Chapter 9
When he saw her, he stopped.
His eyes traveled down the green dress, back up to her face, and lingered on the faint smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“You clean up nicely, Nurse Kowalski,” he said, stepping forward to shelter her beneath the umbrella.
“You’re not wearing a tie,” she observed, stepping close to his side. The scent of him—bay rum, rain, and clean wool—wrapped around her. “I feel under-threatened.”
“We can stop by a warehouse on the way if you need me to rough someone up to set the mood,” he replied deadpan, opening the passenger door for her.
“Please. I see enough trauma between seven and seven.”
The restaurant was a tiny, unmarked subterranean trattoria tucked away in an alley off Taylor Street in Little Italy. There was no sign out front—just a heavy wooden door with an iron grille. Inside, the air was warm, smelling of crushed garlic, braised veal, rosemary, and aged Chianti. An elderly woman with silver hair pulled into a knot came out from the kitchen, wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron, and pulled Luca into a fierce, rib-cracking hug.
“Luca,” she scolded in Italian, slapping his cheek with enough force to sting. “Too thin. Always working. Who is this beautiful girl you finally brought to see me?”
“Signora Bianchi, this is Nina,” Luca said, his ears turning a faint shade of red that Nina found utterly delightful. “She saves lives and complains about my pastries.”
Signora Bianchi gasped, clapping her hands together. “Good! D’Agostino uses margarine in his sfogliatelle! I told his mother twenty years ago he has no soul! Sit, sit! I feed you both!”
For two hours, the world outside ceased to exist.
There were no hospital sirens, no radio calls, no federal wiretaps, no territorial borders. They ate handmade agnolotti stuffed with braised short rib; they drank a deep, earthy Barolo that warmed Nina from the inside out; they talked about things that had nothing to do with violence.
Nina told him about her father, Henry, who could rebuild an alternator blindfolded but couldn't remember to put the lid on the mayonnaise jar. She told him about the terrifying rush of her first code blue, and the strange, quiet beauty of walking through Chicago at 5:00 AM when the street sweepers were the only living things awake.
Luca listened.
He didn't check his phone. He didn't scan the room. He leaned his forearms against the red-checkered tablecloth, his gaze locked on her face, drinking in her voice like a traveler who had found an oasis after forty years in the desert.