“Are you sure about this?” I whisper to Bruno as we walk up to the nightclub. The bass is booming, making the very pavement outside vibrate to the beat. I’m wearing a tight black dress, dark hosiery, heels, and a black leather jacket, and I’m shivering in the cold winter air. The city is wide awake and pulsing with life, from the neon signs to the honking horns and shrill laughter of a bachelorette party group filing clumsily into a bar across the street. It’s strange to be back in New York after our stay in the cabin, to be surrounded by so much noise again. Back to the real world, where all our fears still live, waiting for us to walk back into focus.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. I’m definitely scared.

“I’m sure. This is the way we have to do this,” Bruno answers me in an undertone. The bouncer stands up as we approach, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He’s a big guy, but still not as tall as Bruno. However, he looks infinitely meaner, with his shaved head, scowling eyes, and face tattoos. He seems a little rough to be working the door at a nightclub like this, but I suppose the more exclusive the club, the more aggressive the door guy has to be.

He opens his mouth to inevitably tell us to fuck off, that the club is at full capacity, but then he stops short, his eyes falling on me. He gives me a quizzical look for a second, like he’s trying to figure out who I am. My heart starts racing, worrying that maybe he recognizes us somehow, that maybe I’m known as an accomplice to Bruno the fugitive. But then he smiles.

“S—Serena?” he asks haltingly. “That you?”

“Uh, yeah,” I answer, confused. He nods slowly.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s me, Damian. We took that comp sci class together in college, remember?”

It dawns on me that I have actually shared a classroom with this guy before. Maybe I can use this to our advantage. I give him a big grin. “Oh yeah! Hi! How—how are you?”

“Great! I’m graduating in the spring, but for now I’m doing this job to get by. Crossing my fingers I get picked up as a CPA somewhere. Just tossin’ out a million resumes right now, ya know. Gotta follow the grind, man,” he explains cheerily. I remember him as a scrawny computer nerd type, but I guess in the past few years he’s either hit the gym five times a day or possibly gone through some miraculous second puberty.

“That’s awesome, Damian. Good luck!” I tell him, amused by the spontaneity of this interaction. I mean, who would’ve guessed it? Sometimes even New York can feel like a small town. Damian moves aside, gesturing for us to go inside.

“Thanks! Well, it was good to see you, Serena. Go on in and have a great night!” he says brightly as we walk into the club. I can feel Bruno’s eyes boring into my head and I look up at him, stifling a laugh. He’s shaking his head, eyebrows raised.

“That was lucky. Good thing you’ve got a memorable face,” he says, grinning.

“Yeah, talk about kismet,” I laugh. We make our way over to the bar and Bruno orders a couple shots. I shake my head, and he doesn’t push me, taking both of them in quick succession. The seriousness of what we’re about to do tonight is flooding back into my mind. Bruno obviously notices my tension, and takes me by the hand, leading me out onto the crowded dance floor. The last thing I want to do right now is dance, but he’s insistent.

“We need to play it cool. Be convincing,” he whispers in my ear. “We’re just a young couple here for a casual evening of dancing. No big deal.”

“How will we know when he gets here?” I ask quietly as Bruno takes hold of my hips and starts to sway with me.

“I’m keeping an eye on the front entrance and the employee’s entrance toward the back. He doesn’t work here but he’s a regular, so he might come in through there to go undetected. But he knows what I look like, and I know what he looks like. We’ll find him, no problem,” he explains.

“What if he doesn’t show?” I ask, biting my lip.

Bruno shakes his head. “He will. Trust me. This guy might be the only person on the planet who hates Price as much as I do.”

We dance together for what feels like hours. I’m beginning to feel hopeless when finally Bruno puts a hand on my arm and nods in the direction of the back of the club. Even though I didn’t know what he looked like before tonight, I recognize him instantly by the world-weary look on his face. He’s a relatively tall man, but he walks with a slight stoop, like he’s perpetually ashamed of himself, trying to make himself look smaller. He has thinning salt-and-pepper hair and deep frown lines on his paunchy face. He looks over and locks eyes with Bruno, both men nodding once in acknowledgement before the ex-cop walks over to a booth against the wall and sits down.

Bruno orders a beer and we head over to the booth where our contact is waiting. I can feel my heart beating fast, but for some reason my mind is totally cool and collected. After spending all this time with Bruno on the run, I think my tolerance for high-stakes situations has gotten a little higher.

We settle into the booth across from the ex-cop and Bruno slides the beer across the table to him. The guy gladly accepts it and takes a long sip before speaking.

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to have company,” he says quietly, his voice a little rough. I can tell he’s probably been a lifelong smoker. Bruno nods.

“This is Serena. And you already know who I am,” Bruno says.

