His tone softens. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Where will you sleep?”
A longer pause follows before he says, “At the condo.”
I’m not sure why, but my stomach drops. “Oh.”
“I’ll be busy until the early morning hours. I’ll probably get no more than a couple of hours of sleep. It’s better if I’m closer to the office.”
“Oh,” I say again, wanting to bite my tongue for sounding so stupid. “Be careful.”
“Go to sleep, darling. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you,” I say before hanging up.
For a long time, I sit on my side of the bed in the dark. What matters is that we’re together now. I keep on telling myself that. Yet it’s not enough. The insecurity is too big, eating at me like a vulture picking a bone clean of its meat.
Chapter
Twenty
Dante
* * *
Sunrise is only an hour and twenty minutes away when I’ve taken care of the setup. Reino and I stand in the shadows, dressed in black jeans and hoodies, staring at the abandoned building as flames lick through the broken window on the second floor.
We’re quiet while we wait. I want to make sure everything goes according to plan. I don’t trust anyone other than myself with the task.
Reino checks his watch.
On cue, a siren sounds in the distance. The old lady living in the dilapidated house across the street would’ve called the fire brigade. She’s a bad sleeper and an early riser. My men did their homework when they scouted the city for a suitable property to burn down.
Reino watched her windows to be sure she was engrossed in her television show before we carried the body through the back into the building due for demolition. The deserted place is a good hideout, or that’s how it will appear when the accident is investigated.
We fitted out the room where we left the body with a portable gas stove, a crate to act as a table, and an old television, making it look like a temporary place where someone wanted by the cops would lay low. The final touch was an empty bottle of cheap spirits.
The electricity in the building is cut off, so I connected the television to the electric line running outside. A loose wire inside the plug caused the fire.
The young woman we left on a thin mattress in the corner had brown hair and delicate features, but she didn’t take care of herself. Spider veins, like those caused by frequent drinking, covered her cheeks, and dirt matted her greasy hair. A jogger found her body on a park bench. The medical examiner declared alcohol poisoning as the cause of death.
I used the dead woman’s dirty fingers to leave prints on a bag and some cash, which I stashed under the staircase on the first level where the investigators will easily find it. My hacker has taken care of the rest, swapping the dead woman’s biometrics with those of Stacia Delacy.
When the sirens get closer, we walk to the car I parked around the corner. The neighborhood has no street cameras and few inhabited houses. The industrial buildings swallowed the residential area a long time ago. Only a few people, like the old lady, refused to sell, maybe for sentimental reasons. The sparse houses that populate the streets are squeezed between factories and warehouses.
When the drug lords moved in, crime devalued the properties. Struggling businesses quickly ran empty, and the few houses that survived became little drowning boats, going under with a sinking neighborhood.
Somewhere on the other side of the city, a rescue team is still pulling bodies out of the water. The tragic accident is already on the news. Speculation is that a fuel leak caught fire. It’s the only reason that explains the explosion that tore through the twin hulls of the catamaran.
Reino gets behind the wheel. “Home?”
“The office.”
He shoots me a look as he starts the engine. “Now? You’ll make Penelope think her concern is founded.”
“Not my office. Teszner Agglomerate.”
I need to bury myself in work.
