Callie wasin the vehicle before Noah finished explaining. They hit the road heading south toward Elizabethtown, Noah pushing the Bronco harder than he usually did on these roads, the morning light slanting through the trees and striping the windshield.
The Strutz Agency was closed. The brass number on the door between the storefronts caught the light but the windows above were dark. Noah tried the handle. Locked. He stepped back ontothe sidewalk and looked up at the apartments on the second and third floors.
A man came out of the hardware store next door. Mid-sixties, apron, reading glasses around his neck.
"Help you?"
"Does a Marisol Delgado live here?" Noah asked, gesturing up at the apartments.
"She did. Cleared out her things this morning. Saw her heading out with a bag."
"Do you know where she was going?"
"Said she was heading home. Catching a bus."
"When was that?"
"Quarter of an hour ago."
"Thanks," Noah said, already moving. He was in the Bronco with the engine running before the man had finished pulling his glasses on. Callie jumped in and they tore out of the space and through the streets of Elizabethtown toward the bus station.
The Greyhound stop was in a strip mall off Hadjis Way, tucked between a laundromat and a tax preparation office that was only open three months a year. As they swung into the lot, a Greyhound bus was pulling away from the curb, its diesel engine growling, its turn signal blinking as it angled toward the road.
Noah cut the wheel hard and brought the Bronco across the bus's path. He was out of the vehicle with his badge raised before the bus had finished braking. The driver's face went white behind the windshield. The doors hissed open.
Noah climbed the steps. "State Police. I need a moment."
The driver nodded, his hands still on the wheel. Noah turned and looked down the aisle. The bus was full. Twenty-five, thirty passengers staring at him with the wide-eyed confusion of people whose Tuesday morning commute had just become something else. He walked down the aisle, scanning faces. Anelderly couple. A college kid with headphones. A woman with a toddler on her lap.
Then he saw her. Near the back, head down, hoodie pulled up, a duffel bag on the seat beside her. The streak of red in her dark hair was visible even under the hood.
"Marisol?"
She glanced up. Her eyes were puffy and her face was bare of makeup, which for a woman who spent her days applying it to others told its own story. She looked at Noah, then at Callie standing at the front of the bus, and her shoulders dropped.
A moment later the Greyhound pulled away without her. Marisol stood on the curb with her duffel bag at her feet and the diesel fumes dissipating around them.
"There isn't going to be another bus for a few hours," she said.
"You quit your job?" Noah asked.
"Didn't want to work there anymore."
"Would that have anything to do with your visit to the Benton family last night?" He held up the folded letter. "What did you mean when you said Samuel Bridger is not who he says he is and is dangerous?"
Marisol looked at the letter in his hand. Then she looked off into the distance, past the strip mall, past the road, toward something only she could see. The morning was bright and the parking lot was empty except for the three of them and the sound of traffic from the main road.
"I had an apartment above the Strutz Agency," she said. "Samuel let me stay there in exchange for doing makeup for the girls that came through. That's my background. Cosmetology. It was money under the table."
"You're not here legally?"
She shook her head.
"How long have you been in the country?"
"Three years."
"How did you meet Samuel?"
