"Follow up."
"I will when I'm not covering your ass. Anything else?"
"Has anyone mentioned Salvatore?"
"Salvatore?" Emilio sounds confused. "He's been in meetings all week. Political shit, judges, the usual. Why?"
"No reason."
"Claudio. You don't ask about people for no reason. You don't do anything for no reason. What's going on with Salvatore?"
"I'll tell you when I'm sure."
"That's not how this works. We don't keep things from each other."
"I'm not keeping. I'm confirming. There's a difference."
He exhales hard. "Fine. But when you're ready to talk, you call me first. Not Leone. Me."
"Noted."
"And Claudio?"
"What."
"Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
He hangs up before I can respond. I stare at the phone and resist the urge to throw it at the wall.
The bathroom door opens. Charlotte steps out in yesterday's clothes, hair wet, face scrubbed clean. Without the sharp eyeliner and the careful composure, she looks younger. Softer. The kind of soft that she'd hate me for noticing, so I don't mention it.
"We need to move," I say. "I'll get food on the road."
She nods. Puts on her jacket. Picks up her shoes from their precise position by the bed.
We check out. The clerk doesn't look up from her crossword. I pull onto the highway heading south, and Charlotte settles into the passenger seat with her feet tucked under her and her jacketzipped to her chin and the last cigarette from her crushed pack between her fingers.
I toss her the lighter without being asked.
She catches it. Doesn't say thank you this time. Just lights the cigarette and opens the window, and the smoke drifts between us in a thin grey thread.
She's different on the road. I noticed it last night, but daylight makes it clearer. She changes. Not dramatically, not a costume or a character. More like a frequency shift. Her posture loosens. Her eyes move differently, wider, scanning, the gaze of someone who's been a stranger in public spaces and knows how to adjust the wattage of her presence so that people look past her instead of at her.
She knows how to be invisible. That's not something you learn at a legal assistant's desk.
"You've done this before," I say.
She takes a drag. Exhales. "Done what?"
"Run. Disappeared. Changed cities, changed names, changed whatever needed changing to become someone new."
Her jaw tightens. The cigarette pauses halfway to her mouth.
"Charlotte Richardson isn't the name you were born with," I say. "Your file is clean. Too clean. No history before three years ago. No college records, no previous employment, no social media footprint. You materialized in a new city with a new identity and a new life, and you did it well enough that nobody noticed until four men with automatic weapons kicked down your door."
She smokes. Doesn't look at me. Her eyes are fixed on the road, and her free hand is on her thigh, fingers pressed flat, nails white against her slacks.
"That's not a question," she says.
