Chapter 10: # CHAPTER 10: Bruno Comes Home First
The call came from a volunteer named Patricia Osei.
She ran the overnight shelter at St.
Augustine's on West 143rd Street.
She had received the private bulletin Rachel's team distributed — woman, approximate age, possible scar near the temple, large black dog — and she had read it three times because she had seen both of them four days ago and sent them away because the shelter didn't allow animals.
She had given the woman a sandwich and her own scarf and watched her walk back into the cold with the dog at her side.
She had thought about them every night since.
When she saw the bulletin she called immediately.
Rachel went first.
Then Mason.
Lorenzo stayed in the car outside because Mason looked at him in the precinct parking lot and said, simply: "If she sees a convoy she runs.
You know that."
Lorenzo stayed in the car.
The longest fourteen minutes of his life passed in a gray November afternoon outside a church on West 143rd Street.
Then Mason came back out.
Opened the car door.
"She's there."
Lorenzo forgot how to breathe.
"Alive?"
"Yes.
She's thin.
Dehydrated.
Healing injuries.
Alert." Mason paused.
"She asked for you."
Lorenzo got out of the car.
His hands were shaking.
He looked at them as though they belonged to someone else.
Mason said: "Go."
The church smelled of candle wax and old wood.
A volunteer pointed him down a hallway.
A door on the left, slightly open.
He stopped outside it.
Through the gap he could see a gray blanket.
A small table.
The edge of a chair.
Then Bruno saw him.
The dog was on his feet before Lorenzo pushed the door open.
Eighty pounds of thin, scarred, underfed Cane Corso hit him in the chest and Lorenzo went to his knees on the hallway floor without deciding to.
He buried both hands in Bruno's fur.
The dog whined and pressed against him and Lorenzo held on.
Then he looked up.
Isabella was in the chair.
Gray blanket around her shoulders.
Short hair — she had cut it herself, he could see that.
Hollow cheeks.
A scar near her temple that hadn't been there before.
Bruises fading yellow along one wrist.
Her eyes were the same.
Green.
Sharp.
Alive.
She was crying before he reached her.
He stood.
Crossed the room.
Stopped one step away.
He didn't touch her.
That surprised her — he could see it.
"Can I?"
Two words.
He asked.
She nodded.
Lorenzo pulled her into his arms and whatever had been holding him together for two months came apart completely.
He cried into her hair.
Not quietly.
Not with any of the control he had maintained in every room and every meeting and every sleepless night in the mansion that had become a museum.
He shook.
Isabella held him just as tightly.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He pulled back.
"No."
"I couldn't call—"
"I know."
"They said Sophia and Emma—"
"I know.
They're safe.
They've been safe."
"I didn't know if your phones were compromised.
I didn't know who Vincent had inside your security."
"He had one person.
A records clerk.
He's been removed." Lorenzo looked at her face.
At the scar.
At the wrist.
"Are you hurt?"
"I was." She touched his face with one hand.
"I'm better."
"Your rib."
She almost smiled.
"How did you know about my rib?"
"Anthony told us."
The name landed between them.
She looked at him.
"He's in custody," Lorenzo said.
"He talked.
Vincent was arrested this afternoon."
Isabella closed her eyes.
When she opened them, something had shifted.
Not relief exactly.
Something quieter and more complicated than relief.
"Claire," she said.
"I know."
"She was trying to help me."
"I know." He held her gaze.
"Her sister has been notified.
Claire will be buried properly.
I'll explain everything when you're ready."
Isabella nodded slowly.
Bruno pressed against her legs.
She reached down and touched his collar — the old brown leather, the bent ring — and something moved across her face that Lorenzo didn't have a word for.
"He never left me," she said.
"No."
"Even when I had nothing to feed him."
"He earned that collar," Lorenzo said quietly.
She looked up at him.
Then she laughed — a short, broken sound — and leaned her forehead against his shoulder.
"Take me home," she said.
"Yes," he said.
May you like
"Let's go home."
* * *
