"Make the call," I say. "And then we need to move. Staying in one place too long makes me nervous."
"Staying in one place too long makes everyone nervous. That's why we keep moving."
"Is that the only reason?"
He drops his hand. Steps back. The soldier clicks back on.
"I'll make the call. Pack what you need. We leave in an hour."
He walks out. I hear him on the phone again. Leone this time, the cadence different, more formal, the shorthand of two men who've been running operations together for over a decade.
I stand in the kitchen and press my fingers to the back of my neck. One. Two. Three.
The clock is ticking. Salvatore knows my name. The compound is compromised. The war is grinding on without us. And somewhere in a building I've never been to, a man with a scar on his left hand is wondering where I am and what I've seen and how quickly he can make me disappear.
I pour the rest of the coffee down the sink. Rinse the mugs. Fold the blanket on the couch. Small domestic acts that mean nothing and everything, the rituals of a woman preparing to leave a place she shouldn't have gotten comfortable in.
The farmhouse is quiet. The trees are still. The light through the window is turning gold.
I memorize it. Not because I'll miss it. Because I've learned to take inventory of the places I've been safe, however briefly, so I can carry them when the world stops being kind.
The farmhouse. The wood stove. The kitchen with the gold light. The bedroom where he shook.
Memorized. Saved. Mine.
I pick up my coat and go.
Chapter Nine: Claudio
Shestopstalkingaroundmile marker 114.
I don't notice immediately. Charlotte's never been a talker on the road. She smokes, she watches, she makes the occasional dry observation about the motels or the gas stations or the quality of coffee in whatever town we've just passed through. She's not chatty. But she's present. A low hum of awareness that fills the passenger seat like background noise.
At mile marker 114, the hum goes dead.
I glance at her. She's sitting the way she always sits, feet tucked under her, jacket zipped, cigarette between her fingers. But her hand isn't moving. The cigarette burns toward the filter without her taking a drag. The ash grows long, curls, drops onto her thigh. She doesn't brush it off.
Her eyes are fixed on the road. Not watching it. Staring through it.
I check the rearview. Clear. Check the mirrors. Nothing. No tail, no surveillance, no threat I can identify. The highway is a two-lane stretch of nothing, farmland and fences and the occasional grain silo sitting against the flat sky like a rusted monument to something nobody remembers.
"Charlotte."
Nothing.
"Charlotte."
Her head turns. Slow. The way someone turns toward a sound they're hearing from very far away. Her eyes find mine and they're wrong. Not the cold blue I've been learning. Flat. Vacant. The eyes of a woman whose body is in this car, but whose mind is somewhere else entirely.
I've seen that look on soldiers after firefights. The lights are on but nobody's driving.
"Where are we?" she asks. Her voice is thin.
I check the GPS on the burner. "Southbound on Route 9. About forty miles from the Virginia border."
Her hand tightens on the cigarette. The filter crumples between her fingers. She doesn't seem to notice.
"Charlotte. What's wrong?"
