Chapter 16 - When Carmine Fell, Sadie Had Seconds to Save Him

Victor gave them until noon.

At 8:00 a.m., Agent Chen moved the original ledgers and Michael’s recording to a federal evidence facility. Dominic insisted on sending Carmine with the convoy because no one else knew which pages mattered.

Sadie rode in the second vehicle.

Dominic objected until Chen reminded him that Sadie was now a federal witness and therefore, for the moment, under government protection rather than his.

He disliked that sentence enough to make Sadie enjoy it.

They were crossing the river when the first SUV in the convoy stopped abruptly.

A delivery truck had jackknifed across the street.

Carmine spoke into his radio.

“Reverse.”

Gunfire answered.

The rear window exploded.

Sadie dropped to the floor.

Agents returned fire while the driver backed toward an alley. Another vehicle blocked them from behind.

It was not a random assault.

Victor knew the route.

“Leak,” Carmine said.

He opened the door to move toward the lead car.

A round struck him beneath the arm.

He fell back into the SUV.

Sadie saw blood spread across his shirt.

Everything in her narrowed.

Not mafia.

Not guns.

Not fear.

Patient.

She crawled to him.

“Carmine. Look at me.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are bleeding through your jacket.”

“Still fine.”

She tore open his shirt at the shoulder seam.

The bullet had entered high on his left side. Blood pulsed, but not in a bright arterial spray. His breathing was fast.

Sadie pressed gauze from the vehicle’s trauma kit against the wound.

“Hold this.”

Carmine tried.

His hand slipped.

Sadie replaced it with hers.

“Pressure.”

The driver yelled that they had an exit through a loading dock.

The SUV lurched.

Carmine’s face went gray.

Sadie remembered skills she had not used since leaving nursing school.

Airway.

Breathing.

Circulation.

She checked his chest, listened for changes, watched for one side rising differently than the other.

“Stay awake.”

“Bossy.”

“Yes.”

“Dominic likes that.”

“Shut up and breathe.”

Carmine laughed once, then winced.

They broke through a chain gate and reached a side street where Chicago police units were converging. Paramedics took Carmine within minutes.

Sadie stayed beside him until the ambulance doors closed.

Her hands were covered in his blood.

Dominic arrived so fast Chen accused him of ignoring three traffic laws and possibly physics.

“Where is he?”

“Alive,” Sadie said.

Dominic looked at the blood on her.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

He gripped her shoulders, checking anyway.

She pulled back.

“Carmine was shot.”

“I know.”

“You need to think, not react.”

His eyes were already cold.

Chen approached.

“We changed the convoy route ten minutes before departure. Only six people knew.”

Dominic looked at her.

“One of yours?”

“Or one of yours inside our planning room.”

Sadie remembered the photographs at the warehouse.

Victor had surveillance on them hours after meetings.

“Phones,” she said.

Chen frowned.

“What?”

“Not people. Devices.”

They surrendered every phone, watch, and radio to a technician.

A tiny unauthorized application was found on Carmine’s phone, hidden inside a security update. It transmitted location data whenever the device moved more than half a mile.

Carmine had been carrying Victor’s tracker for weeks.

No new leak.

An old compromise.

Dominic closed his eyes briefly.

The discovery changed the next move.

Chen collected every device and issued clean replacements. She also created three false plans for the Pier 17 exchange, each distributed through a different channel.

One plan used Dominic’s compromised phone.

It said he intended to arrive with the ledgers in two SUVs from the south.

A second plan suggested a helicopter approach.

The real plan was shared only face-to-face.

At the hospital, Carmine came out of surgery in stable condition.

Sadie stood outside his room and stared at her bloodstained sleeves.

Dominic joined her.

“You saved him.”

“I kept pressure on a wound.”

“The surgeon said another ten minutes without it and he might have bled out.”

Sadie looked away.

“I left nursing school because my mother got sick,” she said. “I worked nights, missed clinicals, lost my scholarship. After she died, I told myself I would go back.”

“You never did.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes failing once becomes a story you tell yourself about who you are.”

Dominic understood that better than she expected.

He looked through the glass at Carmine.

“My father told himself he was protecting the family. After enough years, the story mattered more than the truth.”

Sadie nodded.

Dominic turned to her.

“When this ends, go back.”

She almost made a joke.

He stopped her with one sentence.

“Not because I pay for it. Because you were good at it.”

Sadie looked at her own hands.

Burns healing beneath blood.

Hands that had pulled Rosa from fire.

Hands that had recognized poison.

Hands that had kept Carmine alive.

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For the first time in two years, nursing did not feel like the life she had lost.

It felt like a door she might still open.