Someone hisses.

Good.

The guard finally clears the threshold and then freezes because he has to choose who to tackle and nothing in his training covered a fake fire drill with a nice lady.

A passerby stops and raises a phone.

The woman drops her weight and locks her arm around my waist.

The man with the vest pins my forearm in a hold that speaks of practice.

The cart shoves.

We tilt toward the alley.

“Hey,” I hear. Rizzo.

She is at the corner, out for coffee she meant to bring me later.

She sees me and breaks into a run that turns heads.

She is not fast.

She does not need to be.

Her voice is a siren all by itself.

“Let her go,” she shouts. “Hey! Let her go!”

The nice woman smiles at Rizzo like this is a misunderstanding in a grocery aisle.

“She’s with us,” she calls back. “Transfer.”

Rizzo does not slow.

“The hell she is,” she says.

There is a coffee cup in her hand.

She throws it without ceremony.

It hits the man with the vest in the face and bursts.

He flinches, curses, and his grip loosens.

I yank my arm down, half free.

The cart bangs my knee a second time.

The second van door opens the rest of the way.

Two more bodies.

Too many hands.

“Run,” Rizzo yells.

I try.