Chapter 33 - The Blood-Stained Safehouse
The rain on the streets above seeped through the storm drains, falling in a steady, icy curtain as they emerged into an abandoned rail yard.
Arthur supported Clara’s weight against his right side, his teeth clenched against the blinding fire in his left shoulder.
Every breath Clara took sounded wet and shallow.
Two of her ribs were cracked from the impact of the water.
They crossed the weed-choked tracks toward a derelict brick warehouse near the edge of the East River.
Clara punched a six-digit code into a rusted keypad hidden behind an electrical junction box.
The heavy steel door clicked open with a muffled hiss of hydraulic pressure.
Inside, halogen strips flickered to life, revealing an armory and medical staging area that looked more like a military outpost than a hideout.
Arthur helped her onto an aluminum surgical table before collapsing into a swivel chair.
"Hold still," Clara muttered, grabbing a heavy leather strap and a bottle of surgical alcohol.
"What are you doing?" Arthur asked, breathing hard.
"Your shoulder," she replied, wrapping the leather between his jaws. "Bite down."
Before Arthur could protest, she hooked her heel beneath his armpit and wrenched his arm upward with ruthless precision.
The bone slammed back into its socket with a sickening crunch.
Arthur screamed into the leather, his vision going white at the edges before the excruciating pressure subsided into a dull, thumping ache.
He spat the leather onto the floor, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.
"You've done that before," he wheezed.
"More times than I care to remember," Clara said, turning away to bandage her own bruised ribs with surgical wrap.
Arthur watched her silhouette against the cold fluorescent light.
The bruised porcelain of her back was mapped with dozens of faint, silver scars.
"Where did you get those, Clara?" he asked quietly.
She paused, the roll of gauze freezing in her slender fingers.
"The Sterling Foundation calls it an elite finishing academy," she said without turning around.
"What are you talking about? The Foundation builds children's hospitals."
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Clara spun around, throwing a thick manila dossier across the stainless-steel table.
"Read it, Arthur," she said, her voice trembling with decades of suppressed fury. "Read what your father did to the girls who wore the veil before me."
