It's bigger than I imagined. Three buildings, interconnected, surrounded by a perimeter wall topped with camera mounts and razor wire. The east gate has a guard booth with two men and a barrier that lifts when Emilio's car approaches. His window comes down. A word. A nod. The barrier lifts.
Claudio pulls up behind him. The guard bends to look through the driver's window. Sees Claudio. Straightens. Doesn't check the passenger.
We pull through.
The compound closes around us like a mouth. The gate drops behind the car, and the wall is on all sides and the buildingsblock the sky and I'm inside. Again. The place I was held. The place I counted ceiling tiles and drank bad coffee and bit a man on the staircase because it was the only weapon I had.
The east garage is underground. Emilio parks first. We pull in beside him. The fluorescent lights are the same sickly yellow I remember. The concrete floor is the same oil-stained grey. The car where Claudio loaded cash and weapons gone, replaced by a black SUV with tinted windows.
I sit in the passenger seat and don't move.
Claudio turns off the engine. Looks at me. Doesn't speak. He reads the paralysis in my body, the white knuckles on my thighs, the shallow breathing, the way my eyes are fixed on the concrete wall ahead of me without seeing it.
"We don't have to go in yet," he says. "We can sit here."
"If we sit here, I'll talk myself out of it."
"Then we go in."
"Give me ten seconds."
He gives me ten seconds. I count them. Not because counting helps. Because counting is what Charlotte Richardson does, and Charlotte Richardson is the woman who walks into buildings and identifies traitors and doesn't flinch. Emma Wren flinches. Emma Wren runs. But Charlotte walks forward.
I gave him Emma's name on the highway so I could leave her in the car.
So, I straighten my back and open the door.
Emilio is leaning against his car, arms crossed, face serious. The rain has stopped but his jacket is still dark with it. He falls into step on my left side. Claudio takes my right. They walk in sync, same stride, same pace, and I realize they've done this before. Flanked someone. Moved as a unit, their bodies forming a corridor of safety around a person they're protecting. The synchronization is unconscious, instinctive. The muscle memory of twins who grew up watching each other's blind spots.
I walk between them and feel something other than fear.
Protected. I feel protected.
Not safe. But protected. Protected is two men with guns and matching faces and a shared understanding that the woman between them is not going to be harmed on their watch.
The elevator takes us up. Ground level. A corridor I don't recognize. Claudio leads now, Emilio behind, me in the middle. The walls are the same grey concrete I remember. The lighting is the same cold fluorescent. But the route is different. We're not going to the east wing. We're going deeper into the building, toward a section I've never seen.
We turn a corner and Leone is there.
He's bigger than I remember. Wider. He fills the corridor the way a wall fills a doorway, and his face is hard and tired and the gun on his hip is the largest sidearm I've ever seen in person. Beside him is his woman. Dark hair, sharp eyes, a laptop bag over one shoulder.
Alexandra.
She looks at me. I look at her. We talked, late at night in the east wing, when the guards changed shifts and the cameras cycled. She asked me questions I didn't answer and I asked her questions she answered honestly, and in those quiet hours she became the closest thing I've had to a friend.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey."
"You look like shit."
"Thanks. I've been on the run for nine days with your boyfriend's attack dog. It's done wonders for my complexion."
Leone's mouth twitches. Emilio grins. Claudio says nothing, but his hand finds the small of my back and presses once. Brief. A touchstone. I lean into it for half a second before I straighten.
"The room is ready," Leone says. "One-way glass. He can't see you. He doesn't know you're here. The morning briefing starts in twelve minutes. He'll be seated at the table, facing the glass."
Twelve minutes. In twelve minutes I'm going to look through a window at a man who tried to have me killed, and I'm going to confirm or deny, and then things are going to happen that I can't take back.
