A MAFIA BOSS PAID $90,000 TO SAVE A HOMELESS WOMAN THEN SHE SPOKE OF HER MOTHER’S RING AND THE FIRE TEN YEARS AGO

Adrian didn't send Marco to take the phone away. He opened the salon door himself and stepped onto the sidewalk, making himself the most interesting thing in the frame.

"You're free to take my picture," he told the man holding the phone. "Leave her out of it."

The man laughed nervously. "She's with you, though, right?"

"She's a person walking down a street."

"People say you bought her."

"People are wrong."

When Adrian turned, Wren had backed behind the reception desk. She was watching the pavement, studying the feet that crossed the windows. Her shoulders shook from the chill even though the room was warm.

"I can call a cab," Théo said quietly to her. "Not his car. A regular cab. You tell the driver where to go."

"Where?" she asked.

Théo had no answer. Adrian heard it, and that was worse than the man turning him down.

He'd been so certain money would solve the first problem. Heat, food, clean clothes, a doctor. He'd even been certain that paying everyone enough would buy discretion. It hadn't occurred to him that ninety thousand dollars and a famous surname were precisely the ingredients of a story that could follow Wren anywhere.

"I made this harder," Adrian said.

Wren blinked at him.

"I brought you somewhere public. I should've asked what you wanted instead of deciding that this place was best."

"You didn't make me get in the car."

"No. But you didn't know what this would be like. Neither did I."

Marco came up beside him. "The private doctor is waiting. We need to get you both off the street."

"I don't want his doctor," Wren said.

Adrian looked at her, then at Marco. "Can we find a clinic she can choose?"

"She's going to be photographed there too."

"Then give her three options and let her pick."

Wren chose a small community health center on the Lower East Side because a woman had once given her dry socks outside its door. It wasn't a glamorous place. There were drawings by children along the wall and a broken vending machine with a handwritten sign that read EXACT CHANGE ONLY, WHICH IT DOES NOT GIVE.

A physician named Dr. Naila Rahman examined Wren with the curtain pulled and Jo, whom Wren had unexpectedly asked to accompany her, sitting beside the door. There were sores under the short hair, dehydration, a skin infection that needed treatment, and injuries that appeared old. Dr. Rahman asked about sleep, food, pain, and medications. She didn't ask for a story before offering help.

"I don't have papers," Wren said.

"We can start the visit without making that your first problem," Dr. Rahman replied. "We'll talk to our social worker afterward."

Wren looked at the clean paper spread across the examining table. "What if I can't remember my birthday?"

"Then we won't pretend to know it."

Adrian, on the other side of the curtain, heard that sentence and looked down at his expensive watch. Three years ago he'd bought a smaller clinic a new imaging machine after an employee's mother was turned away. He'd never sat in the waiting room. Now he watched people fill out forms with borrowed pens and pass their phones to tired children.

A man wearing a delivery jacket took the chair opposite him. "You okay, buddy?"

Adrian looked down at the blood showing through his bandage. "Been better."

"You should tell the desk."

"Someone knows."

"Well, whoever knows is taking their time."

Adrian gave a breath of laughter and went to the desk. The nurse told him he needed emergency reassessment for a worsening wound. He argued. She wasn't impressed.

"You can be important in the ambulance," she said.

Wren emerged from behind the curtain in a borrowed sweatshirt and clean pants from the clinic's donated clothing rack. Her haircut was uneven, her eyes too large in her thin face. Without the heavy hair, she looked both older and more fragile. She took one look at Adrian's side and said, "You should go."

"I'm not leaving you alone."

"I won't be alone. Jo's here."

He had no good answer to that. Jo, who had missed most of her workday and was checking on her own daughter's after-school ride, raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'll stay until the social worker's finished," she said. "But I can't adopt either of you."

Marco laughed before catching himself.

A little later, inside the urgent-care ambulance, Adrian gave his lieutenant instructions he was used to giving about vehicles, security, and surveillance. Marco listened until the last instruction.

"Find out every shelter she's been in. Every alias. Quietly."

"Why?"

Adrian watched the ceiling panel sway as the ambulance began to move. "I think I know her family."

Marco folded his arms. "You think she belongs to someone."

"That's not what I said."

"Then don't say it with an investigation."

Adrian turned his face toward the window. The admission was an annoyance because it was true. He didn't want to put Wren back in danger. He also couldn't stand not knowing.

At the clinic, Wren sat beside a social worker who slid a sheet of housing choices toward her. The woman, Ms. Ortiz, had been careful to ask Wren what kind of room she could tolerate: private or shared, lights on or off, close to an exit or not. It was an oddly precise question, and Wren answered it instantly.

"Close to an exit."

Ms. Ortiz nodded. "There are options, but I won't pretend there isn't a wait. The overnight bed I can offer today has staff, and the front doors are alarmed after ten."

Wren studied the page. "Locked?"

"For safety. We can arrange an exit with staff."

She slid the page back. "No."

Jo had to leave for her daughter's pickup. Before going, she wrote a phone number on a receipt. "This is my work number, not an invitation to call me at two in the morning," she told Wren. "I can give you haircut appointments. I can find you a warm coat. If you need more than that, I'll tell you who can help."

Wren folded the receipt very carefully. It didn't occur to her that a limited offer might be more trustworthy than an unlimited one.

Marco returned after dark. He had a key card to a small vacant apartment in a building where Adrian held a controlling share. "He said you can use this, no charge, and leave whenever. There aren't guards inside."

Wren looked suspiciously at the card. "And you?"

"I'm driving you. Then I'm going to find dinner."

"Do you have to report where I go?"

Marco hesitated. "I work for him. I'd tell him you're safe."

"That isn't what I asked."

"No," Marco admitted. "It isn't."

She took the card. The apartment turned out to be on the second floor, with a window overlooking a laundromat and a kitchen so small the refrigerator door hit the cabinet. The building's hall smelled of somebody cooking onions. Wren stood inside the entrance while Marco demonstrated the locks.

"This one goes from the inside," he said. "This is the fire exit."

"Can I leave now?"

"Yes."

"And tonight?"

"Yes."

After he went, Wren tested the handle fourteen times. The lock worked. The door opened. It was possible to get out.

She still slept on the floor beside it.

Just after midnight her phone—an inexpensive one the social worker had helped arrange—lit up with a message from Jo's work number.

I didn't give anyone your number. But Mr. Kane's man asked me what you said at the sink. I told him that was yours to tell. Thought you should know.

Wren sat upright, suddenly wide awake.