“Here or on the line.”
“Here.”
The living room is clean but lived-in. A plant on the windowsill awaits water. Two books sit on the arm of the sofa—one spine-creased, one still new. The curtains are pulled shut.
Paolo waits just inside the door, a tablet in his hands.
“Show me,” I say.
He turns the screen and taps a file open. A grainy rectangle blooms to life. The angle of the footage is a little too high and to the left. A neighbor from across the street who got just a triangle of Bianca’s stoop in it.
“This is at 6:52 last night,” he says.
The picture stutters. The street is empty. A car’s hood nose is idling nearly out of frame in front of Bianca’s house. Then thedoor opens into the slanted eye of the camera, and Bianca steps out.
My body stills.
She’s in the same outfit she was wearing on the plane. Jeans and a soft sweater, hair down. She walks calmly down the steps of the stoop.
A man walks out behind her.
Inside me, everything tightens.
He’s taller than she is by a head, shoulders narrow, dark hair. Nothing outstanding. They step down. He scans once and keeps moving. She gives the door a small backward glance.
No hand on her. No drag. No panic. She walks with him to the curb.
The car that was idling out of frame rolls forward slow enough that the front quarter panel finally shows. Paolo has frozen the image on the plate numbers and zoomed on the first run, but I make him play it straight through once.
The man opens the rear door, waits for her to get in, then follows. The car eases away.
“Run the plate,” I say.
“Already did. Covered,” he answers. “But I’ve got traffic cam angles on the next block, two intersections over. We’ll build the route.”
“Do it.”
He starts to back out. I stop him with a look. “Faces.”
“We’re enhancing now,” he says. “We’ll compare to our files and to DMV. I’ll have you a short list in minutes.”
“Not a list,” I say. “A name.”
He nods and disappears.
The house goes quiet again. I walk back into the kitchen.
The half apple sits on the board.
But where’s the knife?
The apple isn’t bitten. It’s cut. There’s no knife next to it, no knife in the sink, or on the drying mat.
Maybe she washed it and put it away. A woman like Bianca wouldn’t leave one of her precious knives sitting out.
I look around carefully, opening drawers. I find a set of knives. Not Bianca’s. Not the set I saw her pack away carefully in her flat in Italy.
Maybe she hasn’t unpacked those yet. But something feels off about it.