“Hi Serena. I’m Hank. Ex-cop, ex-success story, ex-productive member of society. Nice to meet you,” the guy says flatly, taking another drink of his beer.

“I’m sorry... can I just ask a question?” I begin, leaning forward and lowering my voice. “What made you quit the force?”

Hank sighs and answers, “An operation went foul at the fairgrounds a while back. Found my own neck on the chopping block. Could’ve made some serious waves if I spoke up, but Price would have my head before I even got the words out. So I decided it was best to just cut and run.”

“So, you worked closely with Price?” I press on.

He nods, rolling his eyes. “Oh yeah, Price and I go way back. We were at the Academy together, rose up in the ranks side by side. He got accolades, I got accolades. He got promoted, I got promoted. We were on parallel tracks to greatness, you know. Colleagues working our asses off on the same team for the greater good. Or so I thought.”

“Price used to be on the straight and narrow once upon a time, then?” Bruno suggests.

Hank shrugs. “I don’t know how far back his dirty business goes. He could’ve been scheming since day one at the Academy for all I know. I had no idea for the longest time. I guess that’s part of why I wasn’t cut out to be a cop after all: I just kind of assumed the best of everyone. You can’t do that in my former line of work. Ain’t nobody one-hundred-percent clean. Price was a good cop, don’t get me wrong. He made arrest after arrest after arrest. He shut down gangs and crime syndicates, threw a bunch of small-time dealers in the clink. If the chief had been handing out gold stars, he would’ve been a goddamn constellation. But turns out, he was double-dipping. Got one hand on the badge and the other digging into places he got no business in. Jewel smuggling, gambling rings, even sex trafficking.”

He shakes his head, his fists tightening on the table in front of him. “That fucker was moonlighting for both sides all along, but really it’s not about good or bad. Price doesn’t work for anybody but himself.”

“Are you the only one who knows about this?” Bruno asks.

Hank chuckles, but the laughter doesn’t warm up his cold expression one bit. “Nah. I can think of a half dozen guys on the force who could give evidence about Price’s shady business dealings. I got evidence of my own. But nobody’s gonna speak up.”

“Not even you?” I pipe up. “You’re already off the force. What do you have to lose?”

He stares at me for a moment with narrowed eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? This is bigger than just a stupid job. I got the hell out of dodge because that was the only way I could at least kind of hold onto what’s left of my damn conscience. Price has friends in high places, but it’s his friends in low places you really gotta watch out for. Everybody hates him, but he made damn sure they’re afraid of him, too. We all know what that rat bastard is capable of, and nobody’s willing to risk life or livelihood to take him down. He’s too powerful.”

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” I interject. “And if you came out to meet us here tonight, that must mean you haven’t totally given up all hope yet.”

Hank gives me a weak, almost wistful smile. “Hope? Nah. I’m way past hope. Nowadays all I got left is desperation and spite.”

“Well, then maybe you’re just desperate enough to help us,” Bruno says. “You said you have evidence. Good enough to put him away?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But it wouldn’t make a difference unless we got everybody on our side, and that’ll never happen,” Hank laments. “Look, I feel for you, man. I get it. Price has taken so much away from me, from you, from a lot of people who didn’t deserve it. I admire what you’re trying to do here, but it’s never gonna work out.”

“We can pay you,” Bruno says. “We can get your job back. We can take Price down.”

“Man, it’s not that I don’t wanna help you. It’s just that I can’t. I already lost everything when I quit the force. That job was everything to me, all I ever wanted to do with my life since I was a little boy playing cops and robbers. But that department is all in Price’s pocket nowadays. Ain’t nothing you or anybody else can do about it. The stakes are too high.”

He gulps down the rest of his beer and starts to slide out of the booth, trying to leave. Desperately, I blurt out, “What if we could promise you a new start? A do-over, somewhere far away. Y-You could get away from all this. Pretend it never even happened.”

Hank turns back to look at me with his brows furrowed. Bruno looks at me, too, confused at what I’m talking about. “A new identity. Untraceable,” I go on, glancing at Bruno meaningfully. “We can do that, can’t we? We can get him out of the country.”

Bruno catches on, realizing that I’m talking about the fake passports he had made for us, the ones with the pictures missing. He nods, gesturing for Hank to sit back down.

“Yes. We can promise you safe passage out of here. Consider it a guerrilla-style witness protection service,” he explains. Hank slowly slides back into the booth, looking apprehensive.

“In exchange for your evidence and your assistance, we can get you a new life. A new chance to make something of yourself, without all this baggage weighing you down,” I tell him.

Hank looks back and forth between us, clearly torn. Bruno and I wait silently, impatiently for him to say something.