Page 2 of Enforcer Daddy
Then he said something that made my stomach drop: "The drive! You understand? The drive is everything!"
Not the money. Not the credit cards. The drive.
The tiny piece of plastic in my hand suddenly felt radioactive.
One of the refrigerator men was scanning the street, his gaze systematic, professional. His eyes swept toward my alley.I pulled back, but too late. He pointed, said something sharp. Chenkov's head snapped toward my direction.
Even from thirty feet away, I heard him suck in a breath. His voice came out in accented English, clear and carrying: "The girl with the eyes! Two different colors—I saw her! It's her!"
I ran.
Not the calculated quick-walk of someone who didn't want attention. Full sprint, feet slapping against the alley's filthy concrete, messenger bag bouncing against my hip. Behind me, shouts of anger, then the heavy thunder of large men trying to follow.
The alley dead-ended at a chain-link fence, eight feet high, topped with razor wire. But I knew this fence. Knew that the bottom left corner had been cut and bent back by kids sneaking into the loading dock beyond. The gap was maybe eighteen inches wide, barely enough for someone my size if I turned sideways and sucked in everything.
The footsteps were getting closer. These weren't hotel security guards or out-of-shape cops. These men moved like hunters, coordinated, one staying at the alley mouth to cut off my retreat while the others advanced.
I dropped to my knees, shoved my bag through first, then turned sideways and started pushing through. The cut metal grabbed at the catering polo, tore a line down my ribs. Something warm and wet—blood from the new cut or the infected wound on my palm opening up, I couldn't tell.
"Stop!" The English was heavily accented but clear. "You don't understand what you've taken!"
I understood enough. Understood that men like this didn't chase you for three hundred dollars. Understood that whatever was on this USB drive was worth more than money to them. Understood that if they caught me, I'd disappear like smoke, another runaway nobody would bother looking for.
My hips caught on the fence. For one horrible second, I was stuck, half in and half out, completely vulnerable. One of the men was close enough that I could smell his cologne—something expensive and sharp, like pine trees and acid citrus.
I twisted hard, felt skin tear, and popped through. The man's hand grabbed for my ankle, fingers brushing my sneaker. I kicked back, connected with something solid—his face, from the sound of his cursing. Then I was running again, across the loading dock, between the trucks, into the maze of back alleys I knew better than any mob muscle ever could.
Every dumpster, every fire escape, every loose board and hidden gap—I knew them like other people knew their childhood bedrooms. But Chenkov's men had phones, coordination, and they were learning fast.
I cut left behind the Korean grocery, vaulted the milk crates they always left stacked by the delivery door. A voice crackled from somewhere ahead—not shouting, but talking steadily into a phone. They were boxing me in, one moving to cut off my escape routes while others herded me forward. Professional. Organized. Everything I wasn't.
My infected palm was definitely bleeding now, leaving smears on everything I touched. The new cut from the fence burned along my ribs. But adrenaline was better than any antibiotic, keeping me moving when my body wanted to collapse.
Right turn. Left. Through the gap between two buildings so narrow I had to turn sideways again. Behind me, foreign cursing as one of them tried to follow and got stuck. Small victories.
I was calculating my next move when I heard it—a sound so faint I almost missed it under my own ragged breathing. Whimpering. High-pitched, desperate, coming from the dumpster behind the abandoned Thai restaurant.
No.
Keep running.
Whatever it was, it wasn't my problem. I had my own survival to worry about.
The whimpering came again, weaker this time. Like something giving up.
I knew that sound. Had made it myself, too many nights to count.
Shit.
I lifted the dumpster lid just enough to peer inside. A cardboard box, Colombia Bananas printed on the side, soggy from garbage juice. Inside, a puppy that might have been a pit bull mix, maybe three months old, nothing but bones wrapped in patchy fur. One eye was swollen shut. The other eye looked at me with that particular exhaustion that came from understanding nobody was coming to help.
"Fuck," I whispered.
Voices getting closer. They were closing the net. The smart move was to run. Leave the puppy to whatever fate awaited things nobody wanted. It was probably dying anyway. Even if it survived, who'd want a one-eyed pit bull?
Nobody. Just like nobody wanted foster kids who aged out with sticky fingers and trust issues.
The puppy tried to lift its head, failed, let out another whimper that was barely more than air.
