Chapter 7

Nico folded toward me as the basement door slammed, but Celia caught most of his weight while I steadied his head; even that small effort sent bright pain through the needle mark in my arm and made the service passage pulse at the edges.

Red alarms striped the narrow service passage, and the building breathed through hot furnace pipes while men beyond the fire door called for the two missing bodies. The word followed us through the walls as if it already belonged to us.

“The service passage is ahead,” Celia murmured, her hand already under Nico's elbow. “It reaches the linen lift. If they sweep the basement, it is our only route to the loading yard.”

Nico lifted his head from my shoulder long enough to study the laminated route map beside the pipes. “No. That line goes past Blue Rest.” He dragged one unsteady finger from the clinic symbol to two funeral homes and then to the cemetery. “I drove these routes for the Morettis. They gave me a woman who was breathing, and when I refused to move the van, they wrote an accident around my name.”

As Nico traced the funeral homes, the map tightened around us. How often had I crossed those streets beside Dante without knowing a person could disappear between two official doors?

A key scraped behind us. Celia pulled us into the preparation room and crossed to a filing cabinet. “They clear records before rooms. If we leave the pages, they vanish before sunrise.”

“Then show me tonight.” Tomorrow tried to form and died against the remembered zipper; I would not wait while someone else held the key.

Celia spread two certificates across the table. “Yours was printed before Moreau injected you and already gives eleven-forty-two as your death. Nico's was approved two days before his accident.”

I read DECEASED twice before it reached the part of me that still remembered breathing beneath the sheet. At eleven-oh-two, I had been waiting for Dante to defend my chair; at eleven-forty-two, my heart had still been fighting while Moreau announced my death. My stomach turned. I nearly crushed the certificate, but boots outside reminded me rage could destroy what I needed. The dates settled into place: Moreau had arranged the death, Valentina had prepared the lie, and Dante had signed the lid after every opening in the trap was visible.

Nico warned that whole pages would reveal exactly what we had stolen, so I tore out only times, names and approval marks, hid them beneath my dress lining and returned the damaged sheets to separate drawers.

The lock shook. Celia opened the narrow linen lift. “It was built for one loaded cart. Three adults may jam it before we reach the truck.”

“No,” I answered as Celia guided Nico toward the lift and the door hinges groaned. “One person leaves. Three people survive.”

We packed into the lift with Nico between us as the door burst open above. When his knees failed, Celia held him upright while I made him describe Blue Rest's east wall and old maintenance road; if he could answer, he was still with me.

Voices gathered below. Celia struck the second-floor bell with a mop handle, turned the boots toward it, then released the brake and dropped us hard enough to jar my teeth.

A laundry truck idled outside while its driver argued over delivery papers. Celia tipped a hamper, and I climbed inside with Nico beneath damp sheets, keeping my wrist against his pulse.

“Come with us,” I whispered as Celia lowered the lid.

Her face appeared once through the narrow gap, pale beneath the red alarm light but completely steady; if an employee vanished, the truck would never move.

I nearly shoved the lid open, but Celia pointed toward the archive stairs and shouted, “They went up there. Check the locked room.” Two men caught her arms. My hand struck the lid before I forced it flat; climbing out would turn her choice into nothing.

White security light swallowed Celia as they dragged her inside. The certificate edges cut my chest, easier to bear than watching a near-stranger spend her safety on mine. Why had my husband needed me helpless before he called me safe? I pressed the paper harder. Celia's closing door could not be her ending.

The truck crossed the gate with a soft jolt. Nico looked through the canvas, his face gray beneath the dirt, and caught my wrist before I could ask where we were going.

“Don't take me downtown,” he breathed. “Blue Rest. The woman I refused to transport woke in my van. She heard Dominic order the cemetery to bury her alive before sunrise.”

The edge of my death certificate scraped my ribs. They could call me a poisoned murderer who had imagined everything. They could not explain two dead women standing in the same room.

“Then we reach her before they close the grave.”