He looks at me with the calm of a man who has learned the only thing he needed to learn tonight. He is not going to give me his name. I know it. He knows I know it.
I want him to give it to me anyway.
I tie off the last suture. I strip off the gloves.
The morning is going to be its own problem.
The car's Bluetooth connects.
It is 2:11 a.m.
I am sitting in the driver's seat in the dark in front of the cabin. I needed five minutes alone with a phone that would not ring inside the house.
I am scrolling through a private intel feed that should not exist on any phone I own. The dashboard lights up.
INCOMING CALL. M. MORETTI.
I do not pick up.
It rings four times.
The voicemail kicks in. The dashboard goes dark.
Then the dashboard lights up again.
INCOMING CALL. M. MORETTI.
I look at the cabin. The kitchen window. The man is asleep on the island in there. Sutured. Stable. Impossible.
I exhale.
I press accept.
Matteo's voice fills the car.
"Nadia."
The way he says my name is not how he usually says it. He says it the way Alessandro saysenough.The way I have heard him say it twice in my whole career. Both times to men who did not survive it.
"Where the fuck are you? And who is the man on the warehouse feed?"
3
SEAN
Iwake up on a couch that does not belong to me.
The light is wrong. Soft. Gold. Coming through a window that is not mine. The ceiling is wood. Pine, knot pattern, beam every four feet. I have stared at my own ceiling for a long time. This is not it.
The pain announces itself before I move. Left side. Below the ribs. Hot but contained. Someone has done very good work on me.
The last thing I remember is the kitchen island. I am not there anymore.
She moved me at some point. I do not remember the moving.
That tells me something about the state I was in when she did it.
I do not move yet. I let my body finish the inventory. Both legs functional. Both arms. The wound is dressed clean. There is a thin pull at the suture line when I shift weight. The work is recent enough that I should not be testing it.
