"I've never—"
"With a military operative armed under his jacket?"
"Claudio, listen to me—"
"With two hundred thousand dollars in payments routed through three banks over six weeks?"
Salvatore goes still.
The performance is over. I can see it in the way his body changes. The casual posture drops. His spine straightens. His shoulders pull back. The loyal soldier costume falls away like a shed skin, and underneath is something older and colder and more dangerous than the man who drinks coffee at morning briefings and tells stories about knife fights at dinner parties.
"Who is the witness?" Salvatore asks. Quiet now. The voice of a man recalculating.
"You know who the witness is. You've spent three weeks trying to kill her."
Salvatore's eyes move to the glass. To the mirror he's been ignoring for the entire briefing. He can't see me. I know he can't see me. The glass is designed to be invisible from his side, a mirror reflecting his own face back at him.
But he looks. And his eyes find the exact spot where I'm standing, as if he can feel my attention through the wall, and for one second, through the glass and the soundproofing and theconcrete, I feel like he's looking at me again. The way he looked at me. The cold, assessing gaze of a man who sees a problem and begins calculating how to eliminate it.
I don't flinch. I stand at the glass, and I look back at him, and my hands are steady and my spine is straight because I refuse to flinch for men who tried to kill her and failed.
The briefing room door opens. Emilio and Carmelo enter. They flank Salvatore on either side, and the geometry of the room shifts from a conversation to a containment. Salvatore looks at them. Looks at Claudio.
"Aurelio knows about this?" he asks.
"Yes."
"I want to speak with him directly."
"You'll speak with me first." Claudio stands. "Downstairs."
Salvatore doesn't move. For five seconds, he sits in his chair and weighs his options, and I can see the calculations running behind his eyes. Fight, negotiate, cooperate, resist. The math of a man who has been running a double life for years and has just had the equation collapse.
He stands. Straightens his jacket. The gesture is almost dignified, the last act of a man preserving his composure because composure is the only thing he has left.
Emilio and Carmelo escort him out. Claudio follows. The briefing room is empty.
I stand at the glass and look at the chair where Salvatore sat and the coffee mug he left behind and the pen on the table and the folder with his notes, and I breathe.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Not because I'm afraid. Because I'mdonebeing afraid.
The observation room door opens behind me a few moments later. Emilio.
"They've got him," he says. "Sub-level. Soundproofed room. Leone's with Aurelio. It's done."
"It's not done. It's starting."
"The identification part is done. Your part. You did it." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, and the look on his face is the same one he gave me at the motel. Respect. The guarded, hard-won respect of a man who doesn't give it easily. "Claudio's going to handle the rest. It's going to take a while. Could be hours."
"I know."
"You should eat. Sleep. Do something that isn't standing in this room staring at an empty chair."
He's right. The adrenaline is crashing. I can feel it draining out of me like water through a hole in a boat, the high of the identification giving way to the hollow that comes after. My legs are shaking. I lock my knees.
"Where's Claudio?" I ask.
