The Mafia's gold and the girl they all wanted

Cynthia's phone was still buzzing on the bathroom floor, and Cynthia was gone.

Sophie Vincenzo stood in the doorway of the empty restroom with her heart beating in her throat. Cynthia's purse lay on its side by the sink with its lipstick and keys spilled across the wet tiles. The screen lit up with Vine's name, then went dark, then lit up again. Ten minutes ago, Cynthia had walked into this bathroom laughing and saying the lights were doing a thing.

Sophie picked up the phone. She was seventeen, in a green dress her friend had chosen for her, at a nightclub she had only agreed to visit because saying no to her friends a fourth time would have meant explaining why. Tonight was supposed to be the night she acted like an ordinary girl.

She should have trusted the feeling she'd had at the door, when the bouncer had waved them through without checking a single ID. He had looked at the three of them the way a man counts boxes on a truck and said one word into his radio. Three. She had noticed it, the way she noticed everything. It was the one habit she had kept from the night she stopped being a child.

At the far end of the corridor, a door marked STAFF ONLY stood slightly open. A strip of white light spilled through the gap, and voices came with it.

She ought to have run for the front exit. She knew that even as she walked toward the light. She needed to know what happened to Cynthia.

Through the gap she saw a loading bay lit by bare bulbs. Two men were carrying Cynthia between them, her head lolling against one man's shoulder and her braids swinging. A woman in a black dress stood beside them with a clipboard and ticked something off with a pen, as calmly as if she were counting groceries.

"That's the first," the woman said. "Table nine had three. Where are the other two?"

"Dario's bringing one." The man's voice was bored. "The third girl, the quiet one, isn't on the list. The boss only wanted two from that table. But she's been watching the room all night, and she followed this one back here."

The pen clicked. "Then she's on the list now."

Sophie's elbow struck the door. It swung open with a quick creak, and every head in the loading bay turned toward her.

She ran.

She made it four steps before a hand clamped around her arm and hauled her backward so hard her teeth clacked. It was the man in the gray shirt who had stared at their table all night. "There you are," he said, almost kindly. "We were just coming to find you."

Sophie screamed. The music in the main club room swallowed the sound. His palm slammed over her mouth, and he dragged her toward the loading bay while she kicked struggling to be free, yet too weak.

"Let go of her, Dario."

The voice came from behind them, low and even and without a trace of heat. Dario stopped. Sophie twisted her head and saw a tall man standing at the mouth of the corridor with his hands loose at his sides. He wore a dark jacket, and he had the tired eyes of someone who had not slept properly in years. A scar split his left eyebrow. He was looking at Dario and not at her.

"Graham." Dario's grip loosened a little. "This isn't your night. Go back to your drinking."

"The girl is Victor's." The man said it as if he were reading the weather. "He asked for her himself. Take it up with him tonight, or let her go and I won't mention you put your hands on his property."

Sophie had no idea what any of that meant, but she felt Dario's fingers twitch against her jaw. Doubt crossed his face, then greed, then the stubborn pride that makes stupid men do stupid things.

"You're lying."

"Maybe." The man stepped closer. "Do you want to bet your hand on it?"

Dario pulled a small ugly knife from his belt, and he never got to use it. The man called Graham moved so fast that Sophie barely saw it. There was a crack, a gasp, a noise like a wet bag hitting concrete, and Dario was on the floor clutching his wrist and making a sound like a kettle. The knife skidded across the tiles and stopped against Sophie's shoe.

Graham took her by the elbow, gently this time, and did not look at her face. "Walk with me. Right now."

"My friends." Her voice cracked. "They have my friends."

"I know."

"Cynthia is back there, and Vine is still at the table. We have to..."

She broke off, because the double doors at the end of the corridor banged open and two more men came through, and between them walked a girl in a silver jacket.

Vine was not fighting. She was looking at nothing, and her feet dragged along the floor. One of the men glanced down the corridor and saw Sophie, and he made the other look. They turned, pulled Vine into the loading bay, and the door slammed behind them with a flat, final sound.

"No!" Sophie lunged forward, and Graham caught her around the waist and lifted her clean off the ground. She clawed at his arms, bit his sleeve, "let me go." She kicked backward into his knees as hard as she could, and he held on.

"Listen to me." His mouth was against her ear, and his voice was rough. "There are at least six of them behind that door, and more are coming in under a minute. If you go in there, you disappear with them, and nobody ever finds any of you. If you come with me, there's a chance. I can't promise more than a chance."

"Then help them!"

"Tonight I can only help you." He said it like a man swallowing broken glass. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He carried her through a kitchen full of steam, past a row of dented bins, and out through a steel door into an alley that stank of rain and rotten waste. Somewhere along the way she stopped fighting. It was not that she had given up. Her body had simply caught up with what her mind already knew, and she was shaking so badly that her teeth rattled.

A black sedan waited at the end of the alley with its engine running. He set her gently in the passenger seat, then went around and slid behind the wheel. The doors locked with a heavy click. He pulled away without headlights until they reached the corner.

Sophie pressed her forehead to the cold window. The club shrank behind them into a smear of amber light, and she realized she was still holding Cynthia's phone so tightly that her fingers ached.

"Who are you?"

"Jackie Graham."

"That's a name, not an answer." She turned to look at him, and her face was wet, and she hated that. "They knew you. You told that man I was Victor's, and he believed you. So you work for the same kind of people who took my friends. Tell me whether you just rescued me or kidnapped me."

Jackie did not answer. He drove through two intersections, checked the mirror three times, and took a corner so sharply that the tires squealed. Then he pulled into the shadow of a shuttered pharmacy and cut the engine. The silence was thick enough to hear the rain ticking on the roof.

He turned to face her. In the dim light she could see a muscle jumping in his jaw, and she noticed him looking at her as though he were looking at a ghost he had been expecting for a long time.

"Before you ask me where your friends are," he said, "I need you to tell me something, and I need the truth."

Sophie's pulse thudded in her ears. Her hand found the door handle, and it would not move. The lock was a small black button on his side of the car.

The question should have made no sense. It made perfect sense, and that was what frightened her. For four years she had kept her real name in pencil and her face at the back of every room, and in a single night this stranger had walked straight up to the one secret she had never told anyone.

"Does anyone know you're still alive?"